Ontologies for an Improved Communication in Urban Development Projects

The main objective of the COST Transport and Urban Development Action C21 is to increase the knowledge and promote the use of ontologies in the domain of urban development, in the view of facilitating the communications between information systems, stakeholders and urban specialists at a European level. Secondary objectives of the Action are: • producing a taxonomy of ontologies in the urban development field, contrasting existing design methodologies, techniques and production standards; • developing an urban development ontology both in textual and visual (graph) presentation and a visual editor to integrate and update concepts, definition, photos into the ontology (software tool); • developing a set of guidelines for the construction of urban development ontologies, based on practical examples (cases); • analysing the role of ontologies in the daily practice of urban development. The research work has been organized along three working groups, the first one dealing more specifically with methodologies for developing urban development to practical applications of ontologies in the urban development field. straightforward way to define end-users’ needs in terms of urban ontologies at the moment. Technology-driven approaches are not relevant as they would rapidly lead to restrict the research to the sole issue of computer representations while the ambitions of this Action extend far beyond this aspect. Furthermore conceptualizations are often tacit or implicit in the urban development domain and efforts to formalize these conceptualizations are generally viewed as “over-simplifications” by experts that are struggling to defend their scientific and technical legitimacy. It was hence suggested to adopt a “prospective approach” in order to better identify the potential role of ontologies in fostering the exchange and support of urban knowledge. In a design-like perspective, the identification of “end-user needs” and relevant issues that could be addressed by ontologies in the urban domain should hence be considered as a product rather than a starting point of this Action. The main parisons between European urban development cases and the third one dedicated It was soon acknowledged by the COST C21 members that there is no