An ontological approach to enhancing information sharing in disaster response

Abstract

Managing complex disaster situations is a challenging task because of the large number of actors involved and the critical nature of the events themselves. In particular, the different terminologies and technical vocabularies that are being exchanged among Emergency Responders (ERs) may lead to misunderstandings. Maintaining a shared semantics for exchanged data is a major challenge. To help to overcome these issues, we elaborate a modular suite of ontologies called POLARISCO that formalizes the complex knowledge of the ERs. Such a shared vocabulary resolves inconsistent terminologies and promotes semantic interoperability among ERs. In this work, we discuss developing POLARISCO as an extension of Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) and the Common Core Ontologies (CCO). We conclude by presenting a real use-case to check the efficiency and applicability of the proposed ontology.