Issues in Designing Ontology for Waste Management: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Effective knowledge management is important for every domain and for this purpose, ontologies have been used for many years as a prominent conceptual tool. However, there is no systematic review approach that provides clear information on how ontologies have been designed in the WM (Waste Management) domain. This type of review would be useful to assess whether ontologies in WM are being designed according to latest ontology engineering disciplines. We have used our findings in designing, developing and testing an ontology-based waste management system for Kemaman Municipal Council (KMC), Malaysia. We conducted a systematic review of the literature of empirical studies of waste management (WM) ontologies, published in major waste management and ontological engineering journals from 2002 to 2017. This systematic literature review resulted in the identification of few facts. Firstly, most of the researchers did not apply any merging or integrations of sub-domain ontologies. Secondly, only a few researchers used predefined methodologies to design ontology for WM. Finally, ontology applications in this domain are still at an infancy stage, and as such, it would be a good direction at this moment in time, to establish systematic guidelines from a design perspective, for ontology development for WM.