Contoexam: an ontology on context-aware examinations

Abstract. Patient observations in health care, subjective surveys in social research or dyke sensor data in water management are all examples of measurements. Several ontologies already exist to express measurements, W3C's SSN ontology being a prominent example. However, these ontologies address quantities and properties as being equal, and ignore the foundation required to establish comparability between sensor data. Moreover, a measure of an observation in itself is almost always inconclusive without the context in which the measure was obtained. ContoExam addresses these aspects, providing for a unifying capability for context-aware expressions of observations about quantities and properties alike, by aligning them to ontological foundations, and by binding observations inextricably with their context.