Understanding Transportation Data with Ontologies

Transportation systems - and the planning decisions that mould these systems - are important factors that influence both food and health supply chains.

The ability to make good decisions about the design and policies underlying these systems requires a significant amount of data. This data is drawn from a wide range of sources and presents significant challenges for processing and integration. In this talk, Dr. Katsumi explores these challenges and discusses the use of ontologies as part of a solution.

Speaker Bio

Dr. Megan Katsumi is a Research Associate at the University of Toronto's Enterprise Integration Laboratory. She completed her PhD at the University of Toronto's Semantic Technologies Laboratory, where her research focused on foundations for ontology development. Megan recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the University of Toronto Transportation Research Institute (UTTRI) where she contributed to the development of a suite of ontologies for transportation planning to support the iCity-ORF project. Her current research activities are focused on the use of ontologies in asset management and the development of ontology-based standards.

Watch the recording of the webinar below

This is a School of Cities Seminar Series "Building Resilience in Food and Health Supply Chains"

Supply chains are the primary societal infrastructure for the production, delivery, and recycling of goods and services. Though sometimes invisible, supply chains are the systems that ensure that flour is available in your grocery store, that hospitals have sufficient personal protective equipment, and that there are enough trained staff to administer medical tests, deliver babies, and check-out your groceries. While much of the effort in supply chains over the past 50 years has been to make them agile, fast, and cheap, there is a growing realization that supply chains must be able to adapt to disruptions from local events such as the inability for a plane to land due to weather to global changes such as the closing of the US-Canada border due to COVID-19.

This seminar series seeks to develop a multi-disciplinary understanding of resilient supply chains by examining two which are of critical importance to everyday life: food and health supply chains. The talks in this series look at these supply chains, both independently and together, through the inclusion of diverse speakers representing at least the following perspectives:

• Supply Chain Optimization 
• Northern and Remote Food and Health Security
• Urban Food Systems
• Systems of Food Production
• Healthcare Systems