Contextual Alignment of Ontologies for Semantic Interoperability

Virtually all of the existing approaches to ontology integration assume that each of the individual ontologies (and the integrated ontology) corresponds to a single set of semantics at a given time. We first claim that this single integrated view assumption is unnecessarily restrictive, and defend the view that ontologies can simultaneously accommodate multiple integrated views provided the accompaniment of contexts - a set of axioms on the interpretation of data allowing local variations in representation and nuances in meaning, and a conversion function network between contexts to reconcile contextual differences. Then, we propose an ontology integration methodology based on the alignment of contexts and linking conversion function networks defined between contexts. The flexibility of our approach and methodology is illustrated with the alignment of air travel and car rental domains, an actual example from our prototype implementation