An ontological analysis of risk in Basic Formal Ontology
This provides a theoretical clarification for ontology developers and philosophers, but it is incremental as it builds on existing BFO categories without broad empirical impact.
The paper tackles the problem of characterizing risk within the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) by arguing that Risk is a subclass of BFO:Role rather than BFO:Disposition, and it applies this modeling to an example to derive sufficient conditions for risk.
The paper explores the nature of risk, providing a characterization using the categories of the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). It argues that the category Risk is a subclass of BFO:Role, contrasting it with a similar view classifying Risk as a subclass of BFO:Disposition. This modeling choice is applied on one example of risk, which represents objects, processes (both physical and mental) and their interrelations, then generalizing from the instances in the example to obtain an overall analysis of risk, making explicit what are the sufficient conditions for being a risk. Plausible necessary conditions are also mentioned for future work. Index Terms: ontology, risk, BFO, role, disposition