Common Ontology of Sustainable Development

Abstract

Sustainable development in its various aspects is a multifaceted and contradictory concept, interpreted by multiple sources. This study exposes the need to explore and develop a productive coevolutionary approach to build modular ontological metamodel of sustainable development including a set of interconnected ontologies and instance databases. Based on a review and on an analysis of existing ontologies in this area, a methodology for building common ontology of sustainable development is proposed as a top level of the metamodel. Using terminology from well-established and authoritative sources in the area, as well as the methods, the resources, and the standards of Semantic Web, the methodology contains stages: exploring the SD concepts; controlled vocabulary and thesaurus creating; ontology formalization, verification, querying, and publication. Relationships with the respective domain and other related to sustainable development ontologies are established. In conclusion, the results and the future development of the ontological metamodel are discussed.