Formal Ontology in Information Systems

Ontology began life in ancient times as a fundamental part of philosophical enquiry concerned with the analysis and categorisation of what exists. In recent years, the subject has taken a practical turn with the advent of complex computerised information systems which are reliant on robust and coherent representations of their subject matter. The systematisation and elaboration of such representations and their associated reasoning techniques constitute the modern discipline of formal ontology, which is now being applied to such diverse domains as artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, bioinformatics, GIS, knowledge engineering, information retrieval and the Semantic Web. Researchers in all these areas are becoming increasingly aware of the need for serious engagement with ontology, understood as a general theory of the types of entities and relations making up their respective domains of enquiry, to provide a solid foundation for their work. The conference series Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS) provides a meeting point for researchers from these and other disciplines with an interest in formal ontology, where both theoretical issues and concrete applications can be explored in a spirit of genuine interdisciplinarity. This volume contains the proceedings of the sixth FOIS conference, held in Toronto, Canada, during 11-14 May 2010, including invited talks by Francis Jeffry Pelletier, John Bateman, and Alan Rector and the 28 peer-reviewed submissions selected for presentation at the conference, ranging from foundational issues to more application-oriented topics.