An Ontology Approach for Building MFM Libraries

With the development of knowledge-based systems technology, it is possible to assist automation of Multilevel Flow Modelling (MFM) to promote reusability and shareability of knowledge-based components based on domain knowledge and concrete process-specific knowledge for life-cycle processes. In this paper, an ontology approach for building MFM libraries is proposed.

The library ontologies are composed of three levels: top-level ontologies, domain ontologies and method ontologies. They are developed for the offshore oil and gas domain and are compared with the ISO 15926 ontology structure. In addition, a procedure for creating MFM library elements is presented and a method for connecting libraries elements are defined.

In the case study, the example of a gas treatment process is modelled. It illustrates the usefulness of the MFM libraries. This approach avoids building models from scratch and instead assembling reusable knowledge-based components. Consequently, it supports odelers to build higher quality models and reduce the modelling efforts at the same time.