Ontology

Definition

This temporal representation particularly considers the N-ary relations as basis for its organisation. The temporal element, which is now considered an explicit event, is represented as a concept (Event) rather than a property; while instances of such classes (e.g. EatingEvent) correspond to instances of this of this new concept.

USE

According to the N-ary relations approach, we can use this strategy for any couple of concepts whose relation has some type of temporal notion. For example, the Person and Meal concepts are related by means of a object property takes. However, a person spents time taking a meal. Thus, we can create a new concept derived from event and called EatingMeal to represent this notion. In its original definition, all events have a time interval, with start and end moments, and they happen during this interval.

contribution

we augmented this structure so it could support the concept of uncertain time and also be generic for both interval and moments. In this novel approach, a generic event is related (occurs object property) to some temporal notion (TimeNotion concept), which can be an Interval or Moment (subclasses of TimeNotion). Intervals are associates with two moments using the object properties (hasBeginning and hasEnd), while any moment used in this representation has a precise or uncertain value.

SEMANTICS

The semantics of this approach was published in paper titled Engineering Uncertain Time for its Practical Integration in Ontologies.