Introduce “Mine” Class Above “Land Mine”

[grabusm1]

I would like to suggest a refinement to the current class hierarchy under Explosive Weapon (cco:ont00000552). At present, Land Mine (cco:ont00000734) is modeled as a direct subclass of Explosive Weapon. This introduces a conceptual limitation by omitting a broader Mine class.

There are many types of mines used in military contexts that share common functional and structural characteristics with land mines, but differ not only in their deployment environments (land, sea, air) but also in their triggering mechanisms (e.g., pressure, magnetic, acoustic, contact, oscillating), mobility (e.g., moored, drifting, mobile), and detonation strategies (e.g., rising or time-delayed mines).

To support reuse and extensibility, I recommend introducing a Mine class as a direct subclass of Explosive Weapon, with Land Mine as a subclass of Mine.

[neilotte]

@grabusm1 Can you propose an rdfs:label, definition, source, and parent class for the class 'Mine' ? thanks

[APCox]

Proposal for review:

ADD: Explosive Mine =def "An Explosive Weapon that is designed to be concealed and to detonate as its target passes near it."
Note that being relatively stationary is a common but not necessarily universal feature of mines.

ADD: Naval Mine =def "An Explosive Mine that is designed to be concealed on or under water and to detonate as a Watercraft passes near it."
altLabel: "Sea Mine"

REDEFINE: Land Mine =def "An Explosive Mine that is designed to be concealed under or on the ground and to detonate as its target passes over or near it."
NOTE: The words 'over or' could be removed for simplicity.

@grabusm1 Can you please provide a definition for Air Mine? Or was your comment restricted to the means of deployment rather than the location of deployment?

The enumeration of deployment methods, triggers, sensors, etc. should be handled in a domain ontology.

[APCox]

Approved to create a PR further fleshing out the proposed terms.

[swartik]

A few points about this issue:

1. Does CCO really want to get into so much detail about types of mines? Is that appropriate for a middle-level ontology?
2. Is "Explosive Weapon" intended to cover explosions from chemical reactions? A nuclear weapon is certainly an explosive weapon in the colloquial sense, but Nuclear Weapon is not a subclass of Explosive Weapon.
3. Also, there are nuclear land mines.
4. I grew up equating nuclear weapons with bombs – the A-Bomb and the H-Bomb. "Bomb" might as easily be an alternate label for Nuclear Weapon as for Explosive Weapon.
5. Incendiary weapons can also be bombs – notably, the phosphorus bombs that devastated so many cities in WW II.

[APCox]

@swartik

1. The question of where to draw the line concerning what belongs in CCO versus a domain-level ontology is a good one. I think "Explosive Mine" and its subtypes are right on the edge. I would not go into more depth here within CCO than what is proposed. I also understand that some people would draw the line 1 or possibly 2 levels higher. CCO already contains Land Mine so adding a sibling and parent class is not unreasonable. This is something that can be revisited if an appropriate domain ontology is identified to host the terms. In general, I ask the question, "Is this term/entity/concept relevant to multiple sufficiently distinct domains?" If the answer is "yes", then there is reason to represent that type of entity in a mid-level ontology. In this case, militaries are certainly interested in explosive mines, but so are humanitarian organizations. As I said, these terms are right on the edge.
2. The current subtyping under Weapon largely follows the CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear) categorization of weapon types. Explosive Weapon can cut across portions of those categories. I've added a subclass axiom to this term stating that every explosive weapon bears some explosive artifact function. This may be elevated to be an equivalency axiom to better support inferred hierarchies.
3. As you noted, CCO should not go further down the land mine hierarchy. The fact that some "mines" placed on land can be nuclear is one reason to change the label to "Explosive Land Mine". CCO is not the place to represent every type of booby trap, though land mines are probably also considered booby traps.
4. Fair. Thankfully alternative labels need not be unique to a single term. Hence, 'Bomb' can be an alternative label for both 'Explosive Weapon' and 'Nuclear Weapon' if needed.
5. Noted, but whether incendiary weapons are bombs or not is not relevant to the current issue.