Semantic modeling of climate change impacts on the implementation of the U.N. sustainable development goals related to poverty, hunger, water, and energy

Abstract

Extreme climate events disrupt the stable, established interactions among the components of the socio-economic and environmental systems. The disruptions affect reaching the targets defined by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 1, 2, 6, and 7 that aim at ending poverty and hunger and ensuring access to clean water, sanitation, and affordable energy. We have semantically modeled the interactions of climate change events with the components of the food, water, and energy systems in the ‘Sustainable Development and Climate’ (SDC) ontology. The domain ontology formalizes the impacts of the events on the implementations of the actions, plans, strategies, and policies that are described by the targets of the selected goals. To ensure interoperability with other ontologies, our ontology extends classes and properties of the top-level Basic Formal Ontology, mid-level Common Core Ontologies, and other upper-level ontologies. The publicly-available SDC ontology facilitates automated discovery, management, integration, and reasoning of the indicator data of the selected goals by reusing the extensive resources of the Common Core Ontologies for data and information modeling. The SDC knowledge model allows government agencies to identify the consequences of their planned actions on people, resources, and the environment in their country, and assess the impacts of the current climate change on the successful implementation of the requirements for goals 1, 2, 6, and 7.

Appendix A: Background on the use of imported top- and mid-level ontologies

This section gives an overview of the top- and mid-level ontologies which are used in the SDC ontology, and establishes a basis for semantic modeling in general. It describes the class and property terminology that are needed to better understand the semantic jargons and discussions througout the paper. All examples given in this section are from the SDC ontology.

BFO divides reality into two disjoint categories: BFO: continuant and BFO: occurrent. Disjoint means that the intersection of these two classes is empty (i.e., is ‘nothing’), and entails that no individual can be both continuant and occurrent at the same time. Continuants are entities that persist or endure through time by maintaining their identity (e.g., Small Island Developing Country, Food Material, Ecosystem). They have parts that are also continuant. Occurrents, on the other hand, are entities that unfold in time (e.g., processes such as Flooding, Export, Use of Service, Adaptation), or they are the zero- or one-dimensional temporal regions (e.g., time of day, duration, season), or spatio-temporal regions that such entities occupy (Oxygen Minimum zone in the Upper Ocean Waters). In contrast to continuants, occurrents can only have temporal parts (e.g., the early or late part of flooding).

BFO further divides the continuant class into dependent and independent categories. An ‘independent continuant’ is an entity that does not depend on any other entity for its existence. The SDC material objects such as Fossil Fuel, Hazardous Material, Greenhouse Gas, Food, Coral Reef, and Aerosol are examples of the BFO: independent continuant. Independent continuants also include immaterial entities such as Sea Level (a two-dimensional continuant fiat boundary) and sites such as a Least-developed Country, Coastal Area, Equatorial Pacific Ocean, and Oxygen Minimum Zone.

There are two types of dependent continuants: BFO: ‘specifically dependent continuant’ and BFO: ‘generically dependent continuant’. The former class depends on the BFO: ‘independent continuant’ for its existence, and has two subclasses: BFO: quality and BFO: ‘realizable entity’. A BFO: quality is a property that inheres in an independent continuant (the bearer of the quality) and does not require any process to occur for it to be realized. For example, instances of Ice Core bear several qualities (attributes) such as Diameter, Mass, Length, and Sample Location that specifically depend on the Ice Core. Other examples include the Air Temperature and Albedo (radiation reflective quality) of Ice sheet, the Color of Coral Reef, Soil Moisture, Glacial Mass, and Land Tenure Type.

Compared to qualities which inhere in an independent entity, a BFO: realizable entity must be realized through a process in order to appear. Realizable entities include BFO: role and BFO: disposition and its BFO: function subclass. Roles are optional, meaning that the independent continuant that bears the role does not require that role, and its nature does not change if it loses the role. SDC examples of BFO: role include: Disaster Role and Hazard Role (for Flood), and Resource Role and Supply Role (for food, energy and Water). A Specimen of Ice or Specimen of Soil is a BFO: material entity (and independent continuant) that bears the Specimen Role at a specific time. The CO₂ gas is a material entity that bears the Greenhouse Gas Role. The Specimen Role for Ice is realized when a scientist takes a specimen, and the Greenhouse Gas Role for CO₂ is realized when the gas is released to the atmosphere through Fossil Fuel Emission, Volcanic Eruption, or other processes.

In contrast to roles that are not inherent in their bearers, dispositions depend on their bearer’s physical make-up. Examples of disposition in the SDC ontology include Decay of a Radioactive Isotope, Risk to Food Security of a Contaminant, Water Scarcity created by Global Warming, Energy Security provided by Increased Energy Production, Food Production Sustainability through Improved Food Production Management, and Energy Price Volatility as a result of Reduced Energy Production or Increased Energy Use. A function is a disposition that a natural or artifact bearer possesses, because of its physical make-up or by design, to realize a specific process. SDC examples include Ecosystem Function, Transporting Function of a Stream, Evapotranspiration Function of Plant, Fuel Function of Oil or Coal, and Cooling Function of Water.

Compared to the specifically dependent continuants that inhere in one independent continuant, the generically dependent continuants do not depend on only one bearer. For example, the data extracted from an Ice Core in a specific project, a Satellite Image taken from the Extent of Sea Ice in 2022, a plot of the Concentration of CO₂ in the Atmosphere in a specific year, or an annual graph of Temperature vs. Depth in the Atlantic Ocean, can be saved in files with different formats that can be displayed on a computer screen or printed on different kinds of paper. For each of these cases, the File, Computer Screen, or the Paper is the different carrier of the same information.

The BFO: occurrent class is subsumed by BFO: process, CCO: Change, CCO: Natural Process, BFO: process profile, and CCO: Stasis that are extensively used in the SDC ontology. The CCO: Change class allows modeling changes in the climate system such as in the temperature, frequency and severity of extreme events, and in other systems such as energy and food production.