Combining domain and business ontologies in a modular construction method: EDF study case

Ontologies are seen by companies such as EDF
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as an answer to the data heterogeneity problem. However the design and management of consensual and complete ontologies in new and evolving domains remain important challenges that must be tackled for the widespread adoption of this notion. In this paper we present the approach we have developed to overcome these issues in the context of a data warehouse project with EDF concerning the electric mobility development. We first propose an incremental and modular design of ontologies. Then we suggest to formalize not only the domain knowledge as an ontology but also the business processes followed to exploit this knowledge. As a result, this method allows engineers to use the ontology as an interface for manipulating heterogeneous data as well as for reusing existing business processes. Finally we report the results and benefits of our approach for the project conducted with EDF.