Ontology Based Mapping of HERM

11 pages•Published: November 6, 2025

Markus von der Heyde and Matthias Goebel

Abstract

Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) provides structured methodologies for planning and analyzing complex organizational ecosystems. One such ecosystem is the German educational system, which spans lifelong learning from kindergarten and school to vocational training, higher education, and professional development. Building integrated digital platforms within this system requires a multi-dimensional perspective on organizational capabilities, data, applications, and technologies. In higher education, the Higher Education Reference Models (HERM) serve as a structured repository of a suitable and domain-specific terminology. However, manually aligning real-world educational scenarios with HERM’s about 600 terms is both labor-intensive and potentially inconsistent. This paper presents an automated mapping approach based on a Hybrid Artificial Intelligence (HAI) method, combining Semantic Web technologies, symbolic AI, and NLP-driven extraction. We applied this approach to 50 user scenarios from the prototype project (BIldungsRaum Digital, BIRD) of the German National Education Platform, generating structured mappings between user interactions and HERM’s core frameworks. The results demonstrate a scalable, transparent method for automated ontology-based scenario analysis, offering a foundation for deep-dive analytics in EAM.

Keyphrases: automated semantic alignment, enterprise architecture, explainable ai (xai), higher education reference models (herm), hybrid artificial intelligence (hai), natural language processing (nlp), ontology mapping, semantic web

In: Laurence Desnos, Raimund Vogl, Lazaros Merakos, Carmen Diaz, Janina Mincer-Daszkiewicz and Stuart Mclellan (editors). Proceedings of EUNIS 2025 annual congress in Belfast, vol 107, pages 216-226.

Links:	https://easychair.org/publications/paper/srSPG
	https://doi.org/10.29007/qf5p

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{EUNIS2025:Ontology_Based_Mapping_HERM,
  author    = {Markus von der Heyde and Matthias Goebel},
  title     = {Ontology Based Mapping of HERM},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of EUNIS 2025 annual congress in Belfast},
  editor    = {Laurence Desnos and Raimund Vogl and Lazaros Merakos and Carmen Diaz and Janina Mincer-Daszkiewicz and Stuart Mclellan},
  series    = {EPiC Series in Computing},
  volume    = {107},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2398-7340},
  url       = {/publications/paper/srSPG},
  doi       = {10.29007/qf5p},
  pages     = {216-226},
  year      = {2025}}

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