2b:null 2c:["$","title",null,{"children":"Life Roles Ontologies | Sam Smith | Observable"}] 31:T413,md`# Life Roles Ontologies ${await FileAttachment("Roles_MomResearcher.png").image()} During the progression of an organism's life, he, she or it will adopt a number of roles. This applies whether the organism is human or non-human (such as a mother goose), but this project is specifically on *human roles*. This discussion of roles is preliminary to a formal ontology, to allow development of a common understanding of classes, properties and relations not requiring technical language. A later phase will formulate these ontologis formally and in compliance with the **Basic Formal Ontology (BFO)** upper layer framework. Two classes of roles are countenanced, and each will have its own formal ontology: - **Occupation** which is a role or activity that a person fills in order to provide a *means of livelihood*. - **Non-occupational Role** are essentially everything else, and for this project, historical roles that are no longer filled are grouped here, whether or not they had an occupational aspect when they existed. `32:T9e0,md` ## Occupation: What is an Occupation? While this initial discussion is non-technical, it would still be important to classify what an occupation is within the **BFO framework**, which has a major distinction between two superclasses of entities: - **continuants** - Things that last or endure, and - **occurents** - things that exist in time for a limited duration. While it is true that a person exercising the roles of his or her profession will be involved in a process (an occurent), the occupation exists independetnly from the person and endures. (Merriam-Webster: something that occurs as distinguished from something that continues to exist) Therefore, it is suggested that **occupations be a subclass of continuant**. Further, there is a distinction between the occupation and the person engaged in that occupation, so that "actor" in the ontology pertains to the actor occupation, while an individual actor is a person engaged in that occupation, and the plural "actors" refers to a set of people engaged in the occupation (plurals being avoided in the ontology itslsel). The US Standard Occupation Classes, for instance, use plurals, whereas the ESCO international standard uses singular terms and is preferred. In some cases, the occupation is referenced by an activity term, such as "acting," which should also be avoided in the ontology. For example, in Wikidata there is no consistency: each of the terms, actor, Actor, acting, actors all appear as the occupation property id P106. Additionally, the term "actor" is duplicated multiple times, each with a different Q prefix id but otherwise identical. Howver, It may be helpful to conceive of the exercise of activities encompassed within an occupation to be processes, with a working term of "occupation-activity." So an actor engaged in the occupation of actor would be performing the occupation-activity of acting while on stage. During the course of a day, a person may then be at any instant engaged in one or more occupation-activities, one or more non-occupational-role-activites, or none (sleeping, goofing off, watching SNL - dead-time states in which no roles are being filled). Regarding quiescent times when no active role is being filled, should it be considered non-role or possibly have role terms for such times, such as "sleeper," "diner," "TV watcher"? Should a role imply some intentional activity towards some end? A person sleeping is a sleeper, but is that a role. Probably not, but it warrants discussion. `33:T429,md`## Role as a BFO Continuant It turns out that Role within the BFO based ontologies already has a definition as a continuant. The ontobee.org contains a vast array of biomedical ontologies and all of the ontologies based on BFO that are registered. It is illustrative to see how this term is represented within the BFO based "information artifact ontology": ${await FileAttachment("Ontobee_BFO_Role.jpg").image()} At this stage we do not need to be concerned about "specifically dependent continuant" or "realizable entity," but is is important to realize that a new set of ontologies such as Life Ontologies can take advantage of a lot of ontological work that has already been done. (The treatment of role in BFO is more specifically defined in this link, showing that role is pretty high in the hierarchy of BFO entities.) `34:T5a1,md`## Existing Occupational Standards The occupational classification systems considered in the Life Ontologies project are the following: - The US **Standard Occupational Classification (SOC)** developed by the Bureau of Labor Standards (BLS), combined with an overall online system, the Occupational Information Network (O*Net) - The **European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations (ESCO)** system. - Existing *Semantic Web knowledge bases*, of which **Wikidata** and **DBpedia** are primary examples. Wikidata will be the main resource used in this project, simply to limit the scope encompassed, as DBPedia is very good, possibly better curated than Wikidata, and hopefully can be incorporated later. - A commercial organization based in Zurich, JANZZ, which is included for reasons explained below. **O*Net vs ESCO - Which is Better?