Franz Baader

TU Dresden | TUD · Institute of Theoretical Computer Science

Removing unwanted consequences from a knowledge base has been investigated in belief change under the name contraction and is called repair in ontology engineering. Simple repair and contraction approaches based on removing statements from the knowledge base (respectively called belief base contractions and classical repairs) have the disadvantage...

Concrete domains have been introduced in description logic (DL) to enable reference to concrete objects (such as numbers) and predefined predicates on these objects (such as numerical comparisons) when defining concepts. The primary research goal in this context was to find restrictions on the concrete domain such that its integration into certain...

Unification has been introduced in Description Logic (DL) as a means to detect redundancies in ontologies. In particular, it was shown that testing unifiability in the DL $$\mathcal{E}\mathcal{L}$$ E L is an NP-complete problem, and this result has been extended in several directions. Surprisingly, it turned out that the complexity increases to PSp...

Errors in knowledge bases (KBs) written in a Description Logic (DL) are usually detected when reasoning derives an inconsistency or a consequence that does not hold in the application domain modelled by the KB. Whereas classical repair approaches produce maximal subsets of the KB not implying the inconsistency or unwanted consequence, optimal repai...

Concrete domains have been introduced in description logic (DL) to enable reference to concrete objects (such as numbers) and predefined predicates on these objects (such as numerical comparisons) when defining concepts. The primary research goal in this context was to find restrictions on the concrete domain such that its integration into certain...

Errors in knowledge bases (KBs) written in a Description Logic (DL) are usually detected when reasoning derives an inconsistency or a consequence that does not hold in the application domain modelled by the KB. Whereas classical repair approaches produce maximal subsets of the KB not implying the inconsistency or unwanted consequence, optimal repai...

Logic-based approaches to AI have the advantage that their behavior can in principle be explained with the help of proofs of the computed consequences. For ontologies based on Description Logic (DL), we have put this advantage into practice by showing how proofs for consequences derived by DL reasoners can be computed and displayed in a user-friend...

The question of how a given knowledge base can be modified such that certain unwanted consequences are removed has been investigated in the area of ontology engineering under the name of repair and in the area of belief change under the name of contraction. Whereas in the former area the emphasis was more on designing and implementing concrete repa...

Ontologies based on Description Logics may contain errors, which are usually detected when reasoning produces consequences that follow from the ontology, but do not hold in the modelled application domain. In previous work, we have introduced repair approaches for 𝓔𝓛 ontologies that are optimal in the sense that they preserve a maximal amount of co...

Ontologies based on Description Logics may contain errors, which are usually detected when reasoning produces consequences that follow from the ontology, but do not hold in the modelled application domain. In previous work, we have introduced repair approaches for 𝓔𝓛 ontologies that are optimal in the sense that they preserve a maximal amount of co...

Concrete domains have been introduced in Description Logic (DL) to enable reference to concrete objects (such as numbers) and predefined predicates on these objects (such as numerical comparisons) when defining concepts. The primary research goal in this context was to find restrictions on the concrete domain such that its integration into certain...

Logic-based approaches to AI have the advantage that their behavior can in principle be explained with the help of proofs of the computed consequences. For ontologies based on Description Logic (DL), we have put this advantage into practice by showing how proofs for consequences derived by DL reasoners can be computed and displayed in a user-friend...

Concrete domains have been introduced in Description Logic (DL) to enable reference to concrete objects (such as numbers) and predefined predicates on these objects (such as numerical comparisons) when defining concepts. The primary research goal in this context was to find restrictions on the concrete domain such that its integration into certain...

OWL is a powerful language to formalize terminologies in an ontology. Its main strength lies in its foundation on description logics, allowing systems to automatically deduce implicit information through logical reasoning. However, since ontologies are often complex, understanding the outcome of the reasoning process is not always straightforward....

Ontologies based on Description Logic (DL) represent general background knowledge in a terminology (TBox) and the actual data in an ABox. Both human-made and machine-learned data sets may contain errors, which are usually detected when the DL reasoner returns unintuitive or obviously incorrect answers to queries. To eliminate such errors, classical...

