Ontology‐supported case‐based reasoning approach for intelligent m‐Government emergency response services

There is a critical need to develop a mobile‐based emergency response system (MERS) to help reduce risks in emergency situations. Existing systems only provide short message service (SMS) notifications, and the decision support is weak, especially in man‐made disaster situations. This paper presents a MERS ontology‐supported case‐based reasoning (OS‐CBR) method, with implementation, to support emergency decision makers to effectively respond to emergencies. The advantages of the OS‐CBR approach is that it builds a case retrieving process, which provides a more convenient system for decision support based on knowledge from, and solutions provided for past disaster events. The OS‐CBR approach includes a set of algorithms that have been successfully implemented in four components: data acquisition; ontology; knowledge base; and reasoning; as a sub‐system of the MERS framework. A set of experiments and case studies validated the OS‐CBR approach and application, and demonstrate its efficiency.