Alain Zarli

A Framework to Support Interoperability among Semantic Resources

This paper presents the framework to support the interoperability among Semantic Resources (SRs) proposed by the FUNSIEC project. FUNSIEC aims at studying the feasibility of building and maintaining an Open Semantic Infrastructure for the European Construction Sector (OSIECS). FUNSIEC adopted a layered approach where the SRs are mapped at the meta-schema and schema levels. This process produces the respective OSIECS meta-schema and schema, which support the design of the OSIECS kernel — the heart of the OSIECS infrastructure. This paper presents and discusses the elements involved in FUNSIEC’s work (e.g. framework, architecture, methodology). Some conclusions and future work complete the paper.

Semantic Web Approach to Ease Regulation Compliance Checking in Construction Industry

Regulations in the Building Industry are becoming increasingly complex and involve more than one technical area, covering products, components and project implementations. They also play an important role in ensuring the quality of a building, and to minimize its environmental impact. Control or conformance checking are becoming more complex every day, not only for industrials, but also for organizations charged with assessing the conformity of new products or processes. This paper will detail the approach taken by the CSTB (Centre Scientifique et Technique du Bâtiment) in order to simplify this conformance control task. The approach and the proposed solutions are based on semantic web technologies. For this purpose, we first establish a domain-ontology, which defines the main concepts involved and the relationships, including one based on OWL (Web Ontology Language) [1]. We rely on SBVR (Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules) [2] and SPARQL (SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language) [3] to reformulate the regulatory requirements written in natural language, respectively, in a controlled and formal language. We then structure our control process based on expert practices. Each elementary control step is defined as a SPARQL query and assembled into complex control processes “on demand”, according to the component tested and its semantic definition. Finally, we represent in RDF (Resource Description Framework) [4] the association between the SBVR rules and SPARQL queries representing the same regulatory constraints.

Controlled Vocabularies in the European Construction Sector: Evolution, Current Developments, and Future Trends

In the last 40 years, the development of Controlled Vocabularies (CVs), such as dictionaries, classifications, taxonomies, and of course the “appealing” ontologies, has been the focus of many research projects around the world targeting the Construction sector. Being involved in several pan-European initiatives, the authors of this paper show milestones on the path of evolution (what has happened so far), the current situation (where we are now) in terms of development and adoption of results, the main problems found regarding both development and adoption of the CVs, and finally, present some speculative and provocative ideas about the future of CVs in the European Construction sector.

Towards the Knowledge Capitalisation and Organisation in the Model of Conformity-Checking Process in Construction

This paper presents an ontological method aimed at the capitalization of expert knowledge in the context of semi-automatic checking model of the conformity of construction projects against a set of construction norms. The efficiency of our ontology-based reasoning model relies on two keystones. First, it is based on the matching of construction projects represented by RDF graphs to technical conformity queries formalized as SPARQL queries. Second, our reasoning model integrates the meta-knowledge on conformity checking process. Our approach of capitalizing such knowledge is based on the development of semantic annotations of conformity queries and organizing them into a query base. This helps to formalize the expert knowledge in form of expert rules scheduling the matching operations of the checking process. Semantic annotations of conformity queries also help to generate a structured conformity report, which interprets the results of reasoning in terms of conformity checking in construction.

Knowledge capitalisation and organisation for conformance checking model in construction

This paper presents an ontological method aimed at the capitalisation and organisation of conformance-related knowledge for semi-automatic checking model of the conformance of construction projects against a set of conformance requirements. We start by developing a method for knowledge representation of explicit knowledge taking part in checking, and capitalisation of tacit knowledge defining checking practices. Then we explain our approach for classification, organisation and retrieval of conformance requirements and propose an approach for scheduling these requirements to optimise the checking process. Finally, we introduce our reasoning model that is based on matching graph representations of construction projects and conformance queries, and interpret the acquired results in terms of conformance checking in construction. To validate our approach, we describe a prototype illustrating its feasibility, and discuss ongoing works and perspectives of our research.

TOWARDS A FRAMEWORK FOR MANAGING STANDARDS-BASED SEMANTIC E-RESOURCES IN THE EUROPEAN CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

This paper presents the current status of the FUNSIEC project, discusses the results achieved so far, and unveils the work to be done. FUNSIEC conducts a feasibility study on the creation and maintenance of the Open Semantic Infrastructure for the European Construction Sector (OSIECS) at technical and business levels. FUNSIEC proposes a framework designed around the Semantic Resources (SRs) currently available for the construction sector in Europe. How SRs can be used to support and catalyse the adoption of e-business practices is one of the primary questions to be investigated (and likely answered) by the project. The FUNSIEC approach to produce OSIECS relies on the following pillars: (i) identification of requirements to be fulfilled by OSIECS; (ii) definition of the scenarios where OSIECS is to be used; (iii) specification of the OSIECS conceptual architecture; (iv) the identification of the potential partnerships to be established across Europe to help promoting the use of SRs in the construction sector; and (v) the consideration of the standard-related recommendations over the development and use of SRs. The OSIECS infrastructure is to be made available to information content and service providers, as well as general actors in the construction sector, who are in the position to exploit the advantages of SRs construction-oriented.

Adaptation of the Domain Ontology for Different User Profiles: Application to Conformity Checking in Construction

This paper presents a method for the adaptation of domain ontologies to different contexts and user profiles. It is applied to the modeling of conformity checking in construction. Considering a method we have developed to acquire and represent the expert knowledge involved in the conformity checking process, we highlight the need to reduce the gap between the expert knowledge primary captured in the domain ontology and the end user knowledge. We propose a method to contextualize the ontological knowledge initially acquired and to adapt it to different user profiles.