An ontological conceptualization approach for awareness in domain-independent collaborative modeling systems: Application to a model-driven development method

One of the most important aspects of collaborative systems is the concept of awareness, which refers to the perception and knowledge of the group and its activities. Support for the design and automatic development of awareness mechanisms within collaborative systems is hard to find. Furthermore, awareness conceptualizations are usually partial and differ greatly between the proposals of different authors. In response to these problems, we propose an awareness ontology that conceptualizes some of the most important aspects of awareness in a specific kind of system: collaborative systems for carrying out modeling activities. The awareness ontology brings together and extends a series of ontologies we have developed in the past. The ontology is prepared to better meet the specific implementation needs of a model-driven development approach. In order to validate the usefulness of this ontology, we relate its concepts to the awareness dimensions set out in Gutwin and Greenberg’s framework, and we apply the ontology to two systems presently in use.