ORFFM: An Ontology-Based Semantic Model of River Flow and Flood Mitigation

The provision of the heterogeneous information acquisition and managing of emerging technologies with IoT, cloud-based storage, and improved communication services have filled the data scarcity gap on one hand but raised the challenge to extract, process, and comprehend relevant data of complex integrated multiple domains involving a large number of participants with diverse spatial terminologies and methodologies. To resolve this challenge various big data and natural language processing techniques were applied. Another widely used approach to resolve the challenges of heterogeneity, interoperability, and complexity of integrated domain is ontology-based semantic modeling. We proposed Ontology for River Flow and Flood Mitigation (ORFFM) for semantic knowledge formalization with semantic understandability of irrigation, disaster management, related administrative and agricultural domain concepts by humans and machines. The semantic modeling of distributed river flow network and associated flood disaster mitigation for effective coordination, collaborative response activities leads to reduce the impact of a disaster and improve information representation among stakeholders. Furthermore, semantic formalization and inference are supported by explicitly annotated information. We populated ORFFM with Pakistan’s Indus river system, flood disaster management, and Sindh administrative authorities to develop a knowledgebase for knowledge sharing and representation. The formal semantically enriched knowledgebase would contribute towards streamflow optimization and flood mitigation through effective coordination and common conceptualization during disaster management phases. The semantic model of irrigation networks would also be useful for academic purposes to acquire domain knowledge for new entrants in the irrigation and disaster management field.