Applying the LOT methodology to a Public Bus Transport Ontology aligned with Transmodel: Challenges and Results

Tracking #: 2841-4055

Authors: 
Oscar Corcho
Edna Ruckhaus
Mario Scrocca
Adolfo Anton

Responsible editor: 
Guest Editors Transportation Data 2020

Submission type: 
Ontology Description
Abstract: 
We present an ontology that describes the domain of Public Transport by bus, which is common in cities around the world. This ontology is aligned to Transmodel, a reference model which is available as a UML specification and which was developed to foster interoperability of data about transport systems across Europe. The alignment with this non-ontological resource required the adaptation of the Linked Open Terms (LOT) methodology, which has been used by our team as the methodological framework for the development of many ontologies used for the publication of open city data. The ontology is structured into three main modules: (1) agencies, operators and the lines that they manage, (2) lines, routes, stops and journey patterns, and (3) planned vehicle journeys with their timetables and service calendars. Besides reusing Transmodel concepts, the ontology also reuses common ontology design patterns from GeoSPARQL and the SOSA ontology. As part of the LOT data-driven validationstage, RDF data has been generated taking as input the GTFS feeds (General Transit Feed Specification) provided by the Madrid public bus transport provider (EMT). Mapping rules from structured data sources to RDF were developed using the RDF Mapping Language (RML) to generate RDF data, and queries corresponding to competency questions were tested.
Full PDF Version: 
Tags: 
Reviewed

Decision/Status: 
Accept

Solicited Reviews:
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Review #1
By Anastasia Dimou submitted on 25/Aug/2021
Suggestion:
Accept
Review Comment:

I would like to thank the authors for their detailed answers to all my comments. I think my concerns were well-addressed in the new version and I do not have any further remarks.

Review #2
By Umutcan Serles submitted on 12/Sep/2021
Suggestion:
Minor Revision
Review Comment:

Many of my previous points have been addressed by the authors. There are still some issues/unclarities listed below:

- how do I check the user stories that are crossreferenced with the competency questions? The referenced wiki page still contains 3 use cases and I do not see any reference to any user stories.
- are the owl axioms really needed? why are there no competency questions that require reasoning? if none of the competency questions require the usage of the OWL axioms, how is it tested that the correct and/or scalable Abox reasoning achieved with the real data, when applicable?
- it would be beneficial to add a direct link to the OOPS! report
- related work section really improves the paper overall, thank you. Just couple things I need to point out:
- "However, as the goal of this work is to provide content personalization, it does not cover the ontology development process nor any insight on how these concepts were reused" how is the purpose of the ontology relevant to the fact that paper is missing insights regarding the methodology and reuse? The sentence implies that there is a causality relationship
- I do not really understand how the work of Benvenuti et al compares with the the proposed ontology

Review #3
By Christoph Lange submitted on 04/Oct/2021
Suggestion:
Accept
Review Comment:

I have carefully reviewed the response letter, the responses to the annotated PDF and the revised manuscript. All my concerns have been addressed sufficiently, and I also consider the authors' response to the other reviewers' concerns sufficient. In particular, the availability of the resource has considerably improved thanks to additional, specific pointers to the GitHub source code repository. At https://www.dropbox.com/s/ucv4l4cdsltc0sb/2020_swj_transport__transmodel... please find some final minor linguistic issues marked up.