Resource Allocations for Humanitarian Response: Introducing a Software Tool Based on SWRL Enabled OWL Ontologies

Resource allocation is one of the most important tasks in organizing humanitarian response to humanitarian crises. It is not only that adequate and efficient resource allocation save lives and reduce damages caused by humanitarian crises, but resource allocation must be fast and efficient to save time and resources. Given that resource allocation is a type of a decision-making process, it is expected that decision on resource allocation are based on accurate and relevant information generated at various stages of humanitarian response. In this article, the authors promote Semantic Resource Allocation tools which a) collects and interprets the semantics of an environment where resource allocation is required and b) the reasons upon the semantics of that environment in order to make appropriate resource allocation. The tool is built with computations based on SWRL enabled OWL ontologies. The prototype has been implemented as a desktop application which can also run in mobile/wireless environments, including Android smart phones.