The Development of an Ontology for Thai’s Indigenous Rice Knowledge in Thailand

Abstract

The purpose of developing an ontology for Thai’s indigenous rice knowledge was to create vocabularies that clearly represented the scope and knowledge structure for the production, processing, and cultural practices of rice in Thailand. The terminology could be described comprehensively by integrating domain ontology outline and the analytico-synthetic method of facet analysis. The process of developing ontology was accomplished through the Hozo program then evaluated by selected experts. It was found that the ontology of indigenous rice culture knowledge could be classified to 20 knowledge groups comprising 3 classes: (1) Rice production; (2) Rice culture; and (3) Special contexts of indigenous rice knowledge beyond 8 sub-classes: (1) Rice varieties; (2) Rice production process; (3) Rice rituals; (4) Rice local scholars; (5) Local wisdom; (6) Periods; (7) Ethnic groups; and (8) Geographic labels. Other beneath layers of the ontology consisted of 17 sub-classes, 244 types of relationships, 155 characteristics, and 10 types of associated relationships. Moreover, 11 groups of associated concepts were found: (1) Production resources; (2) Principles and methods; (3) Traditional technologies; (4) Processes; (5) Products; (6) Value; (7) Belief; (8) Safety; (9) Security; (10) Continuity; and (11) Social identity.

Keywords

• domain ontology
• indigenous rice knowledge
• classification