[transferred from OEO] Axiomatise `transport`

[l-emele]

Description of the issue

The class transport has the definition: Transport is the process of moving people or goods from one place to another.

This implies at least to axioms:

• A relation to people or goods
• Some relation(s) describing the from one place to another part

Ideas of solution

The relation between transport and people or goods can be describes as: transport SubclassOf: 'has participant' some (person or good)

Workflow checklist

• I discussed the issue with someone else than me before working on a solution
• I already read the latest version of the workflow for this repository
• The goal of this ontology is clear to me

I am aware that

• every entry in the ontology should have a definition
• classes should arise from concepts rather than from words

[lumi321]

I'm not sure there is a good way to axiomatise from one place to another with the current set of object properties.

• 'has input'/'has output' are not possible because the location per se is not modified and already present at the beginning of the process.
• 'Starts with'/'ends with' seems to relate only processes.

Depending on the interpretation of 'has sink'¹/'has source'², they might be possible:

• 'has source' some 'spatial region'
• 'has sink' some 'spatial region'

That would imply though, that a transport process either is or uses a directed graph in some way.

Footnotes

1. "A relation that holds between a directed graph and a node in that graph that has edges ending but not starting there." ↩

2. "A relation that holds between a directed graph and a node in that graph that has edges starting but not ending there." ↩

[l-emele]

We probably need some new relations here.

There is also a separate issue on improving has sink and has source

[l-emele]

To move forward, I'll implement now the relations between transport and (person or good). But I will let this issue stay open so we can discuss the other relations later.

[lumi321]

I had a look at some transport ontologies. Not all of them have transport processes defined, but routes or similar that lead from one place to another. The relations I found are startFrom/stopAt, startLoc/endLoc, starts_at/end_at, and hasDestination/hasOrigin.

[l-emele]

Which ontologies are you looking into? And what are the definitions of the relations in these?

[lumi321]

These are the ontologies where I found some relations. Only one had definitions though.

• ontology.tno.nl/transport: under classes, then logiTrans:Transport activity: hasOrigin/hasDestination. No definition there.
• Ontology of Transportation Networks: page 32. starts_at/ends_at which is used for road description, but also for positions in timetables or public transport systems. I didn't find a definition for the relations here.
• A Transportation Ontology for Global City Indicators page 25: startLoc/endLoc. They are actually reused from the Trip Ontology but are apparently not defined.
• Ontology for Transportation System: figure 2: startFrom/stopAt. Definitions: "the place from where a vehicle starts"/"the stop points of a vehicle".

[stap-m]

I transfer this issue to OTO repo