GEM: Extensible Ontology for Domain-Specific Modeling and Taxonomy

General Entity Model (GEM) is an extensible, upper-level ontology. An ontology is a collection of concepts and their relationships and properties and can be used as a schema or data model to describe some domain. As an upper-level ontology, GEM is intended to be used as a foundation for building domain-specific ontologies (such as energy, manufacturing, etc.). GEM combines existing open-source resources to create an upper-level ontology that uses ontologies widely used and agreed upon by experts across government and industry. The concepts included within GEM provide a foundation for how the domain-specific images to be modeled should be organized. This includes hierarchies that define ideas concerning temporal (time-bound), non-temporal, and other boundaries and definitions. GEM can be viewed as a standalone XML document or in an ontology editor (like Protege or DeepLynx). This software is intended for groups who need an ontology to either act as a taxonomy and reference for their domain or actively apply the ontology as a typical model or schema for their data.

This software is open source and available at no cost.