Title: Design of an ontology for detecting the social influence on non-communicable diseases risk factors

Authors: Henrique Damasceno Vianna; Jorge Luis Victória Barbosa; João Carlos Gluz; Renan Belarmino Scherer Dos Santos

Addresses: Applied Computing Graduate Program (PPGCA), University of Vale do Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS), São Leopoldo, Rio Grande do Sul (RS), Brazil ' Applied Computing Graduate Program (PPGCA), University of Vale do Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS), São Leopoldo, Rio Grande do Sul (RS), Brazil ' Applied Computing Graduate Program (PPGCA), University of Vale do Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS), São Leopoldo, Rio Grande do Sul (RS), Brazil ' Applied Computing Graduate Program (PPGCA), University of Vale do Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS), São Leopoldo, Rio Grande do Sul (RS), Brazil

Abstract: Non-communicable diseases are caused by habits such as poor diets, lack of physical activity practice or smoking. Besides, some studies have already correlated the influence of social relations on some factors of these diseases like weight gain, feeling of happiness and quitting smoking. This paper presents the design of an ontology for detecting the social influence on the spreading of non-communicable diseases risk factors following Gruniger and Fox's methodology. Its motivation scenario focuses on the recommendation of beneficial connections to social network members. UML was used to represent domain and range of object properties, data properties, and subsumption, while the Manchester syntax was used to demonstrate equivalences. To test the ontology a small social network was created using axioms from the ontology in PROLOG and defining the necessary conditions for the ontology to suggest new connections for a node to obtain a lower probability of obesity.

Keywords: ontology; ontology engineering; chronic diseases; non-communicable diseases; social influence; social networks.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMSO.2018.098388

International Journal of Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies, 2018 Vol.13 No.2, pp.120 - 130

Received: 14 Jun 2018
Accepted: 21 Oct 2018

Published online: 18 Mar 2019 *

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