Concrete domains have been introduced in the area of Description Logic to enable reference to concrete objects (such as numbers) and predefined predicates on these objects (such as numerical comparisons) when defining concepts. Unfortunately, in the presence of general concept inclusions (GCIs), which are supported by all modern DL systems, adding...

The word problem for a finite set of ground identities is known to be decidable in polynomial time using congruence closure, and this is also the case if some of the function symbols are assumed to be commutative or defined by certain shallow identities, called strongly shallow. We show that decidability in P is preserved if we add the assumption t...

Explanations for description logic (DL) entailments provide important support for the maintenance of large ontologies. The “justifications” usually employed for this purpose in ontology editors pinpoint the parts of the ontology responsible for a given entailment. Proofs for entailments make the intermediate reasoning steps explicit, and thus expla...

Ontologies based on Description Logic (DL) represent general background knowledge in a terminology (TBox) and the actual data in an ABox. DL systems can then be used to compute consequences (such as answers to certain queries) from an ontology consisting of a TBox and an ABox. Since both human-made and machine-learned data sets may contain errors,...

Errors in Description Logic (DL) ontologies are often detected when a reasoner computes unwanted consequences. The question is then how to repair the ontology such that the unwanted consequences no longer follow, but as many of the other consequences as possible are preserved. The problem of computing such optimal repairs was addressed in our previ...

Explanations for description logic (DL) entailments provide important support for the maintenance of large ontologies. The "justifications" usually employed for this purpose in ontology editors pinpoint the parts of the ontology responsible for a given entailment. Proofs for entailments make the intermediate reasoning steps explicit, and thus expla...

Ontologies based on Description Logic (DL) represent general background knowledge in a terminology (TBox) and the actual data in an ABox. DL systems can then be used to compute consequences (such as answers to certain queries) from an ontology consisting of a TBox and an ABox. Since both human-made and machine-learned data sets may contain errors,...

Errors in Description Logic (DL) ontologies are often detected when a reasoner computes unwanted consequences. The question is then how to repair the ontology such that the unwanted consequences no longer follow, but as many of the other consequences as possible are preserved. The problem of computing such optimal repairs was addressed in our previ...

The inexpressive Description Logic (DL) ${\cal F}{{\cal L}_0}$ , which has conjunction and value restriction as its only concept constructors, had fallen into disrepute when it turned out that reasoning in ${\cal F}{{\cal L}_0}$ w.r.t. general TBoxes is E xp T ime -complete, that is, as hard as in the considerably more expressive logic ${\cal A}{\c...

We review our recent work on how to compute optimal repairs, optimal compliant anonymizations, and optimal safe anonymizations of ABoxes containing possibly anonymized individuals. The results can be used both to remove erroneous consequences from a knowledge base and to hide secret information before publication of the knowledge base, while keepin...

Unification in the Description Logic (DL) \(\mathcal {FL}_0\) is known to be ExpTime-complete and of unification type zero. We investigate whether a lower complexity of the unification problem can be achieved by either syntactically restricting the role depth of concepts or semantically restricting the length of role paths in interpretations. We sh...

The inexpressive Description Logic (DL) $\mathcal{FL}_0$, which has conjunction and value restriction as its only concept constructors, had fallen into disrepute when it turned out that reasoning in $\mathcal{FL}_0$ w.r.t. general TBoxes is ExpTime-complete, i.e., as hard as in the considerably more expressive logic $\mathcal{ALC}$. In this paper,...

The application of automated reasoning approaches to Description Logic (DL) ontologies may produce certain consequences that either are deemed to be wrong or should be hidden for privacy reasons. The question is then how to repair the ontology such that the unwanted consequences can no longer be deduced. An optimal repair is one where the least amo...

Logic-based approaches to AI have the advantage that their behavior can in principle be explained to a user. If, for instance, a Description Logic reasoner derives a consequence that triggers some action of the overall system, then one can explain such an entailment by presenting a proof of the consequence in an appropriate calculus. How comprehens...

