Open Energy Ontology (OEO)#
The Open Energy Ontology (OEO) is created as a domain ontology within the field of energy system modelling. It is growing constantly and under a regular release cycle.
Access the Open Energy Ontology
Domain ontology: What is that?#
An ontology is a formal collection of terms and relationships between those terms, with clear definitions and a logical interpretation. An ontology can help to provide a clear understanding of a domain of discourse. For the Open Energy Platform, this domain of discourse is energy system modelling, and with the Open Energy Ontology (OEO) we aim to develop a language that works across disciplines.
What is it good for?#
Ontologies can be used for multiple different purposes, which is why they are already used and developed in many scientific fields. Applications include:
- Standardising terminology in a domain: An ontology provides a controlled vocabulary, with clear definitions that indicate how terminology is to be used. A collection of synonyms is created to indicate the breadth of actual language usage in the domain. Thus, it becomes possible to identify, clarify and diambiguate ambiguous vocabulary.
- Data annotation and integration: Applying an ontology to data annotation in databases allows flexible, content-oriented data integration and aggregation. It adds the possibility of enhanced searching functions and logical querying across datasets.
- Templates for data capture: The ontology can provide a structure which is used to make reporting more uniform and detailed.
- Visualisation: Knowledge encoded in the ontology can be visualized in various ways to make it more comprehensible.
- Text and Data mining: The ontology can be used to automatically search across text and data resources to e.g. suggest associations (mentions) of ontology entities. Automatic assosiations of ontology entities to large corpora can be used to gain an overview of the literature or data across a domain. It can be used for discovery and for automated data or research synthesis and meta-analysis.
Usage beyond the Open Energy Family tools#
The OEO is developed within the scope of the Open Energy Family. Nevertheless, it is developed as an ontology for the whole energy system modelling area. We explicitly want it to be used in other contextes and use cases as well. Where and how can I contribute? Anyone is invited to contribute to OEO development as this is a community-driven process. OEO development takes place on GitHub. We have some helpful guidelines on the workflow and a wiki providing detailed information. Welcome! We invite you to participate. If you have questions, please reach out via the OEP contact form. We can then facilitate someone who can follow up on your question.