---
title: "A Causal Time Ontology for Qualitative Reasoning"
authors:
  - "Yoshinobu Kitamura"
  - "Mitsuru Ikeda"
  - "Riichiro Mizoguchi"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1997/74"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1997/0074.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 1997
pages: "501-506"
track: "Diagnosis and Qualitative Reasoning"
keywords:
---

# A Causal Time Ontology for Qualitative Reasoning

Yoshinobu Kitamura, Mitsuru Ikeda, Riichiro Mizoguchi

*Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 501-506.

## Abstract

Aiming at explicit description of temporal meaning of causal relations generated by qualitative reasoning systems, this article proposes a ca~sal time ontology which defines a set of general time concepts in qualitative models, called causal time sc~les . Each of them associated with a modeling techmque represents a te111poral granularity and/o~ an ontological viewpoint. They allow us to spectfy temporal performance of the reasoning engines and to id~n tify a general causal reasoning scheme together wtth sophisticated feedback analysis. Lastly, we present a causal time resolution required to derive causal relations in fluid-related systems and a reasoning system satisfying it.