An ontology is a formal description of classes, which describe concepts in a domain. Classes are the focus of most ontologies, which then leads to subclasses, etc. Making determinations about what goes into a class, what dictates a subclass, and attributes that aren’t unique enough to break a group are all part of building an ontology. An ontology is a structured set of terms and logical relations that represents not only the data, but what the data is about. DATAVERSITY brought this interesting news to us in their article, “Ontology Plays a Part in United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Project.”
In the United Nations Environment Program’s (UNEP) Sustainable Development Goals Project, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) are a set of 17 goals and 169 targets to be achieved by 2030 to promote human prosperity worldwide while protecting the environment and addressing climate change. Each goal’s targets will have one or more indicators, which are linked to specific data points that United Nations statisticians and the general public can monitor to assess progress on that issue.
For the project to come together in a way that ensures data quality and transparency as well as setting the stage to enable more accurate analysis and measurement of progress, the Sustainable Development Goals Interface Ontology (SDGIO) is being developed to represent the various facets of the SDGs.
Of course we already know that ontologies and other controlled vocabularies help ensure consistency and standardization. Access Innovations is one of a very small number of companies able to help its clients generate ANSI/ISO/W3C-compliant taxonomies to make their information findable.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
