Ontology development for drought management Information

The paper aims at integrating the data on drought management for the development of ontology-based semantic search to support the decision makers at various stages of a disaster. Ontology development comprises two processes: (1) knowledge acquisition and ontology modelling and (2) construction of ontology. In both processes, knowledge domain and ontology on drought management were collected, captured, revised and evaluated by the experts in the field of environmental engineering, water resources engineering, GIS and ontology development. The outcome of this research is the hybrid ontology for drought management information which comprised three types of ontologies: (1) river basin ontology, (2) statistics ontology and (3) task ontology. Approximately 154 concepts of drought management have been defined and classified. The ontology was constructed by using Hozo Ontology Editor. This developed ontology will be useful for ontology-based semantic search and knowledge visualisation system, which will provide extensive capabilities for accessibility and decision support system. Copyright © 2014 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.