An ontology-driven decision support system for land delivery in Zambia

Land is increasingly becoming important as the global economic crisis and climate change impacts continue to grow. This is mirrored in Zambia where the management of land has become very critical, prompting urgent government intervention/regulatory measures in the form of land reform. However, lack of efficient communication mechanisms inhibits the success of these efforts as officials are unable to make efficient land delivery decisions. This paper investigates the extent to which Semantic Web technology, an emerging communication technology, can be used in developing decision support systems that can facilitate the Zambian land delivery process.

► Representation of Zambian land delivery process using the Web Ontology Language (OWL).
► Modeling of the Zambian land delivery process to capture OWL restrictions.
► Semantic enrichment of the Zambian land delivery ontology to facilitate reasoning.
► Use of Semantic Web Rule Language to provide a reasoning mechanism.