Creation and merging of ontology top-levels

We provide a new method for systematically structuring the top-down level of ontologies. It is based on an interactive, top-down knowledge acquisition process, which assures that the knowledge engineer considers all possible cases while avoiding redundant acquisition. The method is suited especially for creating/merging the top part(s) of the ontologies, where high accuracy is required, and for supporting the merging of two (or more) ontologies on that level.