Panorama das ontologias do domínio agrícola: estudo a partir da análise de conteúdo.

Abstract

This study aims to identify the current panorama of ontologies in the agricultural domain, through a review in literature. The methodological procedures adopted in this study are: 1) bibliographic survey; 2) selection of papers for study; 3) application of the Content Analysis technique to create four categories of analysis: subject, purpose, development methodology and evaluation/validation. The results show that as far as the “subject” category is concerned, ontologies have a diversity of topics within the agriculture, revealing the innumerable possibilities of ontology construction in the area. In terms of the “ontology purpose” it can be observed that the objectives of ontologies vary between creating a model of representation of knowledge in a subdomain related to agriculture, and serve as the basis for some application. With regard to “development methodology”, the construction of ontologies is predominant without the use of methodologies recognized in the literature. Finally, the category “evaluation/validation” reveals the concern of the developers in the verification of the ontologies. We conclude that the main omission of the ontologies of the agricultural domain is with respect to the use of development methodologies.