Giacomo De Colle

Tim Prudhomme, Giacomo De Colle, Austin Liebers et al.

The Provenance Ontology (PROV-O) is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommended ontology used to structure data about provenance across a wide variety of domains. Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) is a top-level ontology ISO/IEC standard used to structure a wide variety of ontologies, such as the OBO Foundry ontologies and the Common Core Ontologies (CCO). To enhance interoperability between these two ontologies, their extensions, and data organized by them, a mapping methodology and set of alignments are presented according to specific criteria which prioritize semantic and logical principles. The ontology alignments are evaluated by checking their logical consistency with canonical examples of PROV-O instances and querying terms that do not satisfy the alignment criteria as formalized in SPARQL. A variety of semantic web technologies are used in support of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles.

Giacomo De Colle

To improve cyber threat analysis practices in cybersecurity, I present a plan to build a formal ontological representation of state actors in cyberspace and of cyber operations. I argue that modelling these phenomena via ontologies allows for coherent integration of data coming from diverse sources, automated reasoning over such data, as well as intelligence extraction and reuse from and of them. Existing ontological tools in cybersecurity can be ameliorated by connecting them to neighboring domains such as law, regulations, governmental institutions, and documents. In this paper, I propose metrics to evaluate currently existing ontological tools to create formal representations in the cybersecurity domain, and I provide a plan to develop and extend them when they are lacking.

John Beverley, Robin McGill, Sam Smith et al.

The term credential encompasses educational certificates, degrees, certifications, and government-issued licenses. An occupational credential is a verification of an individuals qualification or competence issued by a third party with relevant authority. Job seekers often leverage such credentials as evidence that desired qualifications are satisfied by their holders. Many U.S. education and workforce development organizations have recognized the importance of credentials for employment and the challenges of understanding the value of credentials. In this study, we identified and ontologically defined credential and credential-related terms at the textual and semantic levels based on the Occupation Ontology (OccO), a BFO-based ontology. Different credential types and their authorization logic are modeled. We additionally defined a high-level hierarchy of credential related terms and relations among many terms, which were initiated in concert with the Alabama Talent Triad (ATT) program, which aims to connect learners, earners, employers and education/training providers through credentials and skills. To our knowledge, our research provides for the first time systematic ontological modeling of the important domain of credentials and related contents, supporting enhanced credential data and knowledge integration in the future.