From Risk Storylines to a Risk-Driven Ontology of Urban Systems

Ontological models empower stakeholders to establish shared ontological commitments for achieving objectives, including (1) fostering domain-specific understanding; (2) formalizing communication between stakeholders and modelers; and (3) enabling knowledge inference through formal rule-based systems. A significant challenge arises as conceptual modeling transitions from single-organizational contexts to heterogeneous, multi-perspective environments, raising questions about how quasi-universal conceptualizations can ensure data interoperability. To address this, we propose storylines to integrate diverse perspectives across past and future scenario narratives. This study applies risk-oriented storylines and ontologies through a middle-out approach, synthesizing top-down and bottom-up strategies, in the ontology engineering of urban systems at risk. The results demonstrate that storylines effectively surface domain-specific terminology among stakeholders but exhibit limitations in capt uring abstract, generic concepts and relationships. Conversely, the top-down approach (guided by competency questions, literature, and interviews) revealed imperceptible abstract concepts that storylines overlooked, while missing specialized terms identified through narrative methods. These results highlight the complementary value of hybrid methodological frameworks: the middle-out approach mitigates blind spots inherent to purely top-down or bottom-up strategies, enabling more robust ontology development in complex, multi-stakeholder environments. This work advances pragmatic methodologies for interoperable ontology design in urban systems, with implications for risk management and urban resilience planning.