Per Christiansson

Ontologies to Support RFID-Based Link between Virtual Models and Construction Components

: Virtual models have in recent years proven their worth in practice in building design. Today, virtual models of a complete building project are often created before the project is carried out in practice. The immediate advantages of this new working process are great; it reduces the number of errors, it gives a better production basis, and it improves clarity and enhances communication compared to traditional 2D drafting methods. However, there is still much unutilized potential in the virtual models, especially for use in the construction and operation phases. A digital link between the virtual models and the physical components in the construction process can improve the information handling and sharing in construction and building operation management. Such a link can be created by means of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. Ontologies play an important role as the foundation for information sharing between trading partners, reuse of data from one phase in construction to the next, integration of process and product models with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, easy access of information, communication of data through networks, reading of data stored in electronic tags, etc. This article reviews existing ontologies relevant in relation to creating such a digital link between virtual models and the physical components. The ontologies are reviewed from an ontology consumer (system developer) point of view. The ontologies are categorized according to their applicability to specification of technical services, resources, organizational relations, business processes, and overall frameworks for ontology descriptions and their relations. It is concluded, with a few modifications for industrial use, the technical service and resource ontologies are applicable and that the meta-, organizational, and business process ontologies need further development and industrial maturity to be applicable for use in system development.

User Driven Innovation in the Building Process

During the late years there has been an ever-increasing focus on the possibilities to change the building process to raise quality on the final building products as well as the activities of actors involved in the building process. One reason for this interest is the new opportunities evolving due to introduction of advanced information and communication technology (ICT). The paper focuses on creative changes of the building process powered by user driven innovation activities. An overview of existing user driven innovation methodologies is given as well experiences from the ongoing Virtual Innovation in Construction (VIC) project. One important driving force for change is the opportunity for users to develop and articulate real needs concerning for example different functionalities of a building and its parts, but also on artifacts supporting the actual needs capture and requirements formulation during building design. A general methodological framework and meta ontology for Virtual Innovation in Construction is presented as well as findings from implementation of the method.

Knowledge Representations and Information Flow in the Intelligent Building

The concept of Intelligent Building was established 1982 by AT&T. The Informart building was erected in Dallas to demonstrate how advanced IT from different suppliers could be used in the intelligent building. Now almost 20 years later industry and researchers again starts to talk about new services in the intelligent and responsive buildings and digital cities. The paper gives an overview of existing and potential new services of the intelligent buildings and how these services may be designed and implemented using advanced IT. Special emphasis is on the relation between new services, user interfaces, the cooperative building and underlying knowledge representations as well as services integration on physical networks, communication protocols, systems and applications levels in the intelligent and responsive buildings.

Semantic Web Supported Knowledge Management System: An approach to Enhance Collaborative Building Design

This paper focuses on a lightweight ontology-based knowledge management system, which is a main component of IT-CODE, a Semantic Web based virtual workspace for enhancing the collaboration at an early building design stage. Technologies with respect to de facto standards that are proposed by industry group W3C are implemented to develop this knowledge management system. Resource Description Framework (RDF) associated with its Schema (RDFS) is selected as ontology language of the system. RDF(S) with its embedded reasoning techniques provides a rich set of constructs to facilitate the generation of ontologies so that the annotated information can be machine readable. Initiatives taken in the building industry for the evolution of the Semantic Web will be overviewed in this paper. Potential benefits offered by the RDF(S)-based knowledge management system to the building industry will be explained. Approaches of how the knowledge is represented in RDF-based ontology, is shared and retrieved among actors participating in the early design phase of a building project will also be described and illustrated. The paper will conclude with a description of how the early design phase may benefit from IT-CODE and its innovative knowledge management system.

