Ontologies for Sustainability: Theoretical Challenges

ABSTRACT The lack of sustainable practices in key sectors of human societies is a global concern, posing threats for the whole planet. This paper provides the first review of ontologies for sustainability efforts, outlining their roles in assessing and advancing such efforts. Section 2 outlines three major challenges associated with sustainability: (1) the polysemy of the term; (2) the relationship between sustainability and sustainable development; and (3) the complexity underlying sustainability. Section 3 reviews the main accomplishments achieved by ontologies to meet these theoretical challenges. Special attention is devoted to ontologies belonging to the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontology (OBO)‐Foundry community, due to the pivotal role these play in the field of applied ontology. A List of Sustainability Ontologies documents the assessed resources. Finally, Section 4 advances a potential trajectory to define an OBO Foundry‐compliant family of sustainability ontologies and introduces a Sustainability Core Ontology (SCO) for consistently structuring this family.