Concrete domains have been introduced in Description Logics (DLs) to enable reference to concrete objects (such as numbers) and predefined predicates on these objects (such as numerical comparisons) when defining concepts. To retain decidability when integrating a concrete domain into a decidable DL, the domain must satisfy quite strong restriction...

The application of automated reasoning approaches to Description Logic (DL) ontologies may produce certain consequences that either are deemed to be wrong or should be hidden for privacy reasons. The question is then how to repair the ontology such that the unwanted consequences can no longer be deduced. An optimal repair is one where the least amo...

Logic-based approaches to AI have the advantage that their behavior can in principle be explained to a user. If, for instance, a Description Logic reasoner derives a consequence that triggers some action of the overall system, then one can explain such an entailment by presenting a proof of the consequence in an appropriate calculus. How comprehens...

In recent work, we have shown how to compute compliant anonymizations of quantified ABoxes w.r.t. 𝓔𝓛 policies. In this setting, quantified ABoxes can be used to publish information about individuals, some of which are anonymized. The policy is given by concepts of the Description Logic (DL) 𝓔𝓛, and compliance means that one cannot derive from the A...

In recent work, we have shown how to compute compliant anonymizations of quantified ABoxes w.r.t. 𝓔𝓛 policies. In this setting, quantified ABoxes can be used to publish information about individuals, some of which are anonymized. The policy is given by concepts of the Description Logic (DL) 𝓔𝓛, and compliance means that one cannot derive from the A...

The project “Semantic Technologies for Situation Awareness” was concerned with detecting certain critical situations from data obtained by observing a complex hard- and software system, in order to trigger actions that allow this system to save energy. The general idea was to formalize situations as ontology-mediated queries, but in order to expres...

We adapt existing approaches for privacy-preserving publishing of linked data to a setting where the data are given as Description Logic (DL) ABoxes with possibly anonymised (formally: existentially quantified) individuals and the privacy policies are expressed using sets of concepts of the DL 𝓔𝓛. We provide a chacterization of compliance of such A...

We adapt existing approaches for privacy-preserving publishing of linked data to a setting where the data are given as Description Logic (DL) ABoxes with possibly anonymised (formally: existentially quantified) individuals and the privacy policies are expressed using sets of concepts of the DL 𝓔𝓛. We provide a chacterization of compliance of such A...

In contrast to qualitative linear temporal logics, which can be used to state that some property will eventually be satisfied, metric temporal logics allow us to formulate constraints on how long it may take until the property is satisfied. While most of the work on combining description logics (DLs) with temporal logics has concentrated on qualita...

The word problem for a finite set of ground identities is known to be decidable in polynomial time, and this is also the case if some of the function symbols are assumed to be commutative. We show that decidability in P is preserved if we also assume that certain function symbols f are extensional in the sense that \(f(s_1,\ldots ,s_n) \mathrel {\a...

Concrete domains have been introduced in the area of Description Logic to enable reference to concrete objects (such as numbers) and predefined predicates on these objects (such as numerical comparisons) when defining concepts. Unfortunately, in the presence of general concept inclusions (GCIs), which are supported by all modern DL systems, adding...

Logic-based approaches to AI have the advantage that their behaviour can in principle be explained by providing their users with proofs for the derived consequences. However, if such proofs get very large, then it may be hard to understand a consequence even if the individual derivation steps are easy to comprehend. This motivates our interest in f...

We investigate the impact that general concept inclusions and role-value maps have on the complexity and decidability of reasoning in the description logic \(\mathcal{FL}_0\). On the one hand, we give a more direct proof for ExpTime-hardness of subsumption w.r.t. general concept inclusions in \(\mathcal{FL}_0\). On the other hand, we determine rest...

We introduce and investigate the expressive description logic (DL) ALCSCC++, in which the global and local cardinality constraints introduced in previous papers can be mixed. On the one hand, we prove that this does not increase the complexity of satisfiability checking and other standard inference problems. On the other hand, the satisfiability pr...

