Ontology-Based Data Observatory for Formal Knowledge Representation of UXO Using Advanced Semantic Web Technologies

Abstract

As landmines and other unexploded ordnances (UXOs) present a great risk to civilians and infrastructure, humanitarian demining is an essential component of any post-conflict reconstruction. This paper introduces the Minefield Observatory, a novel web-based datastore service that semantically integrates diverse data in humanitarian demining to comprehensively and formally describe suspected minefields. Because of the high heterogeneity and isolation of the available minefield datasets, extracting relevant information to determine the optimal course of demining efforts is time-consuming, labor-intensive and requires highly specialized knowledge. Data consolidation and artificial intelligence techniques are used to convert unstructured data sources and store them in an ontology-based knowledge database that can be efficiently accessed through a Semantic Web application serving as the Minefield Observatory user interface. The MINEONT+ ontology was developed to integrate diverse mine scene information obtained through non-technical surveys and remote sensing, such as aerial and hyperspectral satellite imagery, indicators of mine presence and absence, contextual data, terrain analysis information, and battlefield reports. The Minefield Observatory uses the Microdata API to embed this dataset into dynamic HTML5 content, allowing seamless usage in a user-centric web tool. A use-case example was provided demonstrating the viability of the proposed approach.