Common Core Ontologies
The Common Core Ontologies (CCO) are a suite of 11 ontologies that include terms that are applicable to a wide range of subjects..[1][2] CCO was first developed by defense contractor CUBRC thanks to an Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity Knowledge Discovery and Dissemination grant. CCO is an extension of Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), the most widely used top-level ontology. As a result, all classes in CCO are subclasses of ones found in BFO. It is used in a variety of domains, including both military and civilian applications. Maintenance of CCO is overseen by the Common Core Governance Board.
CCO is a mid-level ontology, meaning it represents entities at a lower level of generality than upper-level ontologies and at a higher level of generality than domain ontologies.[3] The Ontology Standards Working Group submitted IEEE P3195 to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers as a proposed standard defining mid-level ontologies.[4] The proposal includes P3195.1, which establishes the Common Core Ontologies as collectively constituting a mid-level ontology.[5]
Applications
CCO is widely used by the US government to support information systems for defense, border control, and cybersecurity. Along with BFO, CCO was made a baseline standard for ontology work with the United States Department of Defense (DoD) and United States Intelligence Community (IC).[6][7][8][9] In April 2023, the joint Department of Defense and Intelligence Community Ontology Working Group (DIOWG) was chartered by the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) and the Intelligence Community Chief Data Officer Council. The DIOWG is tasked with "developing coordinated ontologies to set the agreed definitions and standard necessary to make data machine understandable".[9] It is responsible for the recommendation to make CCO a baseline standard. Due to it being a baseline standard, ontology work with the DoD and IC is directed to make use of the common core ontologies as a mid-level ontology to improve understandability, integration, interoperability, and logical consistency.[9]
CCO has been used in the development of the Joint Doctrine Ontology (JDO) which helps with the interoperability of data between elements of a joint military force[10], and CUBRC has developed the Common Core Military Ontologies, a suite of military domain ontologies in compliance with CCO design principles.[11] Additionally, CCO has been extended with ontologies for land combat information[12], an ontology of ground vehicle systems[13], an ontology for integrating information used for Processing, Exploitation, and Dissemination (PED), a process for formulating and distributing military information[14] , and a cybersecurity ontology[15]
CCO has been applied to more than just military domains. It has been extended with ontologies for other domains, such as the Space Object Ontology[16], the Product Life Cycle Ontologies[17], an ontology for human expertise-dependent manufacturing processes[18], ontology applications in additive manufacturing[19] and digital engineering[20], and an ontology for commercial exchange.[21] There is also a semantic mapping translating between the Provenance Ontology (PROV-O), a World Wide Web Consortium recommended ontology used for modeling provenance data, and a few Basic Formal Ontology extensions, including the Common Core Ontologies.[22] Additionally, CCO is being used in commercial applications, such as by Enterprise Knowledge. [23]
Component Ontologies
The ontologies within CCO include:[1]
- Geospatial Ontology: "Designed to represent sites, spatial regions, and other entities, especially those that are located near the surface of Earth, as well as the relations that hold between them."
- Information Entity Ontology: "Designed to represent generic types of information as well as the relationships between information and other entities."[24][25]
- Event Ontology: "Designed to represent processual entities, especially those performed by agents, that occur within multiple domains."
- Time Ontology: "Designed to represent temporal regions and the relations that hold between them."
- Agent Ontology: "Designed to represent agents, especially persons and organizations, and their roles."
- Quality Ontology: "Designed to represent a range of attributes of entities especially qualities, realizable entities, and process profiles."
- Units of Measure Ontology: "Designed to represent standard measurement units that are used when measuring various attributes of entities."
- Currency Unit Ontology: "Designed to represent currencies that are issued and used by countries."
- Facility Ontology: "Designed to represent buildings and campuses that are designed to serve some specific purpose, and which are common to multiple domains."
- Artifact Ontology: "Designed to represent artifacts that are common to multiple domains along with their models, specifications, and functions."
- Extended Relations Ontology: "Designed to represent many of the relations that hold between entities at the level of the mid-level Common Core Ontologies."
Although not strictly part of CCO, the Modal Relations Ontology (MRO) is an extension of CCO hosted on its official GitHub repository. Amongst other uses, MRO permits CCO ontologies to represent entities that might potentially exist in the future.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Jensen, Mark; De Colle, Giacomo; Kindya, Sean; More, Cameron; Cox, Alexander; Beverley, John (2024). "The Common Core Ontologies". arXiv:2404.17758 [cs.AI].
- ↑ "An Overview of the Common Core Ontologies" (PDF). CUBRC. Retrieved 4 June 2024.
- ↑ Beverley, John; DeColle, Giacomo; Mark, Jensen; Benson, Carter; Smith, Barry. "Middle Architecture Criteria" (PDF). University of Twente. Retrieved 28 November 2024.
- ↑ "IEEE P3195 Ontology Standards Working Group". ieee.org. IEEE. Retrieved 4 June 2024.
- ↑ "P3195.1 Standard for Common Core Ontology (CCO)". ieee.org. IEEE. Retrieved 28 November 2024.
- ↑ "BFO and CCO adopted as 'baseline standards' by federal agencies". University at Buffalo. Retrieved 4 June 2024.
- ↑ Gambini, Bert. "DOD, Intelligence Community adopt resource developed by UB ontologists". University at Buffalo. Retrieved 4 June 2024.