Simple counting quantifiers that can be used to compare the number of role successors of an individual or the cardinality of a concept with a fixed natural number have been employed in Description Logics (DLs) for more than two decades under the respective names of number restrictions and cardinality restrictions on concepts. Recently, we have cons...

The theory ACUI of an associative, commutative, and idempotent binary function symbol + with unit 0 was one of the first equational theories for which the complexity of testing solvability of unification problems was investigated in detail. In this paper, we investigate two extensions of ACUI. On one hand, we consider approximate ACUI-unification,...

In two previous publications we have, on the one hand, extended the description logic (DL) ALCQ by more expressive number restrictions using numerical and set constraints expressed in the quantifier-free fragment of Boolean Algebra with Presburger Arithmetic (QFBAPA). The resulting DL was called ALCSCC. On the other hand, we have extended the termi...

In previous work, we have investigated privacy-preserving publishing of Description Logic (DL) ontologies in a setting where the knowledge about individuals to be published is an \(\mathcal {EL} \) instance store, and both the privacy policy and the possible background knowledge of an attacker are represented by concepts of the DL \(\mathcal {EL}\)...

The probabilistic Description Logic is an extension of the Description Logic that allows for uncertain conditional statements of the form “if C holds, then D holds with probability p,” together with probabilistic assertions about individuals. In , probabilities are understood as an agent’s degree of belief. Probabilistic conditionals are formally i...

In recent work we have extended the description logic (DL) by means of more expressive number restrictions using numerical and set constraints stated in the quantifier-free fragment of Boolean Algebra with Presburger Arithmetic (QFBAPA). It has been shown that reasoning in the resulting DL, called , is PSpace-complete without a TBox and ExpTime-com...

In two previous publications we have, on the one hand, extended the description logic (DL) ALCQ by more expressive number restrictions using numerical and set constraints expressed in the quantifier-free fragment of Boolean Algebra with Presburger Arithmetic (QFBAPA). The resulting DL was called ALCSCC. On the other hand, we have extended the termi...

We make a first step towards adapting an existing approach for privacy-preserving publishing of linked data to Description Logic (DL) ontologies. We consider the case where both the knowledge about individuals and the privacy policies are expressed using concepts of the DL ℰℒ, which corresponds to the setting where the ontology is an ℰℒ instance st...

We make a first step towards adapting an existing approach for privacy-preserving publishing of linked data to Description Logic (DL) ontologies. We consider the case where both the knowledge about individuals and the privacy policies are expressed using concepts of the DL ℰℒ, which corresponds to the setting where the ontology is an ℰℒ instance st...

Matching concept descriptions against concept patterns was introduced as a new inference task in Description Logics two decades ago, motivated by applications in the Classic system. Shortly afterwards, a polynomial-time matching algorithm was developed for the DL FL0. However, this algorithm cannot deal with general TBoxes (i.e., finite sets of gen...

The classical approach for repairing a Description Logic ontology O in the sense of removing an unwanted consequence α is to delete a minimal number of axioms from O such that the resulting ontology O does not have the consequence α. However, the complete deletion of axioms may be too rough, in the sense that it may also remove consequences that ar...

We make a first step towards adapting the approach of Cuenca Grau and Kostylev for privacy-preserving publishing of linked data to Description Logic ontologies. We consider the case where both the knowledge about individuals and the privacy policies are expressed using EL concepts. We introduce the notions of compliance of a concept with a policy a...

The classical approach for repairing a Description Logic ontology O in the sense of removing an unwanted consequence α is to delete a minimal number of axioms from O such that the resulting ontology O does not have the consequence α. However, the complete deletion of axioms may be too rough, in the sense that it may also remove consequences that ar...

Finding suitable candidates for clinical trials is a labor-intensive task that requires expert medical knowledge. Our goal is to design (semi-)automated techniques that can support clinical researchers in this task. We investigate the issues involved in designing formal query languages for selecting patients that are eligible for a given clinical t...

