Representing biological and physical systems as temporal event hierarchies

Abstract

A method for representing texts describing biological systems is presented. The representation is that which an educated layman would build from reading a text describing a biological system. This representation is viewed as a bridge between the English description of a biological system and deeper representations of such a system. The representation is based on temporal relations which are used to index and organize knowledge about biological systems (circulatory, respiratory, etc.) in a hierarchy of events. Several reasoning methods which the proposed representation permits are explained. A method for drawing diagrams depicting the function of the systems represented is also included.<>