UMBEL (Upper Mapping and Binding Exchange Layer) is a logically organized knowledge graph of 34,000 concepts and entity types that can be used in information science for relating information from disparate sources to one another. It was retired at the end of 2019. UMBEL was first released in July 2008. Version 1.00 was released in February 2011. Its current release is version 1.50. The grounding of this information occurs by common reference to the permanent URIs for the UMBEL concepts; the connections within the UMBEL upper ontology enable concepts from sources at different levels of abstraction or specificity to be logically related. Since UMBEL is an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

extract of the OpenCyc

knowledge base In computer science, a knowledge base (KB) is a set of sentences, each sentence given in a knowledge representation language, with interfaces to tell new sentences and to ask questions about what is known, where either of these interfaces migh ...

, it can also take advantage of the reasoning capabilities within Cyc. UMBEL has two means to promote the

semantic interoperability Semantic interoperability is the ability of computer systems to exchange data with unambiguous, shared meaning. Semantic interoperability is a requirement to enable machine computable Logic in computer science, logic, inferencing, knowledge discove ...

of information:. It is: * An

ontology Ontology is the philosophical study of existence, being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of realit ...

of about 35,000 reference concepts, designed to provide common mapping points for relating different ontologies or

schema Schema may refer to: Science and technology * SCHEMA (bioinformatics), an algorithm used in protein engineering * Schema (genetic algorithms), a set of programs or bit strings that have some genotypic similarity * Schema.org, a web markup vocab ...

to one another, and * A

vocabulary A vocabulary (also known as a lexicon) is a set of words, typically the set in a language or the set known to an individual. The word ''vocabulary'' originated from the Latin , meaning "a word, name". It forms an essential component of languag ...

for aiding that ontology mapping, including expressions of likelihood relationships distinct from exact identity or equivalence. This vocabulary is also designed for interoperable domain ontologies. UMBEL is written in the

Semantic Web The Semantic Web, sometimes known as Web 3.0, is an extension of the World Wide Web through standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The goal of the Semantic Web is to make Internet data machine-readable. To enable the encoding o ...

languages of

SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) is a W3C recommendation designed for representation of thesauri, classification schemes, taxonomies, subject-heading systems, or any other type of structured controlled vocabulary. SKOS is part of t ...

and OWL 2. It is a

class Class, Classes, or The Class may refer to: Common uses not otherwise categorized * Class (biology), a taxonomic rank * Class (knowledge representation), a collection of individuals or objects * Class (philosophy), an analytical concept used d ...

structure used in

Linked Data In computing, linked data is structured data which is interlinked with other data so it becomes more useful through semantic queries. It builds upon standard Web technologies such as HTTP, RDF and URIs, but rather than using them to serve web ...

, along with OpenCyc, YAGO, and the

DBpedia DBpedia (from "DB" for "database") is a project aiming to extract structured content from the information created in the Wikipedia project. This structured information is made available on the World Wide Web using OpenLink Virtuoso. DBpedia a ...

ontology. Besides data integration, UMBEL has been used to aid concept search, concept definitions, query ranking, ontology integration, and ontology consistency checking. It has also been used to build large ontologies and for online question answering systems. Including OpenCyc, UMBEL has about 65,000 formal mappings to

, PROTON,

GeoNames GeoNames (or GeoNames.org) is a user-editable geographical database available and accessible through various web services, under a Creative Commons attribution license. The project was founded in late 2005. The GeoNames dataset differs from, b ...

, and schema.org, and provides linkages to more than 2 million

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

pages (English version). All of its reference concepts and mappings are organized under a hierarchy of 31 different "super types",Se
Annex G
in the UMBEL specifications. which are mostly disjoint from one another. Each of these "super types" has its own typology of entity classes to provide flexible tie-ins for external content. 90% of UMBEL is contained in these entity classes.

Notes

External links

Main page for UMBEL

UMBEL specification
and its accompanyin
Annexes A – L, Z
{{Semantic Web Knowledge representation Ontology (information science) Semantic Web Knowledge bases

See also

Notes

External links