An interoperable ontology for CPS-enabled Polyhouse Solar Dryer: A case study of the AgroESP project

Polyhouse is a commonly used conventional method for solar drying of food products. These Polyhouse Solar Driers (PSDs) are characterized by their enclosed structure and translucent covering, providing a controlled environment conducive to efficient food drying. Smart polyhouses, equipped with a Cyber-Physical System (CPS), further enhance this process by optimizing environmental conditions and enabling real-time monitoring. In smart PSDs, the data are obtained from diverse sources with different specifications in accuracy, resolution, and range. This multifaceted nature of the information obtained from various sources significantly compounds the complexity of the system. This complexity of data from diverse sources within smart polyhouses necessitates a standardized knowledge representation. Ontologies serve this purpose by establishing a common vocabulary and structure for data integration, promoting semantic interoperability and effective communication among diverse systems. This paper proposes a novel unified ontology designed to model complex polyhouse CPSs, aiming to address semantic interoperability issues and streamline data integration across various domains. The proposed polyhouse ontology attempts to reuse the concepts defined in existing ontologies rather defining new concepts for efficient knowledge sharing and enhanced understanding of polyhouse operations. The practical applicability of the polyhouse ontology has been verified with competency questions and through field deployment in a CPS enabled smart Polyhouse Solar Dryer.