A formal model for situated semantic alignment

Ontology matching is currently a key technology to achieve the semantic alignment of ontological entities used by knowledge-based applications, and therefore to enable their interoperability in distributed environments such as multi-agent systems. Most ontology matching mechanisms, however, assume matching prior integration and rely on semantics that has been coded a priori in concept hierarchies or external sources. In this paper, we present a formal model for a semantic alignment procedure that incrementally aligns differing conceptualisations of two or more agents relative to their respective perception of the environment or domain they are acting in. It hence makes the situation in which the alignment occurs explicit in the model. We resort to Channel Theory to carry out the formalisation.