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EnvironmentOntology / environmental-exposure-ontology

Modular environmental exposures ontology
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SDGIO "exposure" #16

Open pbuttigieg opened 7 years ago

pbuttigieg commented 7 years ago

Just a head's up that the SDGIO is dealing with "exposure" as defined by UN bodies. This is more along the lines of "assets exposed to risk". We had a crack at "exposure" as a process in the more general sense too.

'exposure process'=def. "A process which is causally within or downstream of another process whose direct or indirect effects cause one or more entities to realise one or more of their dispositions.
+ comment: "Consider that when "E died of exposure to P", E died as an outcome of the processes which were initiated by E's participation in P, in which E's dispositions to react to P (or its parts or participants) were realised."
+ editor note: "This class may be replaced by a class in EXO, pending a clarification on the scope of its meaning. Right now it is essentially the same as 'interaction'. https://github.com/SDG-InterfaceOntology/sdgio/issues/21"
cmungall commented 7 years ago

Good start, but that's a very general definition. It's basically "caused process"

I am tending towards a generic definition encapsulating all interactions and series of interactions between an organism / organism population and an environment. The interaction may be physical or indirect.

pbuttigieg commented 7 years ago

It's basically "caused process"

In most cases we've come across in SDGIO ('exposure to flooding', 'exposure to drought', etc) it does seem to boil down to the series of processes which unfold in some exposed entity due to the named process and which cause that entity to realise some dispositions. So it's more "caused process + disposition realisation".

Recall that this ties in to the semantics of "vulnerability" and "risk" we're developing in SDGIO: https://github.com/SDG-InterfaceOntology/sdgio/issues/21 https://github.com/SDG-InterfaceOntology/sdgio/issues/22

I am tending towards a generic definition encapsulating all interactions and series of interactions between an organism / organism population and an environment. The interaction may be physical or indirect.

I can see that working, but I think we should have top level classes that are not bound to organisms (nuclear power plants can be exposed to earthquakes and tsunamis).

Further, how does interaction relate to exposure? I could see them as almost interchangeable. If one is exposed to flooding, one interacts with the process via either direct participation or participation in a causally downstream process; or are these interactions restricted to continuants?