Toward a Practical Ontology for Socioeconomic Metabolism

摘要: Summary The complexity of data and methods in industrial ecology (IE) keeps growing, the demand for comprehensive interdisciplinary assessments increases. To keep up with this development, field needs a infrastructure that allows researchers to annotate, store, retrieve, combine, exchange at low cost, without loss information, across disciplines model frameworks. A consensus-building debate about how describe common object study, socioeconomic metabolism (SEM), is necessary development practical structures databases. We review definitions basic concepts SEM IE related fields such as integrated assessment modeling. find many are not compatible, implicit, sometimes lacking. resolve conflicts inconsistencies within current definitions, we propose hierarchical system terms ontology, describing objects, their properties, events SEM. typology properties use sets group objects into hierarchical, mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive (H-MECE) classification. This grouping leads general definition stocks. show MECE representation necessarily requires two complementary concepts: processes flows, which based on sets. Using these structure any can be formulated directed graph. guidelines semantic annotation database design, help turn vision powerful research reality.