Ontology-based Reasoning for Critical Incidents
in Public Events
Dimos Ntioudis, Angelos Chatzimichail, Georgios Meditskos, Stefanos
Vrochidis, and Ioannis Kompatsiaris
Information Technologies Institute, Centre for Research and Technology - Hellas,
{ntdimos,angechat,gmeditsk,stefanos,ikom}@iti.gr
Abstract. One of the most critical challenges during critical incidents
in big public events are the absence of real time information as well as
the lack of filtering this information to meaningful knowledge in order to
provide crisis decision support. Towards addressing those challenges, se-
mantic technologies can provide a semantically data representation of the
critical events, along with superior capabilities in reasoning to support
the decision making. In this paper we describe the semantic reasoning
framework of the DESMOS project, that could constitute the backbone
of the decision support systems in public events.
Keywords: Ontologies · Reasoning · Security · Internet of Things.
1 Introduction
The era of the Internet of Things (IoT) is upon us, with a huge number of
IoT devices already in everybody lives. A large number of applications in Smart
Cities, E-health, Security and other domains are exploiting the IoT technologies,
like sensors, smartphones and actuators. One of the most significant domains of
IoT is the safety and security, which IoT is used to save lives and mitigate
dangerous incidents.
However, several challenges arose with the existing IoT technologies regarding
the interoperability of those different IoT technologies since their data is based
on proprietary formats and they do not use common formats or a vocabulary to
describe the interoperable data. The basic structure of the IoT is the Machine-to-
Machine (M2M) communication. For example, the measurements of sensors are
required to be distributed and analyzed by other devices or sensors and not being
human readable without any kind of processing. Therefore, those measurements
should be understandable from one machine to another.
In this paper, we describe the methodology and procedure that underpin the
development of reasoning rules in the DESMOS ontology. DESMOS is a novel
framework for the intelligent interconnection of smart infrastructures, mobile and
wearable devices and apps for the provision of a secure environment for citizens,
especially for visitors and tourists. The platform aims to promote the collab-
oration between people and devices for protecting tourists, supporting timely
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2 D. Ntioudis et al.
reporting of incidents, adaptation of the interconnected environments in case of
emergency, and the provision of assistance by empowering local authorities and
volunteers. The main research contribution of the paper is the combination of
the data processing modules (localization) with the semantic knowledge under
a common reasoning framework.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we describe related
work. In Section 3 the Desmos framework and the main technical components.
Section 4 describes the Data Integration. rule-based semantic reasoning. In Sec-
tion 5 the Rule-based Reasoning is presented. Finally, Section 6 concludes the
paper.
2 Related Work
The Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming more and more popular and its appli-
cations are facing an enormous proliferation resulting in a new digital ecosystem.
IoT is based on a wide range of different heterogeneous technologies and devices,
there is not a uniform vocabulary for representation and processing of data. This
has led to a large number of incompatible IoT platforms. Through this way, it is
very difficult for data scientists to extract knowledge from the enormous number
of data producing every second through the IoT applications.
Semantic web technologies tries to overcome such challenges. Semantic web
leverage web standards and semantic technologies to interconnect all types of
devices by transforming low-level sensor data into high-level knowledge that is
comprehensible to humans and machines. Semantic modelling produces a definite
description of the data meaning in a structured way by combining application
knowledge and context-relevant information with sensor data. The ontology -
based development, which is a domain of semantic modelling, of IoT frameworks
can lead to universal IoT solutions multiplying the benefits of IoT.
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) suggested an ontology, the Seman-
tic Sensor Network (SSN), as a human and machine-readable specification that
covers networks of sensors and their deployment on top of sensors and observa-
tions [1]. The target of this project was to face the problems that arose from
the heterogeneous data from different devices. However, there are limited on-
tologies that annotate the time–space correlation between the sensor data and
the resources. In order to overcome that, the authors in [2] deployed the Sensor,
Observation, Sample, and Actuator (SOSA) ontology providing a formal but
lightweight general-purpose specification for modelling the interaction between
the entities involved in the acts of observation, actuation, and sampling.
