Ontology Design Patterns for Representing Knowledge in the Disaster Risk Domain

The success of disaster risk management efforts depend on the ability of multiple stakeholders to share disaster-related information. Semantic integration of such heterogeneous information requires ontology building. The top-down-approach of ontology building has several disadvantages to knowledge representation. To support the process of ontology engineering, a bottom-up-approach that utilizes modular Ontology Design Patterns (ODPs) with weak dependencies can be used to overcome the disadvantages of the top-down-approach. To bridge the availability gap of patterns for representing disaster knowledge, the study identifies existing and emerging patterns that can be used to organize disaster knowledge. Based on the eXtreme Design (XD) methodology and key informant interviews, Competency Questions (CQs) were listed from domain stakeholders. Consequently, corresponding patterns covering the CQs were also identified and developed. This study identifies emerging patterns such as Event Type ODP for representing risky and hazardous events. The QualityCausation ODP is also identified for representing the causality nature of vulnerability. The resulting patterns are aligned to the DOLCE1 foundational ontology and can be used to organize data in the disaster domain.