From thesauri to Ontologies: A short case study in the food safety area in how ontologies are more powerful than thesauri From thesauri to RDFS to OWL Boris Lauser Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations Rome, Italy

Keywords: Thesauri, Ontologies, RDFS, OWL, KAON, Protégé

This short case study will show on the basis of a simple example taken from the Food Safety area, how ontologies differ from thesauri. The example will start with showing an extract from the AGROVOC^[1] thesaurus and exploring the information that can be extracted from here. We will then develop this example further in order to show growing functionality and expressive power first in RDFS and finally in OWL ontologies.

^[1] AGROVOC is a multilingual, agricultural thesaurus, developed and maintained by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). It is accessible online at http://www.fao.org/agrovoc.

Table of Contents

1. Knowledge modelling in thesauri

2. Ontologies in RDFS

3. Ontologies in OWL

Summary

Appendix A: RDFS sample Food Safety ontology

Appendix B: OWL sample Food Safety ontology