Ontology-mediated query answering can be used to access large data sets through a mediating ontology. It has drawn considerable attention in the Description Logic (DL) community where both the complexity of query answering and practical query answering approaches based on rewriting were investigated in detail. Surprisingly, there is still a gap in...

Plenty of novel emerging technologies are being proposed and evaluated today, mostly at the device and circuit levels. It is unclear what the impact of different new technologies at the system level will be. What is clear, however, is that new technologies will make their way into systems and will increase the already high complexity of heterogeneo...

The work in this paper is motivated by a privacy scenario in which the identity of certain persons (represented as anonymous individuals) should be hidden. We assume that factual information about known individuals (i.e., individuals whose identity is known) and anonymous individuals is stored in an ABox and general background information is expres...

In contrast to qualitative linear temporal logics, which can be used to state that some property will eventually be satisfied, metric temporal logics allow to formulate constraints on how long it may take until the property is satisfied. While most of the work on combining Description Logics (DLs) with temporal logics has concentrated on qualitativ...

We consider ontology-based query answering in a setting where some of the data are numerical and of a probabilistic nature, such as data obtained from uncertain sensor readings. The uncertainty for such numerical values can be more precisely represented by continuous probability distributions than by discrete probabilities for numerical facts conce...

We introduce a new description logic that extends the well-known logic \(\mathcal {A}\mathcal {L}\mathcal {C}\mathcal {Q}\) by allowing the statement of constraints on role successors that are more general than the qualified number restrictions of \(\mathcal {A}\mathcal {L}\mathcal {C}\mathcal {Q}\). To formulate these constraints, we use the quant...

We investigate ontology-based query answering (OBQA) in a setting where both the ontology and the query can refer to concrete values such as numbers and strings. In contrast to previous work on this topic, the built-in predicates used to compare values are not restricted to being unary. We introduce restrictions on these predicates and on the ontol...

The work in this paper is motivated by a privacy scenario in which the identity of certain persons (represented as anonymous individ- uals) should be hidden. We assume that factual information about known individuals (i.e., individuals whose identity is known) and anonymous individuals is stored in an ABox and general background information is expr...

Description logics (DLs) have a long tradition in computer science and knowledge representation, being designed so that domain knowledge can be described and so that computers can reason about this knowledge. DLs have recently gained increased importance since they form the logical basis of widely used ontology languages, in particular the web onto...

In a recent research paper, we have proposed an extension of the lightweight Description Logic (DL) εL in which concepts can be defined in an approximate way. To this purpose, the notion of a graded membership function m, which instead of a Boolean membership value 0 or 1 yields a membership degree from the interval [0, 1], was introduced. Threshol...

Recently introduced approaches for relaxed query answering, approximately defining concepts, and approximately solving unification problems in Description Logics have in common that they are based on the use of concept comparison measures together with a threshold construction. In this paper, we will briefly review these approaches, and then show h...

Methods for computing the least common subsumer (lcs) are usually restricted to rather inexpressive Description Logics (DLs) whereas existing knowledge bases are written in very expressive DLs. In order to allow the user to re-use concepts defined in such terminologies and still support the definition of new concepts by computing the lcs, we extend...

Unification in description logics (DLs) has been introduced as a novel inference service that can be used to detect redundancies in ontologies, by finding different concepts that may potentially stand for the same intuitive notion. It was first investigated in detail for the DL \(\mathcal {FL}_0\), where unification can be reduced to solving certai...

Fuzzy description logics (FDLs) have been introduced to represent concepts for which membership cannot be determined in a precise way, i.e., where instead of providing a strict border between being a member and not being a member, it is more appropriate to model a gradual change from membership to non-membership. First approaches for reasoning in F...

Unification in Description Logics has been introduced as a means to detect redundancies in ontologies. We try to extend the known decidability results for unification in the Description Logic $\mathcal{EL}$ to disunification since negative constraints can be used to avoid unwanted unifiers. While decidability of the solvability of general $\mathcal...

