Ontology population: Approaches and design aspects

Ontologies provide a means to store knowledge in a machine-readable format. Ontology population is the task of updating an ontology with new facts from an input knowledge resource. These facts are represented in a structured format and integrated thereafter into the existing knowledge in the ontology. Textual resources are the dominant online knowledge resources that contain a large number of facts expressed either explicitly or implicitly. Hence, the automatic processing of the extensive knowledge available in these resources has recently gained increasing interest. This study discusses the major components of ontology population process and the different design aspects to be considered when building ontology population systems. In addition, this research explains the different approaches and techniques adopted to carry out the task of ontology population. The possible choices of the design aspects and the related issues are identified and analysed using a set of representative ontology population systems. This study concludes by describing the remaining open issues that should be further explored in ontology population