One of the most important ontologies for event annotation is Event [3]. This
ontology is centered around the notion of event, with cognitive agents classify ar-
bitrary time/space regions. The agent class was derived from the FOAF (Friend
of a Friend) ontology, a core ontology for the social relationships [4]. In [5]
presented an ontology for situation awareness (SAW). These ontologies anno-
tated events with general situations and could be expanded with supplementary
ontologies. In [6], researchers developed a platform to assist citizens in report-
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Ontology-based Reasoning for Critical Incidents in Public Events 3
ing security threats together with their severity and location. The information
about the threats were stored in a knowledge base of the system that allowed
for lightweight reasoning with the gathered facts.
There are many research studies for semantic reasoning on critical event
response and management. In [7], developed a system based on semantic tech-
nologies for monitoring social media for earthquake reports and weather alerts,
and for notifying the public in case of an emergency. Also, in [8], researchers
presented a novel approach to emergency response applications integrating a
formal semantic domain model into an event-based decision support system,
which supports reasoning on this model. A semantic web-based disaster trail
management ontology that covered all vital facets of disasters like disaster type,
disaster location, disaster time and so forth is presented in [9]. The ontology was
assessed efficaciously via competency questions, externally by the domain ex-
perts and internally with the help of SPARQL queries. Finally, in [10] Semantic
Web Technologies applied for Decision Support in Climate-Related Crisis Man-
agement, supporting crisis management systems in the domain of situational
awareness.
3 DESMOS Framework
In this section we are presenting the framework for encoding, aggregating and se-
mantically analysing information relevant to the DESMOS application domain.
The framework is presented in Figure 1. It consists of a) a Communication
Layer that allows the interactions between the system components, b) an Ontol-
ogy, that is used for semantically representing notions pertinent to the project,
c) a Knowledge Base Repository (KBR) that hosts the domain ontology, d) a
Knowledge Base Service that acts as the main interface to the ontology, re-
sponsible for populating the ontology with incoming data as well as performing
rule-based reasoning over the knowledge base, e) Mobile Apps, Wearable Devices
and Sensors that feed the system with real-time data and finally f) a Localiza-
tion Module that retrieves the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) values
of the wearable devices from the KBR in order to calculate the distance based
on data analysis algorithms.
3.1 Use Cases and User Requirements
The basis for the development of an intelligent interconnected framework for
public security and protection are the needs and requirements of the domain
experts. The purpose of the requirements collection is to understand the needs of
the users and the problems they try to solve. A common methodology for defining
the use cases and requirements has been used, starting from the identification of
the most common security and protection incidents in the pilot location, the ways
of dealing with them up to now, and the difficulties encountered in managing
them.
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4 D. Ntioudis et al.
KNOWLEDGE BASE REPOSITORY
Mobile
Apps Wearables Locati on
GraphDB
SPARQL RDF4J
COMMUNICATION LAYER
KNOWLEDGE BASE SERVICE
RSSI ANALYSIS S ERVICE
Knowledge Base
Population Distance
Localization
Module
Events Crawler RSSI
Fig. 1. DESMOS framework.
Table 1. Use Cases.
UC# Use Case Name Use Case Description
UC 1 MylosKarpa & City It refers to CPR-certified users and chronic patients and
Karpa in particular people suffering from a heart disease.
UC 2 MylosKidFinder It refers to families with children aged 3 years to 10 who
visit the pilot location and there is a possibility that gets
lost in the crowd.
The use cases show in Table 1 were identified and studied by running several
focus group sessions between stakeholders concerned with integrated risk man-
agement (municipal authorities, volunteers etc.) focusing on their needs. In ad-
dition, requirements were identified and prioritized through interview questions
and focus group sessions between domain experts, end-users, lawyers and soft-
ware engineers. Table 2 contains an indicative subset of the user requirements.
