Development of the PLEIADES Decommissioning Core Ontology

As a recent achievement, the nuclear decommissioning-specific ontology was released from the PLEIADES project.
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As a recent achievement, the nuclear decommissioning-specific ontology was released from the PLEIADES project.

This ontology forms the philosophical backbone of the PLEIADES project by providing a common understanding of the decommissioning process that is described in various nuclear decommissioning support software packages. The provision of a Decom Core Ontology is a key element of the overall PLEIADES project as it ensures a common vocabulary for the further exchange between the software packages and the processes they support. Beyond that, the ontology also provides the technical basis for the development of a database serving as a data management solution for the PLEIADES prototype platform.

Several methods for ontology engineering have been identified, consulted, and examined. In the end, we have derived a very basic but suitable method to develop the ontology.

In parallel with the ontology development process, we have consulted several interested parties, within the consortium (e.g. for the categories of “Measurement” and “Waste management” a workshop was organised) as well as for those outside the consortium (IAEA, EU, OECD-NEA). This allowed us to develop an ontology that will also be compatible with the major knowledge sources for decommissioning, providing compatibility to the foreseen users of the PLEIADES ecosystem.

Definitions of the top-level ontology concepts have been documented within the ontology. The sources have been mainly international and national standards (ISO, DIN, IAEA Safety Glossary) but also more general sources, such as Merriam-Webster. In some cases, there was no source for a definition and, hence, a definition had to be developed within PLEIADES itself.

Finally, the ontology was formalised using Vocbench into an RDF/XML file including the definitions and some translations as starting point for a thesaurus functionality.

 

References:

BORRMANN, F., HEIN, V., BECKER, M., JACQUES, M.-B., RIDAO, J. A., DANISKA, D. and PATRICE, F., 2021. An international approach to a nuclear decommissioning ontology. In: Proceedings of the 2021 International Conference on Decommissioning Challenges: Industrial Reality, Lessons Learned and Prospects (DEM 2021). Avignon, France.

BORRMANN, F., HEIN, V., BECKER, M., SZOKE, I. and CANDY, S., 2021. An international decommissioning ontology. In: 15. Internationales Symposium „Konditionierung radioaktiver Betriebs- und Stilllegungsabfälle“ einschließlich 15. Statusbericht des BMBF „Stilllegung und Rückbau kerntechnischer Anlagen“ (KONTEC 2021). Dresden.

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