Domain Ontology for Semantic Mediation in the Data Science Process

Silvia Lucia Borowicc, Solange Alves-Souza

2025

Abstract

The integration of heterogeneous data sources is a persistent challenge in public health. As regards dengue and other arboviral diseases, data collected over many years by various organizations are fragmented across heterogeneous, siloed databases, lacking semantically consistent integration for effective decision-making in health crises. These organizations operate autonomously but must collaborate to integrate data for a unified understanding of the domain of knowledge. However, standardizing infrastructure or unifying systems is often unfeasible. This study proposes the incorporation of semantic mediation into the data science process, introducing an innovative approach for data mapping that preserves the autonomy of data providers while avoiding interference with their existing infrastructure or systems. The goal is to streamline the integration and analysis of distributed, heterogeneous datasets by applying domain ontologies within an iterative data science process. Unlike traditional approaches, which perform data mapping in later stages, our approach advances this step to the definition phase, providing benefits such as early standardization, greater efficiency and error reduction. The methodology includes a collaborative workflow for constructing a modular domain ontology that will support the data mapping from data sources to a global RDF ontology-based data model. This approach fosters expert involvement and accommodates evolving domain knowledge. The results demonstrate that semantic mediation enables the consolidation of semantically enriched data, enhancing the understanding of outcomes in the decision-making process, in a scalable process for integrating public health data in epidemiological monitoring and response contexts.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Borowicc S. and Alves-Souza S. (2025). Domain Ontology for Semantic Mediation in the Data Science Process. In Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 1: ICEIS; ISBN 978-989-758-749-8, SciTePress, pages 234-242. DOI: 10.5220/0013279600003929

in Bibtex Style

@conference{iceis25,
author={Silvia Borowicc and Solange Alves-Souza},
title={Domain Ontology for Semantic Mediation in the Data Science Process},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 1: ICEIS},
year={2025},
pages={234-242},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0013279600003929},
isbn={978-989-758-749-8},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 1: ICEIS
TI - Domain Ontology for Semantic Mediation in the Data Science Process
SN - 978-989-758-749-8
AU - Borowicc S.
AU - Alves-Souza S.
PY - 2025
SP - 234
EP - 242
DO - 10.5220/0013279600003929
PB - SciTePress