Foundational ontologies can be used to enable semantic interoperability in modern information systems. Aligning a domain ontology to a foundational ontology is perceived difficult, however. Reasons include confusing underlying concepts, understanding the philosophical ideologies of foundational ontologies, and lack of alignment guidance. For BFO, there is a BFO Classifier tool for alignment, but users still face challenges. To uncover some of these user challenges, an experiment was performed using 10 BFO-aligned domain ontologies. The alignment of domain entities were analysed, revealing seven different types of mistakes in the alignments. To avoid them, the BFO classifier tool was altered to improve the questions and explanations for the core principles of BFO. Thereafter, the BFO classifier tool was evaluated to measure the effect on alignment with a use-case based approach, using the GORO and AWO ontologies. The evaluation revealed that alterations facilitated alignment, as users felt more confident in their results given the improved understanding of the questions and possible answers.

Complex societal problems require a multidisciplinary and multi-method approach to develop models that can support the development of solutions. General morphological analysis is a qualitative method to extract information from experts through facilitation and the use of customized software. Ontologies provide semantic representation of knowledge bases together with automated reasoning capabilities. These two approaches, combined with the use of concept maps, provide an integrated approach which can be used to understand complex and ill-structured problem domains and to aid in business modelling, strategy and scenario development and finally, decision-making. The resulting models are subjective constructs reflecting the knowledge and understanding of the analysts. Subsequent synthesis of new understanding and decisions rely on the robust validation and verification of the underlying logic and assumptions of the conceptual models. Morphological Analysis and ontological constructs are applied in terms of an integrated Morphological Ontology Design Engineering methodology (MODE), which is based on Design Science. The paper is developed around the opportunity of scoping the applied research competence required to support a nation's progress toward energy sufficiency. This paper presents a complex fused model for national energy sufficiency in New Zealand. The approach can be used to address other ill-structured complex societal problems.

A purpose of a foundational ontology is to solve interoperability issues among ontologies. Many foundational ontologies have been developed, re-introducing the ontology interoperability problem. We address this with the new online foundational ontology repository ROMULUS, in which DOLCE, BFO and GFO have been aligned. We summarise the alignments, mappings, and logical inconsistencies of the foundational ontologies, and ROMULUS?s features.