Ontology Structure of Elements for Web-Based Natural Disaster Management Systems

Recent natural disasters have brought forth the need for disaster preparedness, planning, and management. Hurricane Katrina demonstrated the usefulness of websites in dealing with a natural disaster. However, little is known about the necessary contents and structures of web-based information management for natural disaster preparation. In this paper, we focus on developing the ontology structure of elements for web-based disaster management systems. We provide a comprehensive review of the existing semi-structured data representation technologies and select the appropriate set for developing and representing the ontology structure. Web elements are identified based on the grounded theory approach using an inventory of 100 non-profit disaster websites and their numerous webpages. The selected technologies are used to organize the ontology structure and the results are coded into a web-based system tool (WB-OS) that makes the ontology structure accessible on the web. Such ontology structure of web elements is utilized to evaluate the quality and completeness of current websites