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owlontology

An ontology for describing a person at a specific time is in a specific location

I am new to ontology and OWL. I want to describe that a person is located in a place in a specific time. How can I do this with OWL? I defined three concepts: person, place and time. and two object property: IsLocatedIn(person,place), AtTime(person,time), but it's not what I want.

Solution

  • I think what you're searching for is reification. Reification is a KR technique that allows you to assert something smarter than a simple "subject-predicate-object" statement. This is usually done by first defining a "meta-statement" and then asserting anything you want about such meta-statement.

    In your example, you could define a meta-concept instantiated as LocationAtTime(l) (using your notation), and then refer to it using three object properties: IsLocated(person,l), LocatedAt(l,time), LocatedIn(l,place).