ISO/TR 23845:2020

TECHNICAL ISO/TR
REPORT 23845
First edition
2020-04
Biomimetics — Ontology-Enhanced
Thesaurus (OET) for biomimetics
Reference number
©
ISO 2020
© ISO 2020
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ii © ISO 2020 – All rights reserved

Contents Page
Foreword .iv
Introduction .v
1 Scope . 1
2 Normative references . 1
3 Terms and definitions . 1
4 Role of the knowledge infrastructure for biomimetics . 2
4.1 General . 2
4.2 Related work in the framework of the design processes of BID . 3
4.3 Positioning of OET in the context of the BID design process . 4
5 How Keyword Explorer works. 4
5.1 General . 4
5.2 A motivating example . 6
6 Ontology-Enhanced Thesaurus . 7
6.1 General . 7
6.2 Characteristics of biomimetics databases . 7
6.3 Basic design of a biomimetics database retrieval scheme . 7
6.4 Keyword translation and exploration . 9
6.4.1 General. 9
6.4.2 Keyword exploration: divergent thinking . 9
6.4.3 Keyword exploration: convergent thinking . 9
7 Ontologies in OET . 9
7.1 General . 9
7.2 Basic design of ontologies in OET . 9
7.3 Ontology of function .10
7.4 Concepts other than function .10
7.4.1 Taxonomy of organisms .10
7.4.2 Properties .10
7.4.3 Living environments .10
8 Implementation and evaluation of a prototype of Keyword Explorer .11
8.1 General .11
8.2 OET Versions .11
8.2.1 The demo version.11
8.2.2 The prototype version .11
8.3 Preliminary evaluation experiment .12
Annex A (informative) Ontology of function .15
Annex B (informative) How Keyword explorer works .18
Bibliography .19
Foreword
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This document was prepared by Technical Committee ISO/TC 266, Biomimetics.
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iv © ISO 2020 – All rights reserved

Introduction
A thesaurus is often used to map terms between different knowledge domains. The Knowledge
Infrastructure for Biomimetics project was established to fill the gap between biology and technology.
The project originally planned to develop a biomimetic thesaurus and an ontology that would
complement such a thesaurus in situations where the thesaurus cannot deliver useful search terms
because concepts in the two domains are associated with keywords that lack explicit links. Although
work on the biomimetic thesaurus has been postponed, Ontology-Enhanced Thesaurus (OET) does not
require a thesaurus and can be used as a standalone tool. For more details see 5.2.
OET addresses a portion of this knowledge infrastructure. It is composed of an ontology of biomimetics
and an application named Keyword Explorer that provides an interface to the ontology. OET and
Keyword Explorer help designers, engineers, and other bio-inspired design (BID) practitioners by
mapping technical terms to biological terms that can then be used to search biological texts to identify
biological models (see Figure 3). For example, a traditional thesaurus may relate “stain-resistant” to
“self-cleaning” or “soil release”. A biomimetic thesaurus or internet keyword search may additionally
return “antifouling”. OET can identify organisms that share functions related to “antifouling” but not
directly associated with the term.
In Clause 4, after a brief overview of the current state of the art of tools and systems in biomimetics,
OET and Keyword Explorer are positioned in the related work. Clause 5 describes OET together with
its design rationale. In-depth description on the implemented ontology in OET is Clause 6 and Clause 7.
Clause 8 describes accessing and running the Keyword Explorer prototype in order to get feedback
from readers.
NOTE A publicly available version of Keyword Explorer and OET is available at http:// biomimetics .hozo
.jp/ OET/ demo .html as a web application — it only includes one function (antifouling) but demonstrates
the capabilities of the prototype version. The corresponding ontology can be inspected via “Browsing the
Biomimetics Ontology” in http:// biomimetics .hozo .jp/ OET/ , but it is not possible to download it. Paid users of
this document can download the prototype version.
TECHNICAL REPORT ISO/TR 23845:2020(E)
Biomimetics — Ontology-Enhanced Thesaurus (OET) for
biomimetics
1 Scope
This document describes prototypes of the Ontology-Enhanced Thesaurus (OET) and the Keyword
Explorer interface to OET. Although their design philosophy is described, this document focuses on
their value and how they work.
2 Normative references
There are no normative references in this document.
3 Terms and definitions
For the purposes of this document, the following terms and definitions apply.
ISO and IEC maintain terminological databases for use in standardization at the following addresses:
— ISO Online browsing platform: available at https:// www .iso .org/ obp
— IEC Electropedia: available at http:// www .electropedia .org/
3.1
data
minimum piece of information that is meaningful for its potential readers or users
Note 1 to entry: In many cases, data is a component of larger entity, a data set or a data base. Data can be text as in
research papers, simulation models, algorithms, numbers, pictures, figures, voice and video recordings.
3.2
database
set of almost any digital objects, which can be text, picture, sound, video, etc.
3.3
information retrieval service
set of software that allows users to retrieve information from databases (3.2)
Note 1 to entry: Quite often, ontologies or thesauri are incorporated in the information retrieval service.
3.4
index
set of key terms (usually arranged in alphabetical order) with pointers to the original source of each
term (includes books, research papers, or other forms of writing)
3.5
metadata
data (3.1) that provides information about other data
Note 1 to entry: The keywords in an index are metadata of the body of the text from which the keywords are
extracted.
3.6
ontology
formal, structured, and explicit description of concepts in a domain of discourse and the relations
between them in the fields of knowledge management and artificial intelligence
Note 1 to entry: An ontology together with a set of individual instances of classes constitutes a knowledge base.
3.7
taxono
...