Integration of the DOLCE top-level ontology into the OntoSpec methodology

This report describes a new version of the OntoSpec methodology for ontology building. Defined by the LaRIA Knowledge Engineering Team (University of Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens, France), OntoSpec aims at helping builders to model ontological knowledge (upstream of formal representation). The methodology relies on a set of rigorously-defined modelling primitives and principles. Its application leads to the elaboration of a semi-informal ontology, which is independent of knowledge representation languages. We recently enriched the OntoSpec methodology by endowing it with a new resource, the DOLCE top-level ontology defined at the LOA (IST-CNR, Trento, Italy). The goal of this integration is to provide modellers with additional help in structuring application ontologies, while maintaining independence vis-à-vis formal representation languages. In this report, we first provide an overview of the OntoSpec methodology’s general principles and then describe the DOLCE re-engineering process. A complete version of DOLCE-OS (i.e. a specification of DOLCE in the semi-informal OntoSpec language) is presented in an appendix.