Basic Formal Ontology
Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) is a top-level ontology developed by Barry Smith and colleagues to promote interoperability among domain ontologies. The BFO methodology accomplishes this through a process of downward population.
BFO is a formal ontology. The structure of BFO is based on a division of entities into two disjoint categories of continuant and occurrent, the former consists of objects and spatial regions, the latter contains processes conceived as extended through (or spanning) time. BFO thereby seeks to consolidate both time and space within a single framework
A guide to building BFO-conformant domain ontologies was published by MIT Press in 2015.
In 2021, the standard ISO/IEC 21838-2:2021 Information Technology — Top-level Ontologies (TLO) — Part 2: Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) was published by the Joint Technical Committee of the International Standards Organization and the International Electrotechnical Commission. ISO/IEC 21838 is a multi-part standard. Part 1 of the standard specifies the requirements that must be met if an ontology is to be classified as a top-level ontology by the standard.