Supporting Ontology Design through Large-Scale FCA-Based Ontology Restructuring

Ontologies are designed to evolve and this is typically done through sequences of a local modifications in the ontological structure, a.k.a. refactorings. Yet the more complex the structure the less obvious the full impact of such a refactoring. Thus, after a protracted period of maintenance, the overall quality of an ontology may substantially deteriorate. As a remedy, an ontology restructuring task would be performed that cleans its structure and enhances the ontology with new and previously missing entities. We investigate an approach for ontology restructuring based on relational concept analysis (RCA) that allows for a thorough reshuffling of the ontology. Here we present a platform for ontology maintenance, INUKHUK, and illustrate its main workflow dedicated to restructuring. We also report on a preliminary validating study involving several small-to-medium size ontologies.