Frederik Gailly

Ghent University | UGhent · Department of Management Information and Operations Management

Purpose Authorities have set up numerous security checkpoints during times of armed conflict to control the flow of commercial and humanitarian trucks into and out of areas of conflict. These security checkpoints have become highly utilized because of the complex security procedures and increased truck traffic, which significantly slow the delivery...

Developing platform software is a challenging and multidisciplinary task that requires significant time and relies heavily on effective human interaction and teamwork. To enhance communication and expedite the development of a customized and satisfactory Minimum Viable Product (MVP), a method for ontology-driven MVP development in the digital platf...

In times of armed conflicts, various security checkpoints are placed by authorities to control the flow of merchandise into and within areas of conflicts. The flow of humanitarian trucks that is added to regular flow of commercial trucks together with the complex security procedures create congestion and long waiting times at the security checkpoin...

A sharing platform is a digital platform that facilitates access to underutilized goods by renting or lending them to others. Users become less dependent on ownership which improves efficiency, sustainability, and the sense of community. The Sharing Economy (SE) is considered a complex domain because value co-creation can occur between multiple typ...

Deviations and variations are the norm rather than the exception in medical diagnosis and treatment processes. Physicians must leverage their knowledge and experience to choose an appropriate variation for each patient. However, this knowledge and experience is often tacit. Process modeling offers a way to convert tacit to explicit knowledge. Many...

In this paper a method is proposed for agile digital platform prototype development based on organization-specific ontologies. The resulting prototypes act as minimum viable product of the digital platform that is described by the ontologies. Our method combines the strengths of agile practices, to speed up the development process in a user-oriente...

In the domain of the platform economy we identified two gaps in the current literature. First the lack of a shared conceptualization of digital platform types. We solve this issue with a taxonomy giving an overview of digital platform attributes, with attribute values expressing the possible variations between platforms depending on their type. The...

Digital platforms can be categorized into different types including ‘multi-sided platform’, ‘digital marketplace’, ‘crowdfunding platform’, ‘sharing economy platform’ and ‘on-demand platform’. As there is a lack of knowledge regarding the requirements and design of these digital platform types, we developed a method to design a digital platform ref...

This paper presents an empirical study that investigates the extent to which the pragmatic quality of ontology-driven models is influenced by the choice of a particular ontology, given a certain understanding of that ontology. To this end, we analyzed previous research efforts and distilled three hypotheses based on different metaphysical character...

Recently the sharing economy has emerged as a viable alternative to fulfilling a variety of consumer needs. As there is no consensus on the definition of ‘sharing economy’ we use the term ‘marketplace’ to refer more specifically to Internet/software-based sharing economy platforms connecting two different market segments. In the field of sharing ec...

Business Process Management can be applied to improve the efficiency, efficacy and transparency of its processes. This paper focusses on processes that can be characterized as loosely framed and knowledge-intensive (e.g. diagnosis and treatment of a patient in a hospital). Declarative process modeling languages that incorporate decision logic are w...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of five workshops symposia, held at the 38th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling, ER 2019, in Salvador, Brazil, in November 2019. The 34 papers promote and disseminate research on theories of concepts underlying conceptual modeling, methods and tools for developing and communicating concept...

This paper conducts an empirical study that explores the differences between adopting a traditional conceptual modeling (TCM) technique and an ontology-driven conceptual modeling (ODCM) technique with the objective to understand and identify in which modeling situations an ODCM technique can prove beneficial compared to a TCM technique. More specif...

Double entry bookkeeping lies at the core of modern accounting. It is shaped by a fundamental conceptual pattern; a design decision that was popularised by Pacioli some 500 years ago and subsequently institutionalised into accounting practice and systems. Debits and credits are core components of this conceptual pattern. This paper suggests that a...

This paper conducts an empirical study that explores the differences between adopting a traditional conceptual modeling (TCM) technique and an ontology-driven conceptual modeling (ODCM) technique with the objective to understand how these techniques influence the consistency between the resulting conceptual models. To determine these differences, w...

This paper investigates the differences that exist between a 3D and a 4D ontology. We examine these differences by comparing both ontologies through the metaphysical choices each ontology makes and explore the composing characteristics that define them. More specifically, the differences between the ontologies were illustrated through several model...

Flexible, human-centric and knowledge-intensive processes occur in many service industries and are prominent in the health-care sector. Knowledge workers (e.g., doctors or other health-care personnel) are given the flexibility to address each process instance (i.e., episode of care) in the way that they deem most suitable. As a result, the knowledg...

Data integration of enterprise systems typically involves combining heterogeneous data residing in different sources into a unified, homogeneous whole. This heterogeneity takes many forms and there are all sorts of significant practical and theoretical challenges to managing this, particularly at the semantic level. In this paper, we consider a typ...

This article describes how domain-specific modeling languages (DSML) are developed to specifically model certain domains and their phenomena. Over the last 15 years, different kinds of DSMLs have been ontologically analyzed to improve their ontological expressiveness. However, the term ‘ontological analyses’ encompasses a great variety of different...

