Technical Report: Representing SES Cases Using Ontology

Socio-ecological System (SES) research studies the interaction between environment, users, and governance of environment resources. Data produced during the research cycle can be both longtail (e.g. heterogeneous) and longitudinal data. For example, the IFRI (International Forestry Resources and Institutions) data set contains studies carried out over a period of 20 years. Given the complexity of a SES system, case studies that are accumulated over time and from different sites (e.g. site visit cases) are highly valuable in the understanding of new SES system behavior for instance. We, as a group of informatics researchers collaborating with personnel from the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University, are developing informatics approaches to facilitating SES scholars’ research.