PERSWADE-CORE: A Core Ontology for Communicating Socio-Environmental and Sustainability Science

Salvatore Flavio Pileggi,Alexey Voinov

doi:10.1109/access.2019.2939214

Salvatore Flavio Pileggi, Alexey Voinov

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2019.2939214

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Abstract

The Centre on Persuasive Systems for Wise Adaptive Living (PERSWADE) aims at developing and applying persuasive technologies and system science for social innovation that can help humanity to move toward sustainable, wise, adaptive living. The PERSWADE collaborative knowledge base needs to be designed with the intent to bring together, enrich and logically relate heterogeneous content, such as datasets, scientific literature and any kind of multimedia and social content, to support a participatory approach and help to translate science into action. PERSWADE-CORE, the foundation ontology described in this paper, plays a critical role in this by providing the backbone semantic infrastructure to enable collaboration through efficient data and knowledge integration, sharing and reuse. It also serves the purpose of clarifying and explaining the goals, functions and operations of the Centre. Because of its purpose, PERSWADE-CORE has been designed to be easy-to-use and easy-to-adapt by allowing generic, as well as more specific, relationships among concepts. The PERSWADE approach prioritizes interoperability and relies on the Semantic Web infrastructure. Furthermore, its design is intrinsically aimed at collaborative environments in which ontologies are expected to evolve as a response to users' activity.

Highlights

The goal of the Centre on Persuasive Systems for Wise Adaptive Living (PERSWADE)1 is ‘‘to develop and apply persuasive technologies and system science for social innovation that can help humanity to move toward sustainable, wise, adaptive living1’’
PERSWADE-CORE, the ontology described in this paper, plays a critical and central role in the previously mentioned system by providing the backbone semantic infrastructure
The ontology presented in this paper is the result of two convergent processes following a top-down and a bottom-up approach respectively. The former process reflects the preliminary activity that has been carried out mostly by the research centre director, who shaped and structured the centre according to its intent and extent. This phase played a critical role in terms of ontology design as we needed to clearly identify the peculiarities of the centre and define a dynamic vocabulary structure

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The goal of the Centre on Persuasive Systems for Wise Adaptive Living (PERSWADE) is ‘‘to develop and apply persuasive technologies and system science for social innovation that can help humanity to move toward sustainable, wise, adaptive living1’’. PERSWADE-CORE, the ontology described in this paper, plays a critical and central role in the previously mentioned system by providing the backbone semantic infrastructure This ontology can be applied to a generic research centre, its design reflects the characteristics of PERSWADE where a trans-disciplinary approach meets the intrinsic need to interact, communicate and communicate with external stakeholders within a continuously evolving domain. The former process reflects the preliminary activity that has been carried out mostly by the research centre director, who shaped and structured the centre according to its intent and extent This phase played a critical role in terms of ontology design as we needed to clearly identify the peculiarities of the centre and define a dynamic vocabulary structure .

ONTOLOGY OVERVIEW

VALIDATION AND EXAMPLES OF USE