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Event-Oriented Ontology

An event-oriented ontology uses events to connect things, concepts, people, time, and place (Fichtner & Ribaud). Event-oriented ontologies place events at the centre of their structure and describe information as the results or outputs of these events, as opposed to object-oriented ontologies, which place objects at the centre.

Using an event-oriented ontology allows the creation of metadata that provides a more complete path of human activities, better enabling machine learning. Additionally, the explicit modelling of events leads to a more complete integration of cultural information while still enabling the interconnection, mediation, and interchange of heterogenous cultural heritage datasets.

Examples​

  • The following example shows a book that is modelled as a product of a “creation event,” with the author and publication date as aspects of that event.

Indian Horse, Richard Wagamese, and the year 2012 are results of a creation event.

Further Resources​