Towards a Biographical Ontology: The OntoBio Framework and Its Applications

This work introduces OntoBio, a biographical ontology grounded in Linked Data principles. The study reviews existing ontologies to identify limitations in their ability to represent the diversity and complexity of individual lives. To address these gaps, we developed OntoBio using a tripartite framework encompassing Personality, Environment and Milieu, and Achievements/Milestones. This framework is supported by an expressive vocabulary designed to capture the multifaceted nature of biographical knowledge. OntoBio provides a structural foundation for the semantic integration of existing ontologies that only partially represent biographical data. We present a set of use-case scenarios that motivated OntoBio’s development and highlight its key modeling features. To ensure robustness and interoperability, OntoBio was developed following the Yet Another Methodology for large-scale faceted Ontology Construction (YAMO) methodology and in compliance with World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards, including Resource Description Framework (RDF), Web Ontology Language (OWL), and SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL). Finally, we evaluate the ontology by constructing a biographical knowledge graph illustrating the life of a prominent individual.