An Approach for Error Detection in Ontologies Using Concept Lattices

Abstract The core of the semantic web is ontology, which supports intero perability among semantic web applications and enables developer to reuse and share domain knowledge. It used a variety of fields such as Information Retrieval, E-commerce, Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence and B io-informatics. However, the reality is that various errors might be included in conceptual hierarchy when developing ontol ogies. Therefore, methodologies and supporting tools are essential to help the developer construct suitable ontologi es for the given purposes and to detect and analyze errors in order to verify the inconsistency in the ontologies. In this paper we propose a new approach for ontology error dete ction based on the Concept Lattices of Formal Concept Analysis. By using the tool that we developed in this r esearch, we can extract core elements from the source code of Ontology and then detect some structural errors based o n the concept lattices. The results of this research can be helpful for ontology engineers to support error detectio n and construction of “well-defined” and “good” ontologies.