Towards an ontology for the description of learning resources on disaster risk reduction

Abstract

One of the priority areas of the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015 for disaster risk reduction is the use of knowledge, innovation and education to build a culture of safety and resilience at all levels. The collection, compilation and dissemination of relevant information and knowledge on disaster risks and to cope with such risks are critical to inform and educate individuals as a basis on which to establish a culture of disaster prevention and resilience. However, in many cases these resources are scattered over multiple repositories in different places and lack a common, shared framework for their description to improve the search and retrieval process. This research intends to contribute to the Hyogo Framework of Action by building a domain ontology on disaster risk reduction for education. The goal is to provide semantically enriched descriptions of learning resources for the use in training curricula and learning programs. The ontology builds on the terminology of disaster risk reduction, published by the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN/ISDR) in 2009. It extends the terminology by reusing other relevant ontology sources and incorporating the knowledge of subject matter experts. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.