Section: Overall Objectives

General Objectives

The semantic web blends the communication capabilities of the web with knowledge representation. Expressing formalised knowledge on a computer is useful, not exclusively for the need of the computer, but for communication. The goal of Exmo is the development of theoretical, experimental and software tools for communicating formalised knowledge.

There is no reason why knowledge expressed on the web should be in a single format or by reference to a single vocabulary (or ontology). In order to interoperate, the representations have to be matched and transformed. We currently build on our experience of alignments as representing the relationships between ontologies. Such alignments may be used for generating knowledge transformations (or any other kind of mediators) used for interoperating or interlinking data. We currently focus on the design of an alignment infrastructure and on the investigation of alignment properties when they are used for reconciling ontologies.

On a longer term, we want to study how a semantic web made of interrelated ontologies and datasets evolves and structures itself depending on its use. In particular, we aim at understanding how it influences and is influenced by its use in interpersonal communication.

Our work is naturally applied in all contexts in which ontologies are used for expressing knowledge that has to be communicated. It is more directly focussed on the infrastructure of the semantic web and the web of data.