Applied ontology is the application of Ontology for practical purposes. This can involve employing ontological methods or resources to specific domains,[1] such as management, relationships, biomedicine, information science or geography.[2][3] Alternatively, applied ontology can aim more generally at developing improved methodologies for recording and organizing knowledge.[4]
Much[quantify] work in applied ontology is carried out within the framework of the Semantic Web.[5][6] Ontologies can structure data and add useful semantic content to it, such as definitions of classes and relations between entities, including subclass relations. The semantic web makes use of languages designed to allow for ontological content, including the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL).
Applied ontology, also called domain ontology, is concerned (i) with the question of what entities exist in a particular domain, for example, in the domain of a scientific branch such as biology, or even in the more specialized domain of a scientific theory such as the theory of active immunity; and (ii) with the formal taxonomy of those entities.
The authors' goal in producing this book has been to show how philosophy and information science can learn from one another, so as to create better methodologies for recording and organizing our knowledge about the world.