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Representing Ecological Niches in a Conceptual Model

  • Conference paper
Conceptual Modeling for Advanced Application Domains (ER 2004)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 3289))

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Abstract

The niche concept has been recognised as a fundamental notion in biological and business systems, amongst others. Existing data models do not have adequate primitives that faithfully represent ecological niches for geographical information systems. This paper shows the limitations of the status quo, manifested in semantic heterogeneity and the meaningless integration of ecological data sets. We advocate an ontological engineering approach to ecological data modelling and propose two new data modelling primitives, Functional object granules [FOGs] and Functional Contexts, which can be used to represent niches. We present our data modelling environment, OntoCrucible, and illustrate our model and methodology in the context of a case study involving African smallholder farmer upliftment.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science Department, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, 7701, South Africa

    Daniel T. Semwayo & Sonia Berman

Authors
  1. Daniel T. Semwayo
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  2. Sonia Berman
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Data Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, (Renmin University of China), MOE, 100872, Beijing, P.R. China

    Shan Wang

  2. University of Kyoto, Japan

    Katsumi Tanaka

  3. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Fudan University, 200433, China

    Shuigeng Zhou

  4. School of Computing, National University of Singapore,  

    Tok-Wang Ling

  5. Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tongji University, 201804, China

    Jihong Guan

  6. Key Laboratory of High Confidence Software Technologies (Peking University), Ministry of Education, China, School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science, Peking University, China

    Dong-qing Yang

  7. Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informatica e Sistemistica, Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, Italy

    Fabio Grandi

  8. School of Computer Science & Informatics, University College Dublinq, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland

    Eleni E. Mangina

  9. College of Information Science and Technology, Drexel University, USA

    Il-Yeol Song

  10. Institute for Applied Informatics, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria

    Heinrich C. Mayr

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© 2004 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Semwayo, D.T., Berman, S. (2004). Representing Ecological Niches in a Conceptual Model. In: Wang, S., et al. Conceptual Modeling for Advanced Application Domains. ER 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3289. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-30466-1_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-30466-1_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-23722-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-30466-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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