Semantic framework for interdependent infrastructure resilience decision support

Abstract

The increasing need for interdependent infrastructure systems to withstand natural disasters has called for the co-creation of resilience decisions to minimize the impact on society. However, issues related to information integration across different infrastructure systems hamper decision making from a system-to-systems perspective. To resolve this problem, the Semantic Web technologies are presented in this paper to serve four functions: (i) linking cross domains through ontology development to represent different domain knowledge; (ii) integrating multiple-source heterogeneous data by a common data format; (iii) retrieving useful information using semantic query language; and (iv) deriving machine automatic logical reasoning by rule languages and logic engines to provide informed resilience decision making support. The proposed framework is tested by a case scenario involving intertwined drainage-transport-building systems under the influence of urban flooding. The result indicates that the framework effectively facilitates information integration between diverse infrastructure systems and helps decision-makers by providing resilience decision-making support.