APRICOT

Behavioural science has enormous potential for addressing the many existential problems facing the world, such as disease and the climate crisis. Realising that potential depends on improving the science, including using precise and shared terms. This will enable researchers and research users to know what each other mean when they use terms, and researchers to integrate complex data and theory across silos, and use machine learning and artificial intelligence in data analysis.

Ontologies represent knowledge precisely. The new research programme: Advancing Prevention Research In Cancer through Ontology Tools (The APRICOT project) builds on the Human Behaviour-Change Project (2016-2023). It will focus on two behaviours key for cancer prevention: smoking cessation and physical activity.

The HCHAI group contributes to the APRICOT project by developing ontology tools and infrastructures such as the py-horned-owl library for manipulating ontologies with Python, the ontology spreadsheet editor, and visualisation tools.

related publications