These user requirements are catalogued as [UR xzz ], where x is the identifier of
the use case scenario in which the requirement originated (see Table 1), and zz
is the serial number of the requirement.
4 Data Integration
The Knowledge Base Service (KBS) in Figure 1 is a central component of the
system architecture since it is the main interface to the DESMOS ontology also
referred to as the Knowledge Base (KB). The ontology is the knowledge represen-
tation model for semantically representing notions pertinent to the project: (a)
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Ontology-based Reasoning for Critical Incidents in Public Events 5
Table 2. Subset of the User Requirements.
UR# User Requirement Name Requirement Description
UR 102 Locate chronic patients Display to volunteers and CPR-certified personnel
(i.e. through their mobile phones) the location of
chronic patients and in particular people suffering
from a heart disease through their mobile phones
when requested.
UR 103 Activate closest AED Detect and activate the beacon of the AED that
beacon is closest to the respective health emergency situa-
tion.
UR 204 Locate lost children Display to volunteers (i.e. through their mobile
phones) the location of a lost children once they are
declared as such from their parents or guardians.
location of the personnel, (b) location of automated external defibrillators (AED)
(c) the RSSI observations made by mobile devices or fixed nodes (i.e. hubs) both
listening for broadcasted addresses from Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices
d) the results of the RSSI analysis service (i.e. Localization module), e) visitor
alert requests and f) personnel assignments to critical incidents.
Volunteer
Notification
Trigger Visitor
Hub subclassOf
Beacon Notification
Human subclassOf
takesAction
subclassOf Agent Category
Action category
Coordinates subclassOf
owns Point
hasRole
coordinates requires subclassOf
location
Loss
Location Health
Device Role Event
Sensor Issue subclassOf
contains subclassOf triggers Missing
subclassOf
subclassOf
Person
Sensor Volunteer
subclassOf
Visitor Data
Is result of
contains
Transmitt
BLE
er
rssi mac Observation DESMOS GEO
RSSI MAC SSN/SOSA FOAF
Fig. 2. Abstract representation of existing ontologies with the DESMOS ontology.
The KB is hosted by GraphDB1 that acts as the Knowledge Base Repository.
A part of the developed ontology is depicted in Figure 2. For the development of
the ontology existing ontologies like SSN, SOSA, Geo (i.e. WGS84) and FOAF
1
https://www.ontotext.com/products/graphdb/
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6 D. Ntioudis et al.
have been reused. In addition, KBS features subscribe/publish capabilities to a
dedicated communication bus (MSB) allowing interactions of the KB with other
system components. In a sense, KBS accepts input from other components and
semantically integrates it into the ontology. It also handles the output of the
semantic reasoning process running on top of the KB and forwards the inferred,
high-level knowledge back to other interested system components.
As shown in Figure 1, KBS consists of two sub-components, namely the
Knowledge Base Population (KBP) component, responsible for integrating data
into the KB, and the Events Crawler that is activated as soon as an event
is triggered. The interactions of the KBS with the KBR is achieved through
SPARQL queries or by using the RDF4J2 library tools.
More specifically, the communication layer allows the exchange of messages
in JSON format. These messages are analyzed by the KBS and are semanti-
cally integrated into the appropriate classes considering the domain ontology.
The ontology itself as well as the data collected from the various system com-
ponents (e.g. sensors, mobile apps etc.) will be stored in the KB and the KBP
component is responsible for the data manipulation. Some indicative examples
of representing notions of the domain are given below (i.e. in RDF Triples). The
first example depicts the representation of a Volunteer along with his location
consisting of the Volunteer’s latest coordinates (i.e. latitude and longitude).
