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BUA UPPER ONTOLOGY

BUA UPPER ONTOLOGY

The BUA Upper Ontology is an upper ontology expressing topics in the German Academic and Academic Administrative domain, intended for the Berliner University Aliance to ensure a consequent common model for the alliance as well as to give each member the freedom to express local idiosynchrasies

Fig1: Overview of the Berlin University Alliance Upper Ontology Fig 2: Overview of the Berlin University Alliance Upper Ontology.

The image above shows a graphic visualisation of the Upper ontology, which describes mostly organisational structures in the common domain of the alliance. The BUA upper ontology itself subclasses the VIVO ontology as well as other ontologies dependant of which the VIVO ontology is dependant on. Such as the FOAF ontology, the OBO BFO ontology and the SKOS ontology

As we can see from the graph, most entities subclass foaf:organization, in the same way as each entity of the member ontologies will subclass the BUA upper ontology classes.

In addition to to the organisational entities, the BUA upper ontology also defines, as we see in Fig2, resource types, not already found in the VIVO ontology or its depency ontologies.

Fig2: Details view of upper ontology Fig2: Details view of upper ontology

In addition to the classes, the upper ontology also contains Object Properties which make out the relation types used to relate entities together within a sertain semantic function as well as data properties making up metadata fields on the class instances.