Food, Waste, and Sustainability: Synergizing Ontology Efforts 

Description and Aims

Nowadays, waste, especially that of food and plastics deriving from human consumption and activities along food supply chains, poses serious concerns both in terms of human health and resilience and sustainability of food systems. While being a source of possible disease outbreaks and attracting wild animals to urban settlements, food waste is correlated with reduced efficiency in water and energy usage and an increase in CO2 gas emissions. Contamination of agricultural soils and environments by plastics and microplastics is threatening the life of numerous species. As micro- and nanoplastics have also been detected in human tissues, they raise questions regarding human well-being. These are just a few examples.  

By fostering data annotation, organization, and interoperation, ontologies ensure that datasets, systems, and people can be interconnected. This is a critical step to effectively deal with complex and widespread health and sustainability issues, such as food and plastic waste. 

In the last decades, efforts in ontology development mainly focused on health and related features, as witnessed by many of the resources provided by the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontology (OBO) Foundry. Recently, attention has also been given to modeling sustainability issues, which resulted in ontologies like Sustainability Core Ontology (SCO), Sustainable Development Goals Interface Ontology (SDGIO), Sustainable Met Systems Ontology (SuMSO), and Sustainable Development and Climate (SDC) Ontology. It is imperative to enhance interconnectedness among these ontologies and related applications. In particular, it will be important to communicate across different ontology communities to adequately capture the intrinsic connections between health and sustainability.

The Food, Waste, and Sustainability: Synergizing Ontology Efforts 2025 Workshop, held as part of the 16th International Conference on Biological and Biomedical Ontology (ICBO 2025), aims at promoting discussions in this direction, focusing on waste as a starting use case. We plan three main sessions. In the first session, we will explore present conceptualizations of waste within food systems, with a particular emphasis on food and plastic waste. Attention will be primarily placed on deriving challenges and opportunities concerning human health, resilience, and sustainability of those systems. The second session will be dedicated to existing and work-in-progress ontologies. We will conversate on how such conceptualizations of the realm of food and plastic waste are implemented in computable ontological models, knowledge graphs, and related applications, tracking down similarities and discrepancies. In the third session, we will engage in an open discussion with experts in the field. Conversations will concentrate on how to synergize sustainability and health ontologies across ontology communities, for harmonizing and interconnecting existing conceptualizations and representations of food systems waste. The ultimate goal of this workshop is to foster dialogues in support of human health and food systems resilience and sustainability.

Workshop Date: November 14, 2025 

Location: Fully remote

Time and Duration: 3-hour-long workshop. 4-7 pm CET

Registration

See ICBO2025 schedule.

Organizing Committee

Dr. Giorgio A. Ubbiali

Prof. Dr. Ludger Jansen

Scientific Committee

To be finalized. We will invite senior researchers in the field to support us in setting up the workshop.

Contact

Please, address all correspondence regarding this proposal to Dr. Giorgio A. Ubbiali.