** Both of these systems are authoritative, but neither was developed in compliance with or cognizant of an overall ontological system. Both systems are described below. The **US O*Net system will be explored most extensively** and compared to Wikidata, with the hope of integrating ESCO at a later time. (Note: Maybe reference this: **Article Comparing the Two Systems:** An exercise to compare the two systems is described in an interesting paper by so-and-so, which concludes that what-and-what. ) `35:T87d,## US SOC - O*Net Online Information Network The Online Information Network is a very well executed US federal resource for job information in the United States. It developed from standards going back to 1938, and is not oriented to international use. In November 2020 there was a major release of updated SOC plus O\*Net information, and the O\*net database is readily available for download. The definition of occupations is from the 2018 Standard Occupational Classifications (SOC) System. In the SOC system each occupation carries a numeric identifier XX-NNNN where XX is the major group, and NNNN is the occupation class within the major group.*** ### Major Classes of the SOC / O*Net There are 23 major groups of occupations: - 11-0000 Management Occupations - 13-0000 Business and Financial Operations Occupations - 15-0000 Computer and Mathematical Occupations - 17-0000 Architecture and Engineering Occupations - 19-0000 Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations - 21-0000 Community and Social Service Occupations - 23-0000 Legal Occupations - 25-0000 Educational Instruction and Library Occupations - 27-0000 Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations - 29-0000 Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations - 31-0000 Healthcare Support Occupations - 33-0000 Protective Service Occupations - 35-0000 Food Preparation and Serving Related Occupations - 37-0000 Building and Grounds Cleaning and Maintenance Occupations - 39-0000 Personal Care and Service Occupations - 41-0000 Sales and Related Occupations - 43-0000 Office and Administrative Support Occupations - 45-0000 Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Occupations - 47-0000 Construction and Extraction Occupations - 49-0000 Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Occupations - 51-0000 Production Occupations - 53-0000 Transportation and Material Moving Occupations - 55-0000 Military Specific Occupations 36:T506,md`## What is the Ontological Structure of the SOC Major Groups? There are 23 major groups of occupations, of which the last is military specific and specialized, so focusing on non-military-specific occupations there are 22 major groups. The idea of using an ontology is to permit reasoning, which imposes a structure on the information in question, and a "flat" list of categories has no structure. To illustrate, let's see what structure could be considered for these 222 major groups. The distinctions could be based on the entities each occupation deals with, and whether the occupation is involved in making, processing or fixing things, or not. Here is an attempt to make these distinctions: This organization of the groups segregates occupations that deal with (non-human) material things as "Make" into groups that *produce* things, versus occupations that *process* things. All other occupations ("Not-Make" without any specific term) could then be divided between those occupations that deal with *people*, versus those of an informational nature, where the clients may be people but the nature of the occupation's result is informational (including artistic creations, "information artefacts" in BFO terms). ${await FileAttachment("OccO_Hdngs.jpg").image()} `37:T5b1,md`## European Skills, Compenences, Qualifications and Occupations (ESCO) An alternative formulation of official occupations is the ESCO system of the European Union, which in turn uses the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-08). The Wikipedia article provides an excellent summary, where the 10 major groups are identified: - 1 Managers - 2 Professionals - 3 Technicians and Associate Professionals - 4 Clerical Support Workers - 5 Services and Sales Workers - 6 Skilled Agricultural, Forestry and Fishery Workers - 7 Craft and Related Trades Workers - 8 Plant and Machine Operators and Assemblers - 9 Elementary Occupations - 0 Armed Forces Occupations Excluding military specific occupations, this grouping is based on skill set, and the degree of skill or responsibility required for a grouping of occupations. Ontologically, it seems that this organization does not treat occupations so much as entities, but as skill sets needed by