Ontology Building: A Terrorism Specialist's Perspective

Abstract

For the semantic Web to fulfill its potential, it needs to be usable by the average user. Until this occurs, the semantic Web will remain the province of programmers and computer scientists. Ontologies, which define concepts for the computer, give the semantic Web its potential power. However, until non-computer science specialists are able to construct useful ontologies, the semantic Web will not fulfill its potential. This paper discusses a non-computer scientist's efforts to construct an ontology for a terrorism analysis Semantic Web portal (profilesinterror.mindswap.org). The paper will address both general challenges in conceptualizing an ontology and specific techniques useful for ontology construction. Some of the concepts will be useful for ontology writing in general, other will be unique to defining terrorism.