A logical geo-ontology design pattern for quantifying over types

Ontology design patterns ease the engineering of ontologies, improve their quality, foster reusability, and support the alignment of ontologies by acting as common building blocks or strategies for reoccurring modeling problems. This makes ontology design patterns key enablers of semantic interoperability and, hence, a crucial technology for representing the body of knowledge of such heterogeneous domains as the geosciences. While different types of patterns can be distinguished, existing work on geo-ontology design patterns has solely focused on content patterns, i.e., design solutions for domain classes and relationships. In this work, we propose a logical pattern that addresses a frequent modeling problem that has hampered the development of sophisticated geo-ontologies in the past, namely how to model the quantification over types. We argue for the need for such a pattern, explain why it is difficult to model, demonstrate how to implement it using the Web Ontology Language OWL, and finally show how it can be applied to modeling concepts such as biodiversity.