BFO: Basic Formal Ontology¹

Issue title: Foundational Ontologies in Action

Guest editors: Stefano Borgo, Antony Galton and Oliver Kutz

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Otte, J. Neil^{a; *} | Beverley, John^a | Ruttenberg, Alan^b

Affiliations: [a] Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, MD, USA | [b] University at Buffalo, State University of New York, NY, USA

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author. E-mail: neil.otte@jhu.edu.

Note: [1] Each author contributed equally to this work.

Note: [] Accepted by: Oliver Kutz

Abstract: Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) is a top-level ontology consisting of thirty-six classes, designed to support information integration, retrieval, and analysis across all domains of scientific investigation, presently employed in over 350 ontology projects around the world. BFO is a genuine top-level ontology, containing no terms particular to material domains, such as physics, medicine, or psychology. In this paper, we demonstrate how a series of cases illustrating common types of change may be represented by universals, defined classes, and relations employing the BFO framework. We provide discussion of these cases to provide a template for other ontologists using BFO, as well as to facilitate comparison with the strategies proposed by ontologists using different top-level ontologies.

Keywords: BFO, top-level ontology, ontological analysis, formal ontology

DOI: 10.3233/AO-220262

Journal: Applied Ontology, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 17-43, 2022