...............................................................................................................................................1 GLOSSARY................................................................................................................................................2 CHAPTER 1 OBJECTIVES AND MOTIVATION.................................................................................4 1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE PROJECT...................................................................................................................4 1.2 MOTIVATION...........................................................................................................................................5 1.3 INITIAL GOALS.........................................................................................................................................7 1.3.1 A DEC ontology defined in Semantic Web languages.................................................................7 1.3.2 A software framework that can use the ontology for practical applications..............................8 1.3.3 An accurate implementation of DEC..........................................................................................8 1.3.4 A reusable framework for DEC rule resolution..........................................................................9 1.3.5 An investigation into merging time ontology with DEC ............................................................9 1.4 LONG TERM OBJECTIVES............................................................................................................................9 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW.................................................................................................11 2.1 OVERVIEW............................................................................................................................................11 2.1.1 Scope of this section..................................................................................................................11 2.1.2 Preliminary discussion..............................................................................................................11 2.1.2.1 References to Semantic Web standards.............................................................................................11 2.1.2.2 Logic terms......................................................................................................................................11 2.1.2.3 Rules................................................................................................................................................11 2.2 BACKGROUND TO THE SEMANTIC WEB.....................................................................................................11 2.3 ONTOLOGY AND THE SEMANTIC WEB.......................................................................................................14 2.3.1 Different interpretations of ontology.........................................................................................14 2.3.2 Motivation for ontology engineering........................................................................................15 2.3.3 Semantic web standards............................................................................................................16 2.3.4 Semantic web stack...................................................................................................................18 2.4 RULES AND THE SEMANTIC WEB.............................................................................................................22 2.4.1 The need for rules in Semantic Web applications.....................................................................22 2.4.2 SWRL.........................................................................................................................................22 2.4.3 Decidability and rules...............................................................................................................23 2.5 EVENT CALCULUS IN THE CONTEXT OF TEMPORAL REASONING......................................................................25 2.5.1 Common concerns of temporal logics.......................................................................................25 2.5.1.1 Representation of intervals and timepoints.......................................................................................25 2.5.1.2 Cause and effect for temporal logics................................................................................................25 2.5.1.3 Monotonic and non-monotonic entailment and proof ......................................................................26