Ontology of Western Australian petroleum data for effective data warehouse design and data mining

Volumes of petroleum resources data are archived in different companies. These are of heterogeneous form - either in relational, hierarchical or network structures. With the widespread use of these databases and explosive growth in their sizes, petroleum businesses face a problem of information overload. Effectively utilizing these data volumes is a major challenge for this type of industry. Data search becomes tedious, at times when specific queries are made, due to data accumulated in several geographic locations. In this research work, we revisit these data and propose to simplify these heterogeneous data structures through an ontological data modelling approach particularly to address the issues of data integration and information sharing. Various ontological models have been described in the context of Western Australian petroleum systems. An ontological framework, with a mechanism to integrate petroleum resources data in a warehouse environment has been investigated. Ontology design benefits and its impacts on designing data mining algorithms are discussed. Ontology approach ensures petroleum data validity that supports petroleum knowledge mining process.