Building a city advisor in a 'hypermedia' environment

In this paper examples are given of how modern information technology may have an impact on the way we build and use computerised models for different applications. The KBS-MEDIA (knowledge-based systems-media) group of projects is described. These projects are aimed at integrating advanced software techniques (knowledge-based systems, HyperCard from Apple Computer, etc) with new distribution and storage media. The ‘hyperdocuments’ which are created possess powerful man-machine interface and dynamic model-building properties. The system described forms a demonstration environment used in different applications to capture, test, and communicate ideas, so allowing fast prototyping. New tools for building and using ‘hypermedia’ systems have been defined, created, and tested. These tools are adapted to the needs of the people intended to use them, by means of ‘friendly’ interfaces. Some comments are made on the ideas behind the project, as well as on how the KBS-MEDIA environment is used in the ‘City Advisor’ application.

Advanced material and vendor information system— AMVI☆

Abstract In the existing KBS-MEDIA [knowledgebased systems-media) environment demonstration systems (demonstrators) are built to support different phases in the building process—City Advisor, Material and Vendor Information, Building Maintenance etc. In this environment new concepts and tools are defined and tried out in connection with using, building and maintaining the systems formed by advanced software and new media. The report describes a demonstration system for ‘Advanced Material and Vendor Information’. The work has been carried through as a joint project between the department of Structural Engineering at Lund University and the Swedish Building Centre in Stockholm. The users have on application level access to the underlying facts bases as relational databases, audio/visual image banks on videodisk and hard disk and tool boxes through a context dependent interface. Existing databases are also transferred to the system. Background agents are created to help users/system-builders to control the access and growth of the system during use. Different representations are used (analogical, hypertext, relational databases, decision trees, neural nets, objectoriented, etc.) which are loosely linked and more or less formalizing our real world. Great emphasis is on the user interface which has multimedia properties. The system forms a demonstration environment used to capture, test and communicate ideas thus admitting fast prototyping of the next generation integrated material and vendor information systems for the building industry.

Dynamic knowledge nets in a changing building process

Abstract Hypotheses and explanation models are put forward about the future global structure, manipulation and transfer of knowledge. The so called Dynamic Knowledge Nets, DKN, are defined and used to explain changes for the next generation of computerized communication and knowledge handling systems. More and more powerful tools become available to model and visualize different parts of our reality. These tools will influence our possibilities to create useful models and will also have a great impact on how these models are integrated and accessed. Behind the interfaces dwell more and more capable integrated knowledge representations which are closely related to pertinent search strategies. It is now possible in a changing building process to create models which bring about a clearer and more obvious connection between the applications, our intentions and the computer stored models. The systems we are formulating today may thus provide us with dramatically better communication tools as communication rooms, personal “telescreens”, and virtual realities. We must formulate and try out new concepts. New tools for building, using and maintaining the next generation systems have been and are continuously created and tested at the KBS-MEDIA LAB (knowledge based systems-media) at Lund University. Examples are given outgoing from ongoing research mainly the Material and Vendor Information and Building Maintenance Systems as well as Decision Support at the Building Site. These systems can shortly be described as multi agent environments with multimedia context dependent user interfaces to underlying facts bases.

Building Management and ICT Learning in Civil Engineering Education

The paper presents structures of the learning domains of building informatics exemplified with experiences from building management civil engineering and open education in Industrial IT at Aalborg University. The courses cover areas such as; object oriented programming and relational database design, human computer interface, user environment design and usability engineering, computer supported collaborative working, knowledge management, virtual buildings, intelligent buildings, and building systems simulation. Experiences from many years involvement in ICT supported learning and development of ICT in construction courses are reported with particular emphasis on the Aalborg University Project Oriented Problem Based learning model, PPBL. Experiences from present and possible future use of virtual learning spaces and ICT tools to support teaching, learning, and (meta) information handling taking into account improvement of learning styles, course content and learning material is also reported.

Using knowledge nodes for knowledge discovery and collaboration

Today most of the information we produce is stored digitally. We are slowly forced to leave behind us thinking about information as something stored in physical containers as books, drawings etc. We make it possible to dynamically create logical containers of information on the fly. The paper focuses on how we in the future can aggregate, classify and generalize digitally stored information in order to make it more accessible and how we can define underlying knowledge container models to support knowledge discovery and collaboration. Examples are picked from ongoing research and the outcomes are generally valid and in particular for the structural engineering field.