The SewerNet Ontology

A structured ontology for wastewater and stormwater networks — aligned with DOLCE-lite and compliant with the INSPIRE EU directive and the RAEPA geostandard.

Une ontologie structurée pour les réseaux d'assainissement et de gestion des eaux pluviales — alignée avec DOLCE-lite et conforme à la directive INSPIRE et au géostandard RAEPA.

⬇ Download OWL Learn more

Overview

SewerNet provides a comprehensive, interoperable semantic model for sewer infrastructure management.

The SewerNet Ontology describes the structure of wastewater and stormwater networks, their elements, and their qualities. It also incorporates events involved in the network management process.

SewerNet is aligned with the DOLCE-lite foundational ontology and imports a few axioms from the Time Ontology for interoperability, providing a well-established semantic basis for modelling sewer networks.

By adhering to the INSPIRE EU directive and the RAEPA geostandard, SewerNet provides a structured framework facilitating the integration of multi-source data, enabling a unified view of information across heterogeneous systems.

L'ontologie SewerNet décrit la structure des réseaux d'eaux usées et pluviales, leurs éléments et leurs qualités. Elle est alignée avec l'ontologie fondatrice DOLCE-lite et conforme aux directives INSPIRE et au géostandard RAEPA.

Screenshot of a visualization of part of the SewerNet ontology
Figure: Visualization of part of the SewerNet ontology.
🔍 Click to enlarge
Enlarged ontology visualization

Resources

Access the ontology files, documentation, and formal renderings.

🗂

Ontology Files

Download the SewerNet ontology in OWL format, along with the foundational ontologies it imports.

📄

Documentation

Web-browsable, auto-generated documentation in both English and French for easy exploration of the ontology.

DL Rendering

Formal rendering of SewerNet in Description Logic (DL) notation, automatically generated from the ontology source.

Publications & Repositories

Peer-reviewed presentations and external repositories hosting SewerNet.

Presentation · EGU 2025

Keet, C. M., Haydar, B., and Chahinian, N. The SewerNet domain ontology: on clarifying and harmonising terminology . EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-8662.

Paper · LDK 2025

Mahlaza, Z., Keet, C. M., Chahinian, N., and Haydar, B. On the feasibility of LLM-based automated generation and filtering of competency questions for ontologies . Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Language, Data and Knowledge, Naples, Italy, Sep 2025, pp. 136–146.

Repository
SewerNet on EarthPortal

Browse and query SewerNet via the EarthPortal ontology repository.

Repository
SewerNet on CLARIN

Access the ontology through the CLARIN language resource infrastructure.

Contributors

The SewerNet ontology is developed by researchers across France and South Africa.

NC

Nanée Chahinian

HydroSciences Montpellier
IRD, Univ. Montpellier, France

BH

Batoul Haydar

HydroSciences Montpellier
IRD, Univ. Montpellier, France

MK

C. Maria Keet

University of Cape Town
South Africa

Funding

STARWARS — EU Horizon 2020 (grant 101086252)

STormwAteR and WastewAteR networkS heterogeneous data AI-driven management.

CROQUIS — ANR (ANR-21-CE23-0004)

Collecting, Representing, cOmpleting, merging and Querying heterogeneous and UncertaIn wastewater and stormwater network data.