In a previous paper, we have introduced an extension of the lightweight Description Logic EL that allows us to define concepts in an approximate way. For this purpose, we have defined a graded membership function deg, which for each individual and concept yields a number in the interval [0, 1] expressing the degree to which the individual belongs t...

Unification in Description Logics has been proposed as a novel inference service that can, for example, be used to detect redundancies in ontologies. The inexpressive description logic EL is of particular interest in this context since, on the one hand, several large biomedical ontologies are defined using EL. On the other hand, unification in EL h...

In ontology-based data access (OBDA), database querying is enriched with an ontology that provides domain knowledge and additional vocabulary for query formulation. We identify query emptiness and predicate emptiness as two central reasoning services in this context. Query emptiness asks whether a given query has an empty answer over all databases...

In Ontology-Based Data Access (OBDA), user queries are evaluated over a set of facts under the open world assumption, while taking into account background knowledge given in the form of a Description Logic (DL) ontology. In order to deal with dynamically changing data sources, temporal conjunctive queries (TCQs) have recently been proposed as a use...

We introduce an extension of the lightweight Description Logic EL that allows us to define concepts in an approximate way. For this purpose, we use a graded membership function, which for each individual and concept yields a number in the interval [0,1] expressing the degree to which the individual belongs to the concept. Threshold concepts C ~ t f...

Ontology-based data access (OBDA) generalizes query answering in databases towards deductive entailment since (i) the fact base is not assumed to contain complete knowledge (i.e., there is no closed world assumption), and (ii) the interpretation of the predicates occurring in the queries is constrained by axioms of an ontology. OBDA has been invest...

Unification in Description Logics has been introduced as a means to detect redundancies in ontologies. We try to extend the known decidability results for unification in the Description Logic EL to disunification since negative constraints on unifiers can be used to avoid unwanted unifiers. While decidability of the solvability of general EL-disuni...

Background Ontologies play a major role in life sciences, enabling a number of applications, from new data integration to knowledge verification. SNOMED CT is a large medical ontology that is formally defined so that it ensures global consistency and support of complex reasoning tasks. Most biomedical ontologies and taxonomies on the other hand def...

The combination of Fuzzy Logics and Description Logics (DLs) has been investi-gated for at least two decades because such fuzzy DLs can be used to formalize imprecise concepts. In particular, tableau algorithms for crisp Description Logics have been extended to reason also with their fuzzy counterparts. It has turned out, however, that in the prese...

Matching concept descriptions against concept patterns was introduced as a new inference task in Description Logics (DLs) almost 20 years ago, motivated by applications in the Classic system. For the DL \(\mathcal{EL}\), it was shown in 2000 that matching without a TBox is NP-complete. In this paper we show that matching in \(\mathcal{EL}\) w.r.t....

Formulae of linear temporal logic (LTL) can be used to specify (wanted or unwanted) properties of a dynamical system. In model checking, the system's behaviour is described by a transition system, and one needs to check whether all possible traces of this transition system satisfy the formula. In runtime verification, one observes the actual system...

High-level action programming languages such as Golog have successfully been used to model the behavior of autonomous agents. In addition to a logic-based action formalism for describing the environment and the effects of basic actions, they enable the construction of complex actions using typical programming language constructs. To ensure that the...

Unification in Description Logics (DLs) has been proposed as an inference service that can, for example, be used to detect redundancies in ontologies. For the DL \(\mathcal{EL}\), which is used to define several large biomedical ontologies, unification is NP-complete. However, the unification algorithms for \(\mathcal{EL}\) developed until recently...

Ontology-based data access (OBDA) generalizes query answering in databases towards deduction since (i) the fact base is not assumed to contain complete knowledge (i.e., there is no closed world assumption), and (ii) the interpretation of the predicates occurring in the queries is constrained by axioms of an ontology. OBDA has been investigated in d...

Ontologies such as the SNOMED Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT), and the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) play a major role in life sciences. Modeling formally the concepts and the roles in this domain is a crucial process to allow for the integration of biomedical knowledge across applications. In this direction we propose a novel methodology to learn for...