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2019
Conference Paper
Titel
Employing Geospatial Semantics and Semantic WebTechnologies in Natural Disaster Management
Abstract
In a natural disaster situation, it is crucial to orchestrate an efficient response, which prevents, or - at least - mitigates damages. Based on the assumption, that a well-informed decision maker can make the best decisions, s/he should have access to all available information. Thus, employing both internal and external data empowers decision makers. Since natural disasters are usually limited to a certain (previously unknown) area, it is of high importance to get to know about the local context of a disaster. Critical infrastructure, such as hospitals, energy supply, buildings with vulnerable beings (kindergarten, elder care, etc.) play an important role in crisis management. Nevertheless, a decision maker might not be aware of all of these places; yet, knowledge about these can often be found in external, public knowledge bases, such as Wikidata. Semantic Web Technology offers tools to integrate data from diverse data stores, offering a giant source of information. To improve situational awareness, this information should be tapped. By employing geospatial semantic features of knowledge bases, it is possible to integrate several data stores and only find information, that is valid within the range of a disaster and therefore of interest to a decision maker. The poster presents the integration of Wikidata as an external knowledge-base into a Decision-Support-System by using federated queries. Through employing geospatial semantic features, only relevant information is retrieved.