Supporting Public Decision Making - A Progressive Approach Aided by an Ontology

This paper discusses a number of results from the CAVALA project, a project which was set up to design a method for defining assessment indicators in relation to territorial economic development policies. An analysis of the particularities of the field and the specific context is proposed. With these particularities in mind, we preferred a progressive approach in the implementation of decision-making tools and we included the construction of an ontology as a prerequisite. The phases leading up to the design of this ontology are explained. An analysis of the texts that set out the Regional Council’s policy on economic development allowed us to identify the existence of competing visions of the world (doxai). The co-existence of these doxai made it necessary for us to construct a polydoxical ontology, that is, integrating several discrete doxai. This choice generated specific methodological problems for which we are able to provide an insight. An illustration is given via an excerpt from the ontology consisting of two doxai for the concept of “territory.â€