We aim to establish that there is at least one role for constructionalism in applied ontology by giving the case history of an early example of a case where the foundations of a top-level ontology are constructionally refactored. What we have called ‘taking the constructional turn’. The example is the BORO foundational ontology which has, over the last decade, been taking this turn. The paper starts by providing an evolutionary context for the case history. It then provides a chronological profile of the constructional turn and the radical enrichment it delivered. This clearly establishes the feasibility and benefits of this specific role for constructionalism in applied ontology.

The paper sketches some initial results from an ongoing project to develop an ontology-based digital form for representing uncertain information. We frame this work as a journey from lower to higher levels of digital maturity across a technology divide. The paper first sets a baseline by describing the basic challenges any project dealing with digital uncertainty faces. It then describes how the project is facing them. It shows firstly how an extensional ontology (such as the BORO Foundational Ontology or the Information Exchange Standard) can be extended with a Lewisian counterpart approach to formalizing uncertainty that is adapted to computing. And then it shows how this is expressive enough to handle the challenges.