- ↑ Weinberg, Justin. "Department of Defense Adopts a Philosopher's Applied Ontology". DailyNous. Retrieved 4 June 2024.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Wade, Lori; Martell, Craig. "MEMORANDUM FOR CHIEF DIGITAL AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE OFFICER COUNCIL MEMBERS/INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY CHIEF DATA OFFICER COUNCIL MEMBERS" (PDF). Retrieved 4 June 2024.
- ↑ Morosoff, Peter; Rudnicki, Ron; Bryant, Jason; Farrell, Robert; Smith, Barry. "Joint Doctrine Ontology: A Benchmark for Military Information Systems Interoperability" (PDF). STIDS 2015 Proceedings.
- ↑ Cox, Alexander. "An Overview of the Common Core Space Domain Ontologies".
- ↑ Moten, Rod; Barnhill, Bill. "A Practical Approach to Data Modeling using CCO" (PDF). STIDS 2016 Proceedings.
- ↑ Louis, Edward; Colletti, Ryan; Hussain, Mohammad; Mocko, Gregory (2022). "Developing Domain Ontologies and an Integration Ontology to Support Modeling and Simulation of Next-Generation Ground Vehicle Systems". WCX SAE World Congress Experience. SAE Technical Paper Series. 1. doi:10.4271/2022-01-0361. Unknown parameter
|article-number=ignored (help) - ↑ Schoening, James; Duff, Daniel; Hines, Dorothy; Riser, Keith; Pham, Tien; Stolovy, Gary; Houser, Jeff; Rudnicki, Ronald; Ganger, Robert (2015). "PED fusion via enterprise ontology". In Pham, Tien; Kolodny, Michael A. Proceedings of SPIE - Ground/Air Multisensor Interoperability, Integration, and Networking for Persistent ISR VI. 9464. Alex James, Eric Nagler. pp. 94640D. Bibcode:2015SPIE.9464E..0DS. doi:10.1117/12.2182064.
- ↑ Donohue, Brian; Jensen, Mark; Cox, Alexander; Rudnicki, Ron (2018). "A common core-based cyber ontology in support of cross-domain situational awareness". In Wiegmann, Dietrich M.; Kolodny, Michael A.; Pham, Tien. Ground/Air Multisensor Interoperability, Integration, and Networking for Persistent ISR IX. 10635. SPIE Defense + Security. p. 14. Bibcode:2018SPIE10635E..0FD. doi:10.1117/12.2307719. ISBN 978-1-5106-1781-0. Search this book on
- ↑ Cox, Alexander; Nebelecky, Christopher; Rudnicki, Ronald; Tagliafarri, William; Crassidis, John; Smith, Barry. "The Space Object Ontology" (PDF). Proceedings of Fusion 2016.
- ↑ Otte, Neil; Kiritsi, Dimitris; Mohd Ali, Munira; Yang, Ruoyu; Zhang, Binbin; rudnicki, Ron; Rai, Rahul; Smith, Barry (2019). "An ontological approach to representing the product life cycle". Applied Ontology. 14 (2): 179–197. doi:10.3233/AO-190210.
- ↑ Mai-Ly Pfaff-Kastner, Manja; Wunderlich, Tim; Wenzel, Ken; Ihlenfeldt, Steffen (2025). "Roxana ontology: a standard-based knowledge model for the formalisation of adaptive human-based processes in the manufacturing industry". International Journal of Production Research. 63 (1): 371–394. doi:10.1080/00207543.2024.2360086.
- ↑ Bjarsch, Thomas; Drechsler, Klaus; Schilp, Johannes (2025). "Ontologies for FAIR Data in Additive Manufacturing: A Use Case-Based Evaluation". Advanced Engineering Materials. 27 (8). doi:10.1002/adem.202401528. Unknown parameter
|article-number=ignored (help) - ↑ Gregory, Joe; Salado, Alejandro (2024). "Towards a Systems Engineering Ontology Stack". Incose International Symposium. 34: 1304–1318. doi:10.1002/iis2.13210.
- ↑ Merrell, Eric; Massin, Olivier; Smith, Barry. "Common Core Conformant Definitions for an Ontology of Commercial Exchange" (PDF). 2nd International Workshop on Ontology of Social, Legal and Economic Entities.
- ↑ Prudhomme, Tim; De Colle, Giacomo; Liebers, Austin; Sculley, Alec; Xie, Piehong; Cohen, Sydney; Beverley, John (2025). "A semantic approach to mapping the Provenance Ontology to Basic Formal Ontology". Scientific Data. 12 (1): 282. Bibcode:2025NatSD..12..282P. doi:10.1038/s41597-025-04580-1. PMC 11833102 Check
|pmc=value (help). PMID 39962095 Check|pmid=value (help). - ↑ "Semantic Layer Strategy for Linked Data Investigations". Enterprise Knowledge. 8 May 2025. Retrieved 12 July 2025.
- ↑ "Modeling Information with the Common Core Ontologies" (PDF). CUBRC. Retrieved 4 June 2024.
- ↑ Duncan, William; Diller, Matthew; Dooley, Damion; Hogan, William; Beverley, John (2024). "Concretizing plan specifications as realizables within the OBO foundry". Journal of Biomedical Semantics. 15 (1): 15. doi:10.1186/s13326-024-00315-0. PMC 11334599 Check
|pmc=value (help). PMID 39160586 Check|pmid=value (help).
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