Ontology-based semantic classification of unstructured documents

As more and more knowledge and information becomes available through computers, a critical capability of systems supporting knowledge management is the classification of documents into categories that are meaningful to the user. In a step beyond the use of keywords, we developed a system that analyzes the sentences contained in unstructured or semi-structured documents, and utilizes an ontology reflecting the domain knowledge for a semantic classification of the documents. An experimental system has been implemented for the analysis of small documents in combination with a limited ontology; an extension to larger sets of documents and extended ontologies, together with an application to practical tasks, is the focus of ongoing work.