Listing 1.1. RDF representation of a Volunteer in the KB.
rdf:type desmos:Human ;
desmos:hasRole desmos:Volunteer ;
desmos:id "867325031117405"^^xsd:string ;
desmos:name "Volunteer_1."@en ;
sosa:hosts ;
rdfs:label "Volunteer 1"@en .
geo:hasGeometry [geo:asWKT POINT(22.9954257 40.5654389)]
Moreover, mobile devices belonging to Volunteers send regular messages
about registered wearable devices that are within their range. These messages are
also characterized by a unique identifier of the sending device that will allow the
information on the wearable device to be matched with the mobile device that
sent the message. Below is the representation of an rssi observation in the on-
tology. Note how the last property in the representation, isObservedBy, matches
the corresponding observation with the mobile device.
Listing 1.2. RDF representation of an RSSI Observation.
rdf:type sosa:Observation;
sosa:observedProperty
;
sosa:hasFeatureOfInterest ;
sosa:madeBySensor ;
2
https://rdf4j.org/
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Ontology-based Reasoning for Critical Incidents in Public Events 7
sosa:resultTime "2019-05-29T12:52:01Z "^^xsd:dateTime;
sosa:usedProcedure ;
desmos:signal_strength "-51"^^xsd:double;
sosa:isObservedBy .
In addition, Visitors of the park may use the application that they have
previously installed in their mobile devices and send a request that will trigger
an Event. This request may refer either to a Health Issue or a Missing Person
situation. The following example depicts the representation of a Health Issue
event in the ontology.
Listing 1.3. RDF representation of a Health Issue Event.
rdf:type desmos:HealthIssue;
desmos:id "0a990cf5-8c3f-4484"^^xsd:string ;
geo:hasGeometry [geo:asWKT POINT(22.9879934 40.57327)]
It is worth mentioning that there is an initialization phase where the ontology
is populated with the volunteer profiles together with the necessary information
about their mobile devices, the exact location of the fixed nodes that listen for
broadcasted addresses from BLE devices as well as the location of the AED
systems that are available in the area. Once this data are populated in the
ontology, the KBS can perform reasoning to infer new knowledge, and then
update the interested components.
5 Rule-based Reasoning
In addition, in order to search for incoming messages and handling their se-
mantic representation and integration into the KB, KBS also incorporates a
reasoning mechanism to infer underlying knowledge and discover connections
between ontology entities during various events occurring in space, such as the
disappearance of a person, or various medical incidents. This mechanism is rule-
based and consists of a set of SPARQL queries. These queries were constructed
by following the approach that is described in the following subsection.
5.1 Competency Questions
The user requirements in Table 2 were first mapped to ontology’s Competency
Questions (CQs). A competency question is a natural language sentence that
expresses a pattern for a type of question people expect an ontology to answer
[11]. The answerability of CQs hence becomes a functional requirement of the
ontology. Based on the list of user requirements above, the ontology is able to
respond to several CQs, such as providing the location of a specific person (e.g. a
patient, a lost child), or detect the closest AED. Following the methodology pro-
posed in [12], we translated the list of CQs into respective SPARQL queries [13]
and evaluated the retrieved results. The following tables represent an indicative
set of CQs along with their SPARQL translation.
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8 D. Ntioudis et al.
Given a Visitor’s request request that is related to UC 1 (i.e. request for
medical help) and consists of a request id and the coordinates of the user re-
questing for help, the following queries (Queries 1.4, 1.5) calculate the nearest
Volunteer and the nearest AED respectively.
Listing 1.4. (UC 1): Who is the nearest Volunteer?
SELECT ?imei WHERE {
?not rdf:type desmos:VisitorNotification ;
geo:hasGeometry [ geo:asWKT ?point1 ] ;
desmos:id ?not_id.
?volunteer desmos:hasRole desmos:Volunteer ;
geo:hasGeometry [ geo:asWKT ?point2 ] ;
desmos:imei ?imei.
BIND((geof:distance(?point1, ?point2, uom:metre)) as ?dist) .
FILTER(?not_id = STR(not_id)) .
