An ontology-based agriculture decision-support system with an evidence-based explanation model

Effective management of plant diseases and pests requires knowledge that covers multiple domains. At the same time, retrieving the relevant information in a timely manner is always challenging, due to the unstructured nature of agricultural data. Over the years, efforts have been made to develop an...

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Main Authors: Amani Falah Alharbi, Muhammad Ahtisham Aslam, Khalid Ali Asiry, Naif Radi Aljohani, Yury Glikman
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2024-12-01
Series:Smart Agricultural Technology
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Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772375524002648
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author Amani Falah Alharbi
Muhammad Ahtisham Aslam
Khalid Ali Asiry
Naif Radi Aljohani
Yury Glikman
author_facet Amani Falah Alharbi
Muhammad Ahtisham Aslam
Khalid Ali Asiry
Naif Radi Aljohani
Yury Glikman
author_sort Amani Falah Alharbi
collection DOAJ
description Effective management of plant diseases and pests requires knowledge that covers multiple domains. At the same time, retrieving the relevant information in a timely manner is always challenging, due to the unstructured nature of agricultural data. Over the years, efforts have been made to develop an ontology-based Decision-Support System (DSS) to facilitate the diagnosis and control of plant diseases. Some major issues with these systems are that: (1) they do not adopt the full extent of the ontological constructs to represent domain entities, which, in turn, reduces reasoning capabilities and prevents systems from being more intelligent, (2) they do not adequately provide the desired level of knowledge to support complex decisions, which requires many factors to be considered, (3) they do not adequately explain or provide evidence to demonstrate the validity of the system's outputs. To address these limitations, we present a novel system termed Agriculture Ontology Based Decision Support System (AgrODSS), which aims to assist in plant disease and pest identification and control. AgrODSS architecture consists of two semantic-based models. First, we developed Plant Diseases and Pests Ontology (PDP-O) to capture, model, and represent diseases and pest knowledge in a machine-understandable format. Second, we designed and developed an Evidence-Based Explanation Model (EBEM) that points to related evidence from the literature to demonstrate the validity of the system outputs. We demonstrate the effectiveness of AgrODSS by executing various queries via AgrODSS SPARQL Endpoint and obtaining valuable information to support decision-making. Finally, we evaluated AgrODSS practically with domain experts (including entomologists and pathologists) and it produced similar answers to those given by the experts, with an overall accuracy of 80.66%. These results demonstrate AgrODSS's ability to assist agricultural stakeholders in making proper disease or pest diagnoses and choosing the appropriate control methods.
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spelling doaj-art-69945d96ece24eeab7e1144cb86d899e2025-08-20T02:50:09ZengElsevierSmart Agricultural Technology2772-37552024-12-01910065910.1016/j.atech.2024.100659An ontology-based agriculture decision-support system with an evidence-based explanation modelAmani Falah Alharbi0Muhammad Ahtisham Aslam1Khalid Ali Asiry2Naif Radi Aljohani3Yury Glikman4Department of Information Systems, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, 23443, Saudi Arabia; Corresponding author.Fraunhofer FOKUS, Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee 31, Berlin, 10589, GermanyDepartment of Agriculture, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, 23443, Saudi ArabiaDepartment of Information Systems, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, 23443, Saudi ArabiaFraunhofer FOKUS, Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee 31, Berlin, 10589, GermanyEffective management of plant diseases and pests requires knowledge that covers multiple domains. At the same time, retrieving the relevant information in a timely manner is always challenging, due to the unstructured nature of agricultural data. Over the years, efforts have been made to develop an ontology-based Decision-Support System (DSS) to facilitate the diagnosis and control of plant diseases. Some major issues with these systems are that: (1) they do not adopt the full extent of the ontological constructs to represent domain entities, which, in turn, reduces reasoning capabilities and prevents systems from being more intelligent, (2) they do not adequately provide the desired level of knowledge to support complex decisions, which requires many factors to be considered, (3) they do not adequately explain or provide evidence to demonstrate the validity of the system's outputs. To address these limitations, we present a novel system termed Agriculture Ontology Based Decision Support System (AgrODSS), which aims to assist in plant disease and pest identification and control. AgrODSS architecture consists of two semantic-based models. First, we developed Plant Diseases and Pests Ontology (PDP-O) to capture, model, and represent diseases and pest knowledge in a machine-understandable format. Second, we designed and developed an Evidence-Based Explanation Model (EBEM) that points to related evidence from the literature to demonstrate the validity of the system outputs. We demonstrate the effectiveness of AgrODSS by executing various queries via AgrODSS SPARQL Endpoint and obtaining valuable information to support decision-making. Finally, we evaluated AgrODSS practically with domain experts (including entomologists and pathologists) and it produced similar answers to those given by the experts, with an overall accuracy of 80.66%. These results demonstrate AgrODSS's ability to assist agricultural stakeholders in making proper disease or pest diagnoses and choosing the appropriate control methods.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772375524002648Ontology modelingDecision support systemsMachine reasoningSmart agricultureSemantic-web
spellingShingle Amani Falah Alharbi
Muhammad Ahtisham Aslam
Khalid Ali Asiry
Naif Radi Aljohani
Yury Glikman
An ontology-based agriculture decision-support system with an evidence-based explanation model
Smart Agricultural Technology
Ontology modeling
Decision support systems
Machine reasoning
Smart agriculture
Semantic-web
title An ontology-based agriculture decision-support system with an evidence-based explanation model
title_full An ontology-based agriculture decision-support system with an evidence-based explanation model
title_fullStr An ontology-based agriculture decision-support system with an evidence-based explanation model
title_full_unstemmed An ontology-based agriculture decision-support system with an evidence-based explanation model
title_short An ontology-based agriculture decision-support system with an evidence-based explanation model
title_sort ontology based agriculture decision support system with an evidence based explanation model
topic Ontology modeling
Decision support systems
Machine reasoning
Smart agriculture
Semantic-web
url http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772375524002648
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