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relation for process and time period #167

Open zhengj2007 opened 9 years ago

zhengj2007 commented 9 years ago

From zhengj2...@gmail.com on May 07, 2013 12:25:46

I have many use cases that need to link a process with time or date. For example,

In BFO, there is a relation 'exists at' with domain 'entity' and range 'temporal region' (instance or interval).

Is 4:30 pm on May 1st, 2011 an instance of 'temporal region' and 2 hours a temporal interval? Can BFO have a specific relation like 'has duration' (a subproperty of 'exists at') for a temporal interval?

For above two examples, is it correct to represent "blood specimen collected at 4:30 pm on May 1st, 2011" as: 'specimen collection' exists at '4:30 pm on May 1st, 2011' and has_output 'blood specimen' and "cells were infected with T. cruzi for 2 hours" as: 'infection process' 'has duration' 2 hours and has_input T. cruzi

Another question, what different of '4:30 pm on May 1st, 2011', '2 hours' as a 'temporal region' form those as 'time measurement datum' in IAO and how shall we use them?

Original issue: http://code.google.com/p/bfo/issues/detail?id=167

zhengj2007 commented 9 years ago

From alanruttenberg@gmail.com on May 07, 2013 10:06:52

The hierarchy is

Region Instant (zero dimensional) interval (one dimensional)

So both are regions.

The "for two hours" refers to an interval, but only gives information about the difference between start and stop.

the "at 4:30pm" sounds like a instant, but isn't, since collecting takes an extended period of time. It might be the time it started, or some time near the beginning, or when it was scheduled. So you would want to choose whether you are indentifying a point in time like a start time, or the time of the process, which is an interval.

has_duration wouldn't be a subproperty of exists_at. (baking has_duration 1 hour does not imply baking exists at 1 hour. It would be a property of a the interval, or could be defined as a shortcut for any occurrent that has a projection to a temporal region.

However, there is a bit of a problem using exists_at for particulars, in the sense that if you want to use OWL data types, you can't use them directly, due to exists_at being an object property. As a practical matter we would probably add object or annotation properties on (object) instances of temporal region.

zhengj2007 commented 9 years ago

From alanruttenberg@gmail.com on June 05, 2013 11:52:27

Stefan will review this, and Jie will hound him until he does.

Owner: steschu@gmail.com