Ontology-Enabled Knowledge Management in Environmental Regulations and Incentive Policies: The ERIPAD System

It is critical for global manufacturing enterprises to know and understand regional and local environmental regulations and incentive programs/polices. However, there has been little research aimed at acquiring and disseminating the knowledge of environmental regulations and incentive policies within the business decision making context, especially for the manufacturing industry sector. To address this problem, we present the Environmental Regulation and Incentive Policies Acquisition and Dissemination (ERIPAD) system, an ontology-enabled knowledge management system that enables systematic knowledge acquisition through ontology and personalized knowledge dissemination via SPARQL-based reasoning queries. Our current ontology is customized for the European Union Emission Trading Scheme and the Waxman-Markey bill because of their comprehensiveness and inclusiveness. It is expected that the ERIPAD system will enable a manufacturing company to improve agility and efficiency in its energy or environment related decision making process.