Home // International Journal On Advances in Life Sciences, volume 17, numbers 1 and 2, 2025 // View article

Integrating and Analysing Occupational Health Data Using a Multi-Ontology Approach

Authors:
Cassandra Barbey
Malika Smail-Tabbone
Nathalie Bonvallot
Frédéric Clerc

Keywords: ontologies; data integration; heterogeneous data; occupational health; occupational exposures; data analytics.

Abstract:
A variety of occupational data are collected by health organisations to investigate workplace exposures encountered by workers in their occupational activities and the potential health effects that may arise. These datasets have diverse characteristics and are not inherently designed to interoperate. However, they contain complementary information, which, when analysed collectively, can provide a broader perspective on high-risk occupational scenarios and inform targeted prevention strategies. The objective of this study is to develop a methodology to integrate and analyse heterogeneous French data. For this, ten French occupational databases, provided by six French institutes were used. An Ontology-Based Data Integration approach was employed, involving the mapping of data sources to a domain-specific ontology, namely the Adapted Occupational Exposure Ontology. Four additional ontologies were utilised: the Occupational Exposure Thesaurus, which categorises occupational exposures and hazards; the International Classification of Diseases, which classifies health disorders and diseases; the French Nomenclature of Activities, which identifies activity sectors in France; and the Professions and Socio-professional Categories, which defines occupational classifications. Data integration is primarily achieved through the concept of the “occupational group”, defined as a group of individuals sharing the same sex, occupation, and activity sector. Two case studies derived from the integrated dataset are presented: (1) a quantitative analysis identifying occupational groups at highest risk and most affected by diseases; and (2) a qualitative analysis evaluating the consistency of exposure and disease-related information. The construction sector was selected for these case studies due to its significance in occupational health research and the availability of substantial, relevant data. This methodological approach structures all the data and enables various analysis methods to be designed and implemented, making it possible to envisage targeted responses to current and emerging occupational health problems using specialised tools and queries.

Pages: 1 to 18

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2025. Used with permission.

Publication date: June 30, 2025

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2660