Abstract: Events may affect the unfolding of other events in several ways. It happens, for instance, when we have an event that consists of a variation of what constitutes the objects that participate in an external, main event – e.g., by replacing parts of some of its participants or by adding/removing portions of the matter of which the participants are made. With that, such side events may result in qualitative changes in the participants of the main event. Sometimes the modified qualities may play a role in the dynamic of the main event. In such cases, any side event that affects these qualities will indeed have an effect on how the main event unfolds. Given this particularity, such a type of side event fill an important position in several domains and an understanding of its ontological nature is in order for a good conceptual modeling of those domains. Thus, in this paper, based on the idea of events as entities delimited by systems, we present an ontological account of auxiliary events, i.e., events that influence the unfolding of other events. We illustrate the proposed idea with a case study from the field of Geology.

Keywords: Ontologies, Events, Processes, Occurrents, Auxiliary Events, Roles, Geology

Authors: Fabrício Henrique Rodrigues, Joel Luís Carbonera and Mara Abel

Journal/Conference: ONTOBRAS 2023: 16th Seminar on Ontology Research in Brazil

Publication: https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3564/paper2.pdf