A Case Study in Ontologies for Probabilistic Networks

Abstract. Building a probabilistic network for a real-life domain of ap-plication is a hard and time-consuming process, which is generally per-formed with the help of domain experts. As the scope and, hence, the size and complexity of networks are increasing, the need for proper documen-tation of the elicited domain knowledge becomes apparent. To study the usefulness of ontologies for this purpose, we have constructed an ontology for the domain of oesophageal cancer, based upon a real-life probabilistic network for the staging of cancer of the oesophagus and the knowledge elicited for its construction. In this paper, we describe the various com-ponents of our ontology and outline the benefits of using ontologies in engineering probabilistic networks in general.