An Ontology-Based Framework for Publishing and Exploiting Linked Open Data: A Use Case on Water Resources Management

Nowadays, the increasing demand of water for electricity production, agricultural and industrial uses are directly affecting the reduction of available quality water for human consumption in the world. Efficient and sustainable maintenance of water reservoirs and supply networks implies a holistic strategy that takes into account, as much as possible, information from the stages of water usage. Next-generation decision-making software tools, for supporting water management, require the integration of multiple and heterogeneous data sources of different knowledge domains. In this regard, Linked Data and Semantic Web technologies enable harmonization of different data sources, as well as the efficient querying for feeding upper-level Business Intelligence processes. This work investigates the design, implementation and usage of a semantic approach driven by ontology to capture, store, integrate and exploit real-world data concerning water supply networks management. As a main contribution, the proposal helps with obtaining semantically enriched linked data, enhancing the analysis of water network performance. For validation purposes, in the use case, a series of data sources from different measures have been considered, in the scope of an actual water management system of the Mediterranean region of Valencia (Spain), throughout several years of activity. The obtained experience shows the benefits of using the proposed approach to identify possible correlations between the measures such as the supplied water, the water leaks or the population.