Developing an Ontology-Based Cold Chain Logistics Monitoring and Decision System

Nowadays the cold chain logistics for perishable goods is increasingly complex, while most of the research works are focusing on the monitoring of temperature and humidity but seldom on the assessment and decision support for the monitored cold chain quality. In this context, a monitoring and decision system based on wireless sensor networks (WSN) and ontology is proposed in this paper which consists of sensing layer, network layer, and application layer. Ontology, as a shared concept model, can describe the objective world better with its own syntax and provides the general understanding of the specialized knowledge in a domain. Therefore, cold chain quality assessment software based on ontology has been developed; consequently, assessment and diagnosis for cold chain quality can be achieved, which can provide constructive advice and suggestions for its treatment. A demonstration of the system along a rabies vaccine logistics chain is validated in this paper. These results proved that this system presents important advantages such as effective regulation, low power consumption, and accurate ontology-based analysis.