Ivan Mutis

Ontology based framework using a semantic web for addressing semantic reconciliation in construction

Exchanging, sharing, or integrating information in the construction industry involve the reconciliation of multiple data formats, structures and schemas with minimal human interaction. Approaching interoperability employing these models via integration, mapping or merging information forces the use of purely syntactical layers with heavy human intervention. Enhancing our ability to explicitly model information and to find methods that consistently harmonize the construction participants use of common language will allow interoperability to be moved to new levels of flexibility and automation by structuring the information upon semantic levels. These levels must have conceptualization aspects to define knowledge, a common vocabulary that covers the syntax, symbols, grammars, and axiomatization that captures inference. Our approach inherits the ability of enhancing interoperability at the syntactic and semantic levels of the Semantic web and proposes onto-semantic schemas, which are ontology constructs of concepts of the construction domain. The approach produces an analysis from the primitives to more refined concepts using the Semantic Webs power of representation with the purpose of enhancing interoperability at semantic and syntactic levels.

Ontology in the AEC Industry: A Decade of Research and Development in Architecture, Engineering, and Construction

Researchers and students in civil engineering, construction management, and computer science will find this publication a valuable resource.

SEMANTIC SCHEMAS FOR SPECIFICATION PROCESSES IN THE AEC DOMAIN

The successful integration of information in the construction industry depends on the degree of support for standardization efforts by industry and academia. The essence of the standards is to operate in a common denominator layer, which includes the language to share information between parties. However the main difficulty in exchanging information resides in relating two or more actor or participant’s data representations from each of their sources. This difficulty makes it impossible to coordinate processes, exchange constraints, and manipulate information among the actors. Several approaches to cope with this problem employ languages, like PSL- Process Specification Language, and XPLD- Process, Definition Languages. The proposed approach revaluates the specification languages and uses a schema to model the processes, labeled semantic schemas, which mediate among each actor’s data representation. The schema contains a semantic component that describes the processes requested by the actors. This approach uses an architecture that resembles database mediation, but the proposed architecture differs in the mechanism. The main advantage of this approach is that it will enhance the reusability of the schema for future repetitive transactions and for multiple actors. In this context, the objective of this research is to provide the necessary theory and understanding of modeling processes in the construction domain given schemas that mediate the semantics between data representations of the participants.

Enhancing Spatial and Temporal Cognitive Ability in Construction Education Through Augmented Reality and Artificial Visualizations

It is essential to provide the future industry workforce to fully develop the learning abilities to effectively solve construction problems. The Construction Management (CM) students’ ability to solve problems is hindered by the lack of exposure to construction processes on the job-site, which results in the students’ lack of understanding of the dynamic complex spatial constraints (e.g., how construction products are related to one another in particular contextual space) and the temporal constraints (e.g., the dependencies for coordinating subcontractors’ processes). As the spatial-temporal-constraint problems pervade projects during the construction phase, their full understating to solve CM problems will significantly enable students to improve productivity levels. This research uses Augmented Reality Technology (ART) and a layer of artificial visualizations to simulate the environmental context and spatial temporal constraints. The superimposition of images serves as an instructional mechanism to virtually incorporate jobsite experiences. The assumption is that the enhancement of spatial-temporal constraints enables learners to visualize context and hidden processes. Therefore, this research expects to demonstrate a significant improvement of the perception of the reality through the combination of two layers (the real environment and the computer-generated information) including the learners’ ability to understand the complexity of construction products (e.g., assemblies) and associated process in the jobsite.

Learning to Appropriate a Project Social Network System Technology

Construction project participants constitute a complex social human network composed of a heterogeneous and fragmented set of stakeholders. The disjoint group of actors that team to work on a project constitutes collective entities, social networks at different scales in time and space. There is a need to incorporate new social network systems that respond to the demand for the interfacing of actors’ communication in the construction project practices. For this purpose, it is critical to understand how social actors interact with these new technologies. This research proposes a framework to understand the actors’ learning process of a social networking system technology, in particular an in-house developed social-network- system for construction projects. The challenge is to understand the interplay of social network system and social actors, as it involves the interaction of multiple actors. It is expected that learning and understanding the components of this technology will lead learners to effectively use the its resources and enable them to effectively appropriate its associated processes for its use, including communication and coordination with the construction work force, and creation, contribution, and distribution of information content.

A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR MAPPING DATA REPRESENTATION IN THE AEC DOMAIN

There is a need in the construction industry to develop strong interaction between customers, contractors, and owners, using emerging technologies to facilitate communication and collaborative use of project information. A successful implementation of these technologies enables integration of project information based on real time and transparent information transfers to make decis ions or to work on concurrent engineering. New approaches using data representation standards, which allow stakeholders’ computer systems to exchange information between actors, have been used for the implementation of this integration. However, the main o bstacle in enabling integration of the data representation is the matching process involved in tying data together. This process is complex but it is the ‘glue’ of the integration process and is very critical in making the exchange of information possible. This research is intended to develop new approaches for data representations in the construction domain to facilitate the mapping process between stakeholders. The research will determine the main characteristics of the data representations needed to per form matching operations in order to formulate alternative solutions and expedite the information exchange process. The proposed approach uses schema-matching prototypes. The result of this approach is to produce a framework that contains an analysis of th e typical data representation of the actors in the construction domain.