ISO/IEC 21838-3:2023

Overview

ISO/IEC 21838-3:2023 - "Information technology - Top-level ontologies (TLO) - Part 3: Descriptive ontology for linguistic and cognitive engineering (DOLCE)" standardizes the DOLCE top-level ontology as a resource for ontology design, ontology integration, and semantic integration of heterogeneous information systems. The standard documents DOLCE’s natural-language signature, formal axiomatizations in OWL 2 and Common Logic (CL), its modular structure, and the methodology for developing domain ontologies that conform to DOLCE. It also demonstrates conformance to the top-level ontology requirements in ISO/IEC 21838-1:2021.

Key topics and technical requirements

• Scope and purpose: DOLCE is aimed at making commonsense, linguistic and cognitive categories explicit for interoperable ontology engineering.
• Conformance: Domain ontologies conform if they are consistent extensions of the DOLCE axiomatization in the same formalism (OWL‑2 or CL).
• Representations provided:
  • Natural language documentation of DOLCE terms and relations for human maintenance.
  • OWL 2 formalization to support Semantic Web applications and OWL reasoners.
  • Common Logic (CL/CLIF) axiomatization to capture expressive axioms and intended models.
• Modularity: The CL axiomatization is modular (e.g., Taxonomy, Mereology, Present, Dependence, Participation, Temporary Parthood, Constitution, Qualities), supporting reuse and conservative extensions.
• Verification: The document provides evidence of logical consistency of the CL axiomatization and interpretability of the OWL 2 axiomatization in CL.
• Breadth of coverage: DOLCE addresses core ontological themes such as space and time (endurants vs. perdurants), parts/wholes, change, qualities, processes, causality, information and social artefacts, and mental/fictional entities.
• Out of scope: The standard does not specify ontology languages themselves (RDF/OWL/CL), reasoning methods, or translation tools between ontology notations.

Applications and users

• Who uses it: Ontology engineers, knowledge architects, semantic integrators, data modelers, AI and NLP researchers, GIS and robotics engineers, and enterprises building interoperable semantic systems.
• Practical uses:
  • Designing domain ontologies that align with a shared TLO for consistent semantics.
  • Integrating ontologies across domains to enable semantic interoperability.
  • Supporting ontology quality control through OWL reasoners and formal CL analysis.
  • Aligning enterprise data models, process models, and knowledge graphs with common upper-level categories.

Related standards

• ISO/IEC 21838-1:2021 - TLO requirements (conformance baseline)
• ISO/IEC 24707 - Common Logic framework (CL)
• OWL 2 (W3C) - Web Ontology Language (used for DOLCE OWL formalization)

Keywords: ISO/IEC 21838-3:2023, DOLCE, top-level ontology, TLO, OWL 2, Common Logic, ontology design, semantic integration, ontology integration.