Building IoT based applications for Smart Cities: How can ontology catalogs help?

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Information Science
• Urban Planning

Background:

• The Internet of Things (IoT) is crucial for Smart City applications, requiring effective data interoperability.
• Existing ontology catalogs need significant adaptation for IoT and smart city contexts.
• Semantic approaches using ontologies can bridge data gaps in smart city initiatives.

Purpose of the Study:

• To demonstrate how ontology catalogs can be more effectively utilized for designing and developing smart city applications.
• To present a methodology for enriching ontology catalogs to support semantic interoperability and reuse.
• To evaluate the effectiveness and quality of ontology catalogs for IoT and smart city domains.

Main Methods:

• Considered four key ontology catalogs: READY4SmartCities, Linked Open Vocabularies (LOV), OpenSensingCity (OSC), and LOV4IoT.
• Developed and applied a generic methodology to enrich ontology catalogs, demonstrated by OSC and LOV4IoT.
• Conducted a survey-based evaluation of the LOV4IoT catalog by researchers and developers.
• Evaluated the quality of IoT and smart city ontologies to enhance catalog quality.

Main Results:

• The proposed methodology effectively enriches ontology catalogs, enhancing semantic interoperability for smart city applications.
• The evaluation confirmed the usefulness of ontology catalogs, encouraging their continued development and maintenance.
• Quality assessments of ontologies provided insights for improving catalog quality and best practices.
• Lessons learned and software tools were shared to aid ontology improvements.

Conclusions:

• Effective enrichment of ontology catalogs is key to unlocking their potential for smart city development.
• The presented methodology offers a generic solution for improving semantic interoperability across domains.
• Ongoing evaluation and adherence to best practices are vital for maintaining high-quality ontology resources.
• The findings facilitate better design and reuse of ontology-based smart city applications.