Ontological Analysis of Organization Modeling Languages

With Prof. Renata Guizzardi, assistant professor in the Computer Science Department of the Federal University of Espírito Santo in Vitória, Brazil

Abstract:

Organizational Modeling is a discipline which tries to capture and reason about the distinct dimensions (e.g. structure, strategies and processes) involved in organizations by the means of conceptual models. In order to be effective, these models must represent in an abstract way, the right set of concepts composing each of the organizational dimension. Our work focuses on identifying and understanding this set of concepts through a foundational ontology named UFO (Unified Foundational Ontology). Moreover, we aim at investigating different modeling languages, identifying if (and to what extent) each of them, individually or in combination with one another, adequately covers this set of concepts. We have, for instance, created a methodology to develop Knowledge Management Systems, by combining two distinct agent-oriented languages, namely Tropos and AORML. In another initiative, we used the same approach to merge Tropos (which focuses on goals) and ARIS (aimed at analyzing business processes), thus allowing one to have a strategic view of the business processes underlying an organization. More recently, we have been investigating how to provide ontological meaning to the constructs of the i* Goal Modeling framework. With this work, we aim at conciliating different views adopted by distinct i* dialects in order to create a more accessible modeling language, easing the adoption and the development of automated support for i*.

In this talk, we explain our ontologically-based approach to analyze and redesign modeling languages. Moreover, we particularly focus on the i* case to illustrate the approach, presenting the concepts of the ontology that we apply in the semantic analysis of the constructs of this language.

Short Bio:

Renata S.S. Guizzardi is an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department of the Federal University of Espírito Santo in Vitória, Brazil, and a senior member of the Conceptual Modeling Research Group (NEMO). She received her Ph.D. in 2006 from the University of Twente, the Netherlands. Then, she did postdoctoral work at IRST (Centro per la Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica) in Italy from 2005 to 2006. Her research interests include knowledge management, agent-oriented software engineering and organizational modeling. To learn more about her research, please take a look at her selected publications.

Plus d'information sur http://www.inf.ufes.br/~rguizzardi/indexi.html

Date: Tuesday February 14th, 2012, 2:00 pm

Location: Battelle bât A, auditorium ground floor

6 février 2012

À la Une