Infrastructure and city ontologies

Abstract

The creation and use of ontologies has become increasingly relevant for complex systems in recent years. This is because of the growing number of use cases that rely on real world integration of disparate systems; the need for semantic congruence across boundaries; and, the expectations of users for conceptual clarity within evolving domains or systems of interest. These needs are evident in most spheres of research involving complex systems but they are especially apparent in infrastructure and cities where traditionally siloed and sectoral approaches have dominated undermining the potential for integration to solve societal challenges such as net zero; resilience to climate change; equity and affordability. This paper reports on findings of a literature review on infrastructure and cities ontologies and puts forward some hypotheses inferred from the literature findings. The hypotheses are discussed with reference to literature and provide avenues for further research on (1) belief systems that underpin non top level ontologies and the potential for interference from them; (2) the need for a small number of top level ontologies and translation mechanisms between them; (3) clarity on the role of standards and information systems upon the adaptability and quality of datasets using ontologies. We also identify a gap in the extent ontologies can support more complex automated coupling and data transformation when dealing with different scales.