kSIST ISO 21127:2024

INTERNATIONAL ISO
STANDARD 21127
Third edition
2023-10
Information and documentation — A
reference ontology for the interchange
of cultural heritage information
Information et documentation — Une ontologie de référence pour
l'échange d'informations du patrimoine culturel
Reference number
© ISO 2023
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Published in Switzerland
ii
Contents Page
Foreword .iv
Introduction .v
1 Scope . 1
2 Normative references . 1
3 Terms and definitions . 1
4 Objectives . 9
5 Compatibility .10
6 Applied form .10
6.1 General . 10
6.2 Naming conventions . 11
6.3 Inheritance and transitivity . 12
6.4 Shortcuts . 12
6.5 Logical expressions used in ISO 21127 .12
6.6 Property quantifiers. 14
7 Modelling principles .15
7.1 Reality, knowledge bases and ISO 21127 . 15
7.2 Authorship of knowledge base (KB) contents . 17
7.3 Extensions . 17
7.4 Minimality . 19
7.5 Monotonicity . 20
7.5.1 Open World principle .20
7.5.2 Monotonicity of the document . 20
7.5.3 Monotonicity of the data . 21
7.5.4 Monotonicity of the knowledge base . . 21
7.5.5 Monotonicity and time-dependent properties . 21
7.6 Disjointness .22
8 Introduction to the basic concepts .22
8.1 General .22
8.2 Relations with events . 24
8.2.1 General . 24
8.2.2 Spatial relations . 27
8.2.3 Temporal relations.29
8.2.4 Spatiotemporal relations . 31
8.3 Specific modelling constructs .33
8.3.1 Types . 33
8.3.2 Temporal relation primitives based on fuzzy boundaries .34
9 Class declarations .37
10 Property declarations .91
Annex A (informative) Scope precision — Intended scope .175
Annex B (informative) Deprecated classes and properties .176
Bibliography .179
iii
Foreword
ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) is a worldwide federation of national standards
bodies (ISO member bodies). The work of preparing International Standards is normally carried out
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electrotechnical standardization.
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described in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1. In particular, the different approval criteria needed for the
different types of ISO document should be noted. This document was drafted in accordance with the
editorial rules of the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2 (see www.iso.org/directives).
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www.iso.org/iso/foreword.html.
This document was prepared by Technical Committee ISO/TC 46, Information and documentation,
Subcommittee SC 4, Technical interoperability, in collaboration with the International Committee for
Documentation (CIDOC).
This third edition cancels and replaces the second edition (ISO 21127:2014), which has been technically
revised.
The main changes are as follows:
— deprecated 13 overspecialised classes and 15 overspecialized properties;
— added 8 properties to replace 8 deprecated properties in order to support chronological reasoning;
— added 4 (sub)classes and 17 properties to align with OCG standards for geospatial data;
— added 4 (sub)classes and 12 properties for more detailed conceptualizations of existing concepts;
— provided further clarification of concepts through the addition real-life examples, references, and
first order logic axioms;
— extended explanatory introductory sections to clarify the standard and its maintained scope.
Any feedback or questions on this document should be directed to the user’s national standards body. A
complete listing of these bodies can be found at www.iso.org/members.html.
iv
Introduction
This document is the culmination of more than a decade of standards development work by the
International Committee for Documentation (CIDOC) of the International Council of Museums (ICOM).
Work on this document began in 1996 under the auspices of the ICOM-CIDOC Documentation Standards
1)
Working Group. The document provided by CIDOC formed the basis for ISO 21127 which was first
published in 2006. While the initial impetus for the work came from the museum community, it
has since spread to encompass other types of cultural heritage institution. This document has been
appropriated and extended to meet the needs of other institutions dealing with cultural heritage.
The primary purpose of this document is to offer a conceptual basis for the integration, mediation,
and exchange of information between cultural heritage organizations such as museums, libraries,
and archives. This document aims to provide a common reference point against which divergent and
incompatible sources of information can be compared and, ultimately, harmonized.
2)
ISO 21127 is an ontology for cultural heritage information: a formal representation of the conceptual
scheme, or “world view”, underlying the database applications and documentation systems that are
used by cultural heritage institutions. It is important to note that this document aims to clarify the logic
of what cultural heritage institutions do in fact document; it is not intended as a normative specification
of what they should document. The primary role of this document is to enable information exchange
and integration between heterogeneous sources of cultural heritage information. It aims to provide the
semantic definitions and clarifications needed to transform disparate, localized information sources
into a coherent global resource, be it within an institution, an intranet, or on the Internet.
The specific aims of this document are to:
— serve as a common language for domain experts and IT developers when formulating requirements;
— serve as a formal language for the identification of common information contents in different data
formats; in particular to support the implementation of automatic data transformation algorithms
from local to global data structures without loss of meaning. These transformation algorithms are
useful for data exchange, data migration from legacy systems, data in
...