} ORDER BY ASC(?dist)
LIMIT 1
Listing 1.5. (UC 1): What is the nearest AED?
SELECT ?aed_id WHERE {
?not rdf:type desmos:VisitorNotification ;
geo:hasGeometry [ geo:asWKT ?point1 ] ;
desmos:id ?not_id.
?aed rdf:type desmos:AED ;
geo:hasGeometry [ geo:asWKT ?point2 ] ;
desmos:id ?aed_id.
BIND((geof:distance(?point1, ?point2, uom:metre)) as ?dist) .
FILTER(?not_id = STR(not_id)) .
} ORDER BY ASC(?dist)
LIMIT 1
Similarly, given a Visitor’s request that is related to UC 2 (i.e. request help
for lost child) and consists of the request id and the mac address of the child’s
wearable device, the following queries (Queries 1.6, 1.7) are calculating the lat-
est observers of the missing child (i.e. Volunteers) and their distance from the
lost child respectively. More specifically, query 1.6 finds the 3 nearest observers
while query 1.7 uses the latter information as input (i.e. through FILTER) and
calculates the respective distance of each observer.
Note that the distance between the Volunteers and the lost child is calcu-
lated based on RSSI-based localization techniques that are performed by the
Localization Module. More specifically in UC 2 children are wearing wearable
equipment emitting a Radio Frequency (RF) signal with an RSSI that is re-
ceived from the the volunteers’ devices as well as from several fixed points (i.e.
hubs) scattered around the pilot area. The RSSI values are then used to cal-
culate the respective distance in meters (in the Localization module) and this
information is integrated into the KB and enriches the existing knowledge.
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Ontology-based Reasoning for Critical Incidents in Public Events 9
The localization module analyzes the RSSI values based on a kalman filtering
and a regression method that transforms the RSSI values to distances. After that,
given the coordinates of the closest Volunteers and Hubs from the KB, namely
A, B, C with coordinates (x1 , y1 ), (x2 , y2 ), (x3 , y3 ) respectively, whose distance
from the point of interest (i.e. lost child) is d1 , d2 , d3 respectively which was
estimated before, we can then calculate the coordinates of the point of interest
(x, y) using the following equations:
(x − xi )2 + (y − yi )2 = d2i , i = 1, 2, 3
Listing 1.6. (UC 2): Who are the child’s latest observers?
SELECT ?imei (MAX(?time) as ?instanceTime) {
?s rdf:type sosa:Observation ;
sosa:isObservedBy ?o ;
desmos:isDataOf ?p ;
sosa:resultTime ?time .
?vol sosa:hosts ?o ;
desmos:imei ?imei .
?p desmos:mac ?mac .
FILTER(?mac = STR(mac))
} GROUP BY ?imei
ORDER BY DESC(?instanceTime)
LIMIT 3
Listing 1.7. (UC 2): What is the location of the lost child’s observers and their re-
spective distance from the lost child?
SELECT ?imei ?lat ?long ?distance {
?s rdf:type sosa:Observation ;
sosa:isObservedBy ?o ;
desmos:isDataOf ?p ;
sosa:resultTime ?time ;
desmos:distance ?distance .
?vol sosa:hosts ?o ;
desmos:imei ?imei ;
desmos:lat ?lat ;
desmos:long ?long .
?p desmos:mac ?mac .
FILTER(?imei = STR(imei) && ?time = time)
}
6 Conclusion
In this paper, we have discussed and demonstrated an ontology-based reasoning
framework for the management of critical incidents in public events. We have
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10 D. Ntioudis et al.
presented the main components of the DESMOS semantic reasoning framework
and how this has been incorporated in the DESMOS main framework. For future
work, the framework will be tested and validated in two pilots in two different
public places which protection and security challenges are higher.
7 Acknowledgements
This research has been co-financed by the European Union and Greek national
funds through the Operational Program Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and
Innovation, under the call RESEARCH-CREATE-INNOVATE (project code:
T1EDK-03487).
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