The InfraRisk ontology: enabling semantic interoperability for critical infrastructures at risk from natural hazards

Abstract

Earthquakes, landslides, and other natural hazard events have severe negative socio-economic impacts. Among other consequences, those events can cause damage to infrastructure networks such as roads and railways. Novel methodologies and tools are needed to analyse the potential impacts of extreme natural hazard events and aid in the decision-making process regarding the protection of existing critical road and rail infrastructure as well as the development of new infrastructure. Enabling uniform, integrated, and reliable access to data on historical failures of critical transport infrastructure can help infrastructure managers and scientist from various related areas to better understand, prevent, and mitigate the impact of natural hazards on critical infrastructures. This paper describes the construction of the InfraRisk ontology for representing relevant information about natural hazard events and their impact on infrastructure components. Furthermore, we present a software prototype that visualizes data published using the proposed ontology.