Conceptual spider diagrams

Abstract

Conceptual Graphs are a common knowledge representation system which are used in conjunction with an explicit type hierarchy of the domain. However, this means the interpretation of information expressed in conceptual graphs requires the combined use of information from different sources, which is not always an easy cognitive task. Though it is possible to explicitly represent the type hierarchy with Conceptual Graphs with Cuts, this less natural expression of the type hierarchy information is not as easy to interpret and soon takes up a lot of space. Now, one of the main advantages of Euler diagram-based notations like Spider diagrams is the natural diagrammatic representation of hierarchies. However, Spider diagrams lack facilities such as the ability to represent general relationships between objects which is necessary for knowledge representation tasks. We bring together the most pertinent features of both of these notations, creating a new hybrid notation called Conceptual Spider Diagrams. We provide formal syntax and semantics of this new notation, together with examples demonstrating its capabilities.