The Role of Ontologies in Disaster Recovery Planning

Disasters have the potential to cripple a country and those countries that are particularly susceptible to disasters must have adequate disaster recovery plans in place to ensure that the country can return to normalcy as soon as possible after the disaster. These plans will involve a number of autonomous entities that need to be able to communicate and coordinate their activities effectively. This paper describes how ontologies can be used to support this effective communication and coordination between entities and how they can help to ensure that the disaster recovery plan (DRP) is effective. The applicability of ontologies to DRPs will be demonstrated using a case study of an electric utility company in Jamaica, a country in the hurricane region