Ontology Development for Sri Lankan Medicinal Plants: A Knowledge Representation

Abstract

Our ancestors consumed medicinal plants through their day to day activities which leads them to a long and healthy life. It plays an important role in their life. But in this fast moving world the value of these plants are gradually going down. As they take comparably long time to give relief from the disease, the people are not interested in these medicines. Fast and modern foods are replaced our traditional food system which lessen the intake of herbs through foods. We have responsibility to aware our future generation about this medicinal plants and their usage, because they are in danger of extinct. The knowledge about these plants are scattered over the web and some experts are still here to carry this knowledge to our future. This research aims to collect all these knowledge from different places and build a knowledge base system for Sri Lankan medicinal plants. This knowledge base consist plants parts, diseases, preparation method and mixtures if any. Ontology is the technique used to develop the knowledge base. To develop the ontology, Protégé which is an open source is used. SPARQL is the language used to query over this knowledge base.