Semantic integration of conceptual models

Abstract

In a collaborative conceptualisation process, the existence of several solutions for a given domain is a very common problem. Given this, specialists must reach a consensus on the concepts that will encompass the final solution. Therefore, this work aims to provide a tool for the integration of conceptual models in order to help specialists during the negotiation phase of developing the final shared model. This approach analyses the concepts of two models and shows the similar concepts to the specialists. The semantic similarity is obtained after three stages, namely: normalization, syntax analysis and semantic analysis. To evaluate the proposed approach, the values of precision and recall measures were calculated in two practical application scenarios. The obtained results proved to be better when compared to the existing tools when applied to semi-formal models (conceptual maps), and very close to the best tools focused on formal models (ontologies) integration. © Springer International Publishing AG 2017.