A Unified Foundational Ontology and some Applications of it in Business Modeling

: Foundational ontologies provide the basic concepts upon which any domain-specific ontology is built. This paper presents a new foundational ontology, UFO, and shows how it can be used as a guideline in business modeling and for evaluating business modeling methods. UFO is derived from a synthesis of two other foundational ontologies, GFO/GOL and OntoClean/DOLCE. While their main areas of application are natural sciences and linguistics/cognitive engineering, respectively, the main purpose of UFO is to provide a foundation for conceptual modeling, including business modeling.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: CAISE
• Authors: Giancarlo Guizzardi, Gerd Wagner
• Keywords: Business Modeling, Business Modeling Methods, CAISE 2004, Foundational Ontologies