Ontology Maintenance Plan

This section documents the maintenance plan for the Circular Economy Ontology Network (CEON) and the three use case ontologies developed within the Onto-DESIDE project (Deliverable D3.7).

Overview

Although the Onto-DESIDE project ended in November 2025, the developed ontologies are intended to support further applications where knowledge representation of the Circular Economy domain is required. The maintenance plan ensures CEON remains adaptable, interoperable, and usable over time.

The plan is grounded in the ontology evolution process outlined by Zablith et al., which consists of five essential steps:

Step	Description
Detecting the Need for Evolution	Identifying new requirements the ontology should capture
Suggesting Changes	Conceptualizing, formalizing, and implementing changes
Validating Changes	Verifying consistency and constraint satisfaction
Assessing Impact	Measuring impact on artifacts dependent on the ontology
Managing Changes	Applying, documenting, and version-controlling changes