A Domain Ontology on Cascading Effects in Critical Infrastructures based on a Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Critical infrastructures (CIs) are crucial assets for society and the economy, as they are responsible for providing essential goods and services. The interdependence between CIs makes them vulnerable to large-scale cascading disasters that can significantly impact society. Cascading effects in CIs are thus a worthy area of study and research, with considerable interests in terms of resilience and risk management. In this paper, a domain ontology of cascading effects was developed using the systematic approach to ontology construction (SaBiO) methodology, which provides guidelines for developing domain ontologies. A systematic literature review (SLR) was used to obtain information, an essential part of the first phase of SaBiO. This research identified the main concepts in the domain of cascading effects. Additionally, the relations between the concepts were also identified, which were formalised in the proposed ontology. Besides the proposed ontology, a small analysis of the domain of the cascading effects was also performed. The ontology proposed was also validated using real cases of cascading effects events from an organisation.