ed Abstract Ontologies play an important role in inter-agent communication, by providing the definitions of the vocabularies used by agents to describe the world [4]. An agent can use such a vocabulary to express its beliefs and actions, and so communicate about them. Ontologies contribute to semantic interoperability when agents are embedded in open, dynamic environments, such as the Web and its proposed extension, the Semantic Web [2]. However, in this type of environment there cannot be a single universally shared ontology that is agreed upon by all the parties involved, as this would result in imposing a standard communication vocabulary. Instead, every agent will typically use its own private ontology, which may not be understandable by other agents. Interoperability therefore relies on the ability to reconcile different existing ontologies that may be heterogeneous in format and with partially overlapping domains [7]. This reconciliation usually relies on the existence of corresp...
Loredana Laera, Valentina A. M. Tamma, Jér&