people engaged in various occupations. The coding system is less flexible than the US system, with a one-digit major group id, a two-digit sub-major group, and a three-digit minor group. `38:T41b,md`## JANZZ - Existing Ontological Treatment of Occupations is Inadequate Commercial organizations seeking to get an ontological handle on occupations have developed their own systems. The need for improved ontological treatment of occupations is made by a Zurich based company that has specialized in this area, JANZZ. The company has invested over 300,000 hours in the development of its proprietary jobs ontology. This development as well as a discussion of Google's Ontology-based job search service are discussed in this informative article. **The Importance of Ontology to Business:** JANZZ business is information-heavy, and it provides an excellent example about the importance of ontology is to businesses in this field. Ontology is a competitive advantae, underscoring the value that a good occupation ontology can offer. `39:Tfce,## Ontological Treatment of Roles and Occupations Commercial ontologies are designed for profit, not as aids to reasoning. So, how would one go about developing an ontology of occupations that had reasoning, that is, as logically derived entities and relationships, for general use? Preliminary to formal definition, here is a suggested approach, going in order from the simplest roles to an occupation involving many properties and relationships. **Model:** This model is proposed for envisioning the entities and relationships in a role or occupation: ${await FileAttachment("Role_Model.jpg").image()} The working term (not ideal) for a person associated with a role or occupation is a *practitioner.* A person *fills* a role performing role-activities. The role persists even while not filling the role, as the mother is a caregiver even when asleep. A person is *engaged in* an occupation, performing occupation-activities. The exercise of the role activity provides the *client agent* with a *solution* to their *need* and may involve conversion of *resource entities* into *result entities* bearing a *value-added quality.* **Examples of Role:** - simple role: A young woman is engaged in a "food preparer" role in order to feed herself. In this case, she is both client agent and practitioner; later, she will be a food preparer for the family. - a family role: A mother takes her daughter to her piano piano lesson as a "caregiver" and "transporter" **Examples of Occupation:** An occupation is like a role, but it provides a “means of livelihood” in the form of income or some other livelihood-enhancing compensation.In an occupation, the practitioner may be self-employed or work for an employer, in which case the flow of resources and compensation flow not directly to the practitioner but through the employer. - a person is engaged in the self-employed occupation of "piano teacher" in providing piano education for a client agent, which is in effect the family - the mom who wants a musician, the dad who may be paying, and the daughter who is playing. - that same piano teacher has a second occupation as an "organist," specifically a "church organist," in providing musical services to a church congregation. - on the way home from the piano lesson, the car's fender gets bent and a new one is needed from the nearby factory. There a *factory worker* works for a manufacturing firm employer, performing the occupaional activity of *metalworking* on metal he had no role in procuring, and he receives compensation from his employer, with no involvement with the client. The *resource entity* of a piece of metal is turned into a *result entity*, a new fender. This example uses **Factory Worker** because this is an occupation that appears in both in the US SOC and in Wikidata, where its identifier is Q87285943, but interestingly it does not appear in the ISOC-08 index. ${await FileAttachment("Occupaiton_Model.jpg").image()} The practioner must have the **skills and abilities** needed to execute the occupation-activities for the occupation (or role). The definition of job-related skills and abilities is covered in both O\*Net and ESCO, and are described in the Life Ontologies under the Life Abilities Ontologies. **Resource Entities** could be viewed as the *domain* that the occupation *deals-with*, for instance, the pianist's domain is pianos and organs, and the factory worker's domain is metal. Dividing the elements of an occupation would permit occupations to be characterized as a set of Occupation-activities that deal-with a domain, eliminating the thousands of discreet occupation names that result, for instance, from "administrator, government," "administrator, city," etc. There could be the opportunity to have verb, noun, domain combinations such that "operate," "operator," and any set of machines constitute an occupation, without needing to tabulate each combination of operator and machine. 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