Ontology-Based Task Simulation

Information services assist people in their decision-making during the performance of certain tasks. In order to determine if a data source, which commits to a given ontology, can be employed for a service, the service provider needs to evaluate its usability and utility for the decision-making process. We propose to do this by simulating with the ontologies the tasks to be supported by the service. Such a simulation needs to access data about entities based on the actions they afford and the events they participate in. This requires that ontologies include information about these affordances and events. The paper demonstrates a formalized framework, which satisfies this requirement by including functions in the ontologies and making the specifications executable. A real-world scenario for a navigation service—instructions for crossing a river by car—demonstrates the applicability and benefits of the approach in a dynamic scenario.