The use of ontologies for solving scientific problems (by example of geophysics)

The paper covers an intelligent support system that allows to describe and construct solutions to various scientific problems. In this study, in particular, we consider geophysical problems. This system is being developed at the Institute of Computational Mathematics and Mathematical Geophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ICMMG SB RAS) and Institute of Informatics System of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IIS SB RAS). The system contains a knowledge base, the core of which is a set of several interconnected ontologies such as the ontology of supercomputer architectures, the ontology of algorithms and methods. Ontology can be viewed as a set of concepts and how those concepts are linked. As the result, the authors present an ontological description of two geophysical problems via the means of the intelligent support system: 1) the seismic wavefield simulation and 2) the reconstruction of a seismic image through pre-stack time or depth migration. For a better visual understanding of the system described and the results obtained, the paper also contains several schematic diagrams and images.