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Semantic interoperability based on the European Materials and Modelling Ontology and its ontological paradigm: Mereosemiotics

The European Materials and Modelling Ontology (EMMO) has recently been advanced in the computational molecular engineering and multiscale modelling communities as a top-level ontology, aiming to support semantic interoperability and data integration solutions, e.g., for research data infrastructures. The present work explores how top-level ontologies that are based on the same paradigm - the same set of fundamental postulates - as the EMMO can be applied to models of physical systems and their use in computational engineering practice. This paradigm, which combines mereology (in its extension as mereotopology) and semiotics (following Peirce's approach), is here referred to as mereosemiotics. Multiple conceivable ways of implementing mereosemiotics are compared, and the design space consisting of the possible types of top-level ontologies following this paradigm is characterized.