Mapping the Provenance Ontology to Basic Formal Ontology

Abstract

The Provenance Ontology (PROV-O) is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommended ontology used to structure data about provenance across a wide variety of domains. Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) is a top-level ontology ISO/IEC standard used to structure a wide variety of ontologies, such as the OBO Foundry ontologies and the Common Core Ontologies (CCO). To enhance interoperability between these two ontologies, their extensions, and data organized by them, an alignment is presented according to a specific mapping criteria and methodology which prioritizes structural and semantic considerations. The ontology alignment is evaluated by checking its logical consistency with canonical examples of PROV-O instances and querying terms that do not satisfy the mapping criteria as formalized in SPARQL. A variety of semantic web technologies are used in support of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles.