Currently, two existing syndromic surveillance oriented ontologies* Biocaster and ESSO*have been loaded into the cKASS triple store and can be used as a basis to construct new syndrome definitions. Both KBs can be queried using SPARQL and SQL. Conclusions cKASS offers public health professionals and clinicians an environment to support the extension and modification of existing KBs, without the need to use complex ontology editing environments and formalisms, allowing the user to rapidly develop or augment existing syndrome definitions and react quickly to the changing surveillance landscape. Keywords Syndrome surveillance; knowledge authoring; ontology (1). Producers were informed of the problem by their swine processing facility. Tissue samples from affected producers were culture-positive for Mycobacterium avium. In the spring of 2010, USDA Veterinary Services (VS) began monitoring weekly ADRS STB carcass condemn data after a VS Staff Officer was made aware of unusual increases in STB condemns in another region. By June 2010, STB condemn rates in both of the affected areas decreased to typical seasonal levels; however, beginning January 2011, rates again rose beyond baseline seasonal highs, exceeding those seen in the 2010 outbreak.