Modeling loosely framed and knowledge-intensive business processes with the currently available process modeling languages is very challenging. Some lack the flexibility to model this type of processes, while others are missing one or more perspectives needed to add the necessary level of detail to the models. In this paper we have composed a list...

Within an enterprise, various stakeholders create different conceptual models, such as process, data, and requirements models. These models are fundamentally based on similar underlying enterprise (domain) concepts, but they differ in focus, use different modeling languages, take different viewpoints, utilize different terminology, and are used to...

In their effort to control and manage processes, organizations often create process models. The quality of such models is not always optimal, because it is challenging for a modeler to translate her mental image of the process into a formal process description. In order to support this complex human processing task, we are developing a smart proces...

More and more organizations turn to the construction of process models to support strategical and operational tasks. At the same time, reports indicate quality issues for a considerable part of these models, caused by modeling errors. Therefore, the research described in this paper investigates the development of a practical method to determine and...

This volume constitutes the proceedings of the 10th IFIP WG 8.1 Conference on the Practice of Enterprise Modeling held in November 2017 in Leuven, Belgium. The conference was created by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 8.1 to offer a forum for knowledge transfer and experience sharing between the academic...

In this paper, we critically survey the existing literature in ontology-driven conceptual modeling in order to identify the kind of research that has been performed over the years and establish its current state of the art by describing the use and the application of ontologies in mapping phenomena to models. We are interested if there exist any co...

In this paper, we perform an exploratory analysis to investigate the impact of adopting a 3D and a 4D foundational ontology on the quality of a conceptual model. More specifically, we determine the impact of the metaphysical characteristics of an ontology on the comprehension and understandability of the ontology-driven models by its users. The con...

The creation of value is an important concern in organizations. However, current Enterprise Modeling languages all interprete value differently, which has a negative impact on the semantic quality of the model instantiations. This issue need to be solved to increase the relevance of these instantiations for business stakeholders. Therefore, the goa...

Visual Modeling Languages (VMLs) are important instruments of communication between modelers and stakeholders. Thus, it is important to provide guidelines for designing VMLs. The most widespread approach for analyzing and designing concrete syntaxes for VMLs is the so-called Physics of Notation (PoN). PoN has been successfully applied in the analys...

In their effort to control and manage processes, organizations often create process models. The quality of such models is not always optimal, because it is challenging for a modeler to translate her mental image of the process into a formal process description. In order to support this complex human processing task, we are developing a smart proces...

Within an enterprise, various stakeholders create different conceptual models, such as process, data, and requirements models. These models are fundamentally based on similar underlying enterprise (domain) concepts, but they differ in focus, use different modelling languages, take different viewpoints, utilize different terminology, and are used to...

Ontology-driven conceptual modeling (ODCM) is still a relatively new research domain and there is still much discussion on how the research in ODCM should be performed and what the focus of this research should be. Therefore, this article aims to critically survey the existing literature in order to assess the kind of research that has been perform...

After observing various inexperienced modelers constructing a business process model based on the same textual case description, it was noted that great differences existed in the quality of the produced models. The impression arose that certain quality issues originated from cognitive failures during the modeling process. Therefore, we developed a...

Different process models are created within an enterprise by different modelers who use different enterprise terms. This hinders model interoperability and integration. A possible solution is formalizing the vocabulary used within the enterprise in an ontology and put this ontology as bases for constructing process models. Given that an enterprise...

Modeling dynamic, human-centric, non-standardized and knowledge- intensive business processes with imperative process modeling approaches is very challenging. Declarative process modeling approaches are more appropri- ate for these processes, as they offer the run-time flexibility typically required in these cases. However, by means of a realistic...

In order to provide both guidance and flexibility to users during process execution, recommendation systems have been proposed. Existing recommendation systems mainly focus on offering recommendation according to the process optimization goals (time, cost…). In this paper we offer a new approach that primarily focuses on maximizing the flexibility...

This paper presents a comparison between a 3D and a 4D ontology, with the purpose of identifying modelling variations that arise from using these different kind of ontologies. The modelling variations are illustrated by using 2 enterprise modelling enigmas on which both ontologies are applied. The goal of our comparison is to demonstrate that the c...

Countless definitions of the term business process can be found in the literature (Lindsay et al., 2003), with the following being one of the most cited: “A business process is a collection of activities that takes one or more kinds of input and creates an output that is of value to the customer” (Hammer and Champy, 1993). Their definition emphasiz...

Within an enterprise, different models - even of the same type - are typically created by different modellers. Those models use different terminology, are based on different semantics and are thus hard to integrate. A possible solution is using an enterprise-specific ontology as a reference during model creation. This allows basing all the models c...

In different fields, ontologies are increasingly deployed to specify and fix the terminology of a particular domain. In enterprise modelling, their main use lies in serving as a knowledge base for enterprise model creation. Such models, based on one or several compatible so-called enterprise-specific ontologies, allow for model alignment and solve...

