Data Ontologies for Data-Driven Decision-Making: Research Approach and Findings (2026)

Technological change has left many agencies managing numerous legacy systems and disparate architectures that, despite their limitations, remain valuable. To support cross-functional decision-making, some agencies are enhancing these systems by adopting data lake or data warehouse approaches. Advanced data representation and knowledge management techniques, such as developing a data ontology, could improve these strategies. A data ontology is a framework for characterizing and defining classes, attributes, and their relationships in a domain, providing a shared meaning across multiple users.

NCHRP Web-Only Document 441: Data Ontologies for Data-Driven Decision-Making: Research Approach and Findings, produced by TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program, provides a detailed description of the research approach and findings, along with an outline of suggested future research to support the adoption and implementation of the work presented in NCHRP Research Report 1169: Data Ontologies for Data-Driven Decision-Making: Development and Use

URL: Data Ontologies for Data-Driven Decision-Making: Research Approach and Findings (2026)