Applying Belief Change to Ontology Evolution

Giorgos Flouris

Institute of Computer Science, FO.R.T.H.
P.O. Box 1385, GR 71110, Heraklion, Greece
fgeo@ics.forth.gr

Abstract
Some of the key problems to resolve towards the realization of the 
vision of the Semantic Web include the creation, management and 
evolution of ontologies. This thesis focuses on the problem of 
ontology evolution. We be-lieve that the ontology evolution community 
will benefit from the application of belief change techniques to 
ontologies and provide arguments in favor of this option. As an 
application of this viewpoint, we evaluate the feasibility of 
applying the AGM theory of contraction to the problem of ontology 
evolution, for ontologies represented using Description Logics (DLs) 
and OWL. Our ap-proach raises interesting theoretical challenges and 
has an important practical impact too, given the central role that 
DLs and OWL play in the Semantic Web.