Concept hierarchies are easy to represent in topic maps and are fundamental to navigation of information resources. So much for the obvious.
Topic maps standards work and debates over arcane issues don’t prepare us to answer the user question: “Excuse me. What concept hierarchy should I use in my topic map?”
The typical response: “Whatever hierarchy you want. Completely unbounded.” That is about as helpful as a poke with a sharp stick.
You don’t want to give your users a copy of this article, but consider reading Deriving concept hierarchies from text by Sanderson and Croft as an introduction to deriving concept hierarchies from the user’s document collection.
Users (aka, paying customers) will appreciate your assistance in developing a hierarchy for their topic map, as opposed to the “well, that’s your problem” approach.
As the links for the authors show, this isn’t the latest word on deriving concept hierarchies. But, it is well written and is a useful starting place. For my part I want to run this backwards to its sources and forward to the latest techniques. More posts coming on this and other techniques that may be useful for building topic maps.