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Launch of the CEN Workshop 'Vocabulary definition for domain ontologies in materials science'

share: Updated:2025-06-03 00:00:00

A new CEN Workshop is being planned which will complement the activities of the EU Research project DiMAT (Digital Modelling and Simulation for Design, Processing and Manufacturing of Advanced Materials). The mission of this project is to develop open digital tools for European SMEs and mid-cap companies that will help them to model, simulate and optimize materials at each stage of the value chain in an affordable way.

The application of semantic technologies, such as ontologies and knowledge graphs, for managing materials and process data in a FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) manner is gaining momentum in materials science and manufacturing. This trend is driven by the vast amount of heterogeneous data that remains inaccessible, preventing experts from comprehensively analyzing it. Ontologies serve as the foundation for working with semantic technologies.

However, employing ontologies to represent data semantically is often challenging. Top-down approaches to ontology development can be time-consuming, as experts must begin with general concepts and progressively refine them to fit specific domains. In contrast, a bottom-up approach allows experts to start with practical applications, identifying relevant terminology (i.e., ontological concepts) to which application data can be mapped. Nonetheless, this approach raises questions about how to define terminology, including naming conventions, descriptions, sources of these descriptions, etc.

Therefore, the goal of this workshop is to provide a comprehensive guideline for defining terminology for application ontologies. By following this guideline, future application ontologies can be developed consistently using a bottom-up approach.