After visualizing data of various observational experiments on the way in which modelers construct process models, a promising process modeling style (i.e., structured process modeling) was discovered that is expected to cause process model quality to increase. A modeler constructs process models in a structured way if she/he is working on a limite...

Discovering business rules is a complex task for which many approaches have been proposed including analysis, extraction from code, and data mining. In this paper, a novel approach is presented in which business rules for an enterprise model are generated based on the semantics of a domain ontology. Starting from an enterprise model for which the b...

In 2007 the Object Management Group (OMG) adopted the Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR) specification. The languages specified by this specification must be used to create business vocabularies and business rules of all kinds of business activities of all kinds of organizations. This paper describes and demonstrates how ent...

Information systems (IS) Engineering has progressed considerably over the decades. Numerous advances, such as improved development methodologies, languages that enforce recognised software engineering principles and sophisticated CASE tools, have helped to increase the quality of IS. Regardless of such progress many IS Engineering projects remain u...

In this workshop paper an experiment is designed which evaluates the use of an enterprise modeling language that was developed with the Resource Event Agent enterprise ontology and the Unified Foundational ontology as a theoretical base. The effect of using the ontology-driven modeling language is analyzed using Moody’s Method Evaluation Model whic...

Ontologies (i.e. formalized models of real world domains and systems) are becoming mainstream in the representation and man-agement of data, information and knowledge. In software engineering, however, the adoption of ontology-driven methods and techniques is still at an initial stage of definition and gestation. A series of initiatives by both aca...

The 2nd International Workshop on Ontology-Driven Software Engineering, held at the ACM SPLASH 2010 conference, was organized with the aim of bringing together researchers and practitioners with an interest in discussing and analyzing the different ways in which ontologies can help to improve the many aspects and areas of software engineering. This...

Applications such as business modelling, model-driven software development, active use of knowledge specifications and enterprise application integration benefit from formal ontology specifications. In this paper we create two formal representations of an enterprise ontology, the Resource-Event-Agent Enterprise Ontology (REA-EO), aiming at repurpos...

The Resource-Event-Agent Enterprise Ontology (REA-EO) explicitly describes business knowledge in terms of domain concepts, relations between domain concepts, and axioms. In this paper, we reengineer the REA-EO based on an analysis of its modeling choices in terms of the Unified Foundational Ontology's (UFO) modeling principles. An important part of...

E-collaboration modeling standards like ISO/IEC 15944 and the UN/CEFACT Modeling Methodology (UMM) provide techniques, terms and reference models for modeling collaborative business processes. They offer a standardized approach for business partners to codify the business conventions, agreements and rules that govern business collaborations and to...

It is widely recognized that ontologies can be used to support the semantic integration and interoperability of heterogeneous information systems. Resource Event Agent (REA) is a well-known business ontology that was proposed for ontology-driven enterprise system development. However, the current specification is neither sufficiently explicit nor f...

EConceptual modelling languages have been evaluated using ontologies as reference theories. Reference ontologies for conceptual modelling are top-level ontologies that specify conceptualizations of the real-world in general and are not restricted to any particular material domain (i.e. part of the real-world). Ontological evaluation clarifies the r...

Requirements engineering is an important and complex phase during systems development because it combines the description of the system’s domain with the elicitation, specification and validation of application-specific requirements. In this paper we propose an ontology-based requirements engineering approach that integrates the use of domain ontol...

Recent Resource, Event, Agent (REA) research has focused on defining and theoretically justifying the ontology's contents. Here, we elaborate on more practical issues related to REA. First, we classify REA and its applications using ontology classification schemes and application frameworks. This analysis clarifies REA's application potential but a...

The Resources-Events-Agents (REA) model is a semantic data model for the development of enterprise information systems. Although this model has been proposed as a benchmark for enterprise information modelling, only few studies have attempted to empirically validate the claimed benefits of REA modelling. Moreover, these studies focused on the evalu...

The term ontology originates from philosophy and was adapted to computer science, in particular to knowledge engineering and artificial intelligence The purpose of an ontology in computer science is to create a conceptualization of the concepts and relationships in the area of interest. Business ontologies define and organize relevant knowledge about...

Business modelling research is increasingly interested in exploring how domain ontologies can be used as reference models for business models. The Resource Event Agent (REA) ontology is a primary candidate for the ontology-driven modelling of business processes because the REA point of view on business reality is close to the conceptual modelling p...

It is widely recognized that ontologies can be used to support the semantic integration and interoperability of heterogeneous information systems. Resource Event Agent (REA) is a well-known business ontology that was proposed for ontology-driven enterprise system development. However, the current specification is neither sufficiently explicit nor f...

Ontologies are a popular research direction in different domains as is also the case in information systems research. In the beginning of this millennium Geerts and McCarthy (2002) proposed an ontology for the business context which was an extension of the basic REA-model which had already proven its use as a semantic accounting information model....

Resource-Event-Agent (REA) ontology-based conceptual modelling is a pattern-based approach to structural business process modelling. This paper hypothesizes that diagrammatic Entity-Relationship (ER) representations of REA ontology-based business process models (REA diagrams) are better understood and perceived to be of higher quality by business p...