icity-urbansystem
iCity Urban System Ontology
http://ontology.eil.utoronto.ca/icity/UrbanSystem/
Megan Katsumi
1.1
Version 1.1, currently in development based on feedback: additional requirements and identified issues.
See previous version and accompanying report (iCity v1).
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Given that all of the projects within iCity are situated in the urban domain, and therefore it is not surprising to find many common concepts between them. It stands to reason that some integration between the different applications should be possible. For example, if data is collected about the population, it should be usable by ILUTE and other simulations, but also by the projects developing analysis tools, such as the smart parking application. Unfortunately, there is also ambiguity in how different concepts are used, and in some cases the same concept may be defined differently in different applications. This provides a challenge not only for integration of the iCity applications, but for shareability of results: if the knowledge generated by iCity is not defined sufficiently, it will be difficult for any other researchers to understand and leverage it.
The iCity ontology provides a common set of terms with which data can be stored and accessed. The ontology will resolve any ambiguities and disagreements between terms by defining a common set of concepts that completely captures the domain, with agreed-upon definitions. In the case that two applications attribute a different meaning to the same term, the result will be two distinct terms with distinct, precisely defined meanings. In this way we can recognize these differences and clearly identify the relationships between different concepts. The ontology will be used to organize and describe data within the iCity project. It may also be used as means of publishing or sharing data with the research community.
The resulting artifact, often referred to as the knowledge base will take the form of a triple-store(s) , created by mapping data from the iCity applications to the agreed-upon terminology defined in the iCity ontology. Beyond this, the precise and formal nature of the ontology will support the use of services such as inference and data validation. Based on the definitions, we may be able to infer new information that was not originally part of the knowledge base. Data validation is supported as a result of the consistency-checking mechanism. We also hope that identification of relationships may serve to uncover synergies between the projects, by illustrating how data from one project may serve to inform the work of another.
In the urban system, we recognize the following key concepts that must be defined:
Person, Organization, Household, Building, Parking, Vehicle, Transportation Networks, Transit, Land Use, Travel.
The semantics of each of these concepts will be defined by a generic ontology. These generic ontologies will then be used in the iCity ontology to define the urban system and its behaviour; its population, land use, transportation infrastructure, and the travel that occurs within it. This representation may then be extended to capture the individual iCity applications so that they may be integrated with one another and sufficiently well-defined so as to be shareable and reproducible with the research community. A Foundational Ontology will be also required in order to define the core concepts that apply across the transportation domain.
Developed as part of the overall iCity ontology effort, the iCity-UrbanSystem ontology is designed to capture concepts related to the urban system.
Changes from previous version:
-imported revised ontologies of activity (iCity-Activity) and change (iCity-Change).
-Trip subclass of Activity (no longer ActivityOccurrence)
-Trip associatedWith some Activity
Copyright @ 2016 Megan Katsumi, iCity Research Group
November 29, 2016
Mark Fox
Added for organizational purposes, to identify all properties defined in the Urban System ontology.
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A Cargo is some Thing that is not a Person and is occupying a Vehicle during transit.
An occupant is a Person who is occupying a Vehicle during transit.
An Occupant may be a Driver or a Passenger
An Occupation is performed by some Person.
An Occupation has a type (e.g. sales, skilled trades)
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A Schedule is a plan for some Activity to occur at/over some point in time.
Added for organizational purposes, to identify all classes defined in the Urban System ontology.
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A Vehicle Block is a schedule assigned to some Vehicle for a given time period.
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