1. An ontology for units of measures across history,standards, and scientific and technology domains
- Author
-
Andersson, Oskar, Li, Huanyu, Lambrix, Patrick, Armiento, Rickard, Andersson, Oskar, Li, Huanyu, Lambrix, Patrick, and Armiento, Rickard
- Abstract
Units of measure are central in all areas of science and technology. There are several ontologicalframeworks aiming to improve interoperability and precision in digital data exchange of quantitiesinvolving units. We introduce an ontology that specifically targets challenges for handling units acrossdatabases of computational and experimental data from various sources. The ontology is created usingdefinition files from the community-driven OPTIMADE standard for a common API for materialsdatabases. The resulting ontology allows addressing data integration challenges encountered in thateffort, including (i) referencing both specific and more general instances of units that have changedover time; (ii) the use of unit systems to define short domain-relevant identifiers for a collection of unitsthat make sense within a specific subdomain, rather than having to adopt globally standardized namingschemes; (iii) specifications of relationships between units that enables tools to convert between them;and (iv) units not part of the International System of Units (SI) can be represented without defining themin SI units or using SI system conventions. This paper provides a brief survey of existing ontologiesfor units of measure and then presents the design and discuss features of an ontology based on theOPTIMADE unit definitions.
- Published
- 2024