Some Tools and Methodologies for Domain Ontology Building

The Laboratory for Applied Ontology (OntoLab) is a distributed structure (Rome and Trento) of the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technology (a section of the Italian National Research Council). It performs basic and applied research on the ontological foundations of conceptual modelling, exploring the role of ontologies in different fields, such as knowledge representation, knowledge engineering, database design, information retrieval, natural language processing and the semantic web. OntoLab is coordinated by Nicola Guarino, and currently employs five full-time research scientists (besides the author and the coordinator): S. Borgo, C. Masolo, A. Oltramari, D.M. Pisanelli and G. Steve. The group is characterized by an interdisciplinary approach that combines computer science, philosophy and linguistics and relies on logic as a unifying paradigm. Although its core interest is in methodologies and theories, the research of OntoLab addresses, or makes use of, artifacts developed in all the basic areas of ontology engineering: