FOMI 2008

FOMI is an international forum where academic researchers and industrial practitioners meet to analyze and discuss issues related to methods, theories, tools and applications based on formal ontologies.

There is today wide agreement that knowledge modeling and the semantic dimension of information plays an increasingly central role in networked economy: semantic-based applications are relevant in distributed systems such as networked organizations, organizational networks, and in distributed knowledge management. These knowledge models in industry aim to provide a framework for information and knowledge sharing, reliable information exchange, meaning negotiation and coordination between distinct organizations or among members of the same organization.

New tools and applications have been and are being developed in diverse application fields, ranging from business to medicine, from engineering to finance, from law to electronics. All these systems have exploited the theoretical results and the practical experience of previous work. In many cases, it has been shown that formal ontologies play a central role in describing in a common and understandable way the logical and practical features of the application domain.

The success of the methodologies associated with knowledge modeling and ontologies led to increased need of a comparison between different approaches and results, with the aim of evaluating the interdependencies between theories and methods of formal ontology and the activities, processes, and needs of enterprise organizations.

The FOMI 2008 Workshop aims to advance in this direction by bringing together researchers and practitioners in this area, paying particular attention to the topics of interest.

Past editions of the workshop have been held in Trento (FOMI 2006), and in Castelnuovo del Garda (VR), (FOMI 2005).