Tamer E. El-Diraby

Dynamic knowledge-based process integration portal for collaborative construction

There is a need to support collaborative coordinated construction through the integration of work processes across various stakeholders, disciplines, and projects. Due to the fast-growing complexities of domain-wide coordination and collaboration, coupled with the emerging opportunities of knowledge sharing, a knowledge-based approach is believed to be the way to go. Knowledge-based process integration takes into account explicit and formal semantics (meaning) of processes. It aims at supporting seamless integration of knowledge-carrying processes. This paper presents a prototype collaborative portal for domain-wide process integration. The portal is ontology-based: semantic process representation is enabled through ontologies, and knowledge-based process integration is facilitated through an ontology merger. The portal aims at offering an efficient value-adding collaboration platform through multidimensional process integration for producing a common workflow that goes beyond listing of processes to a kn...

Merging Architectural, Engineering, and Construction Ontologies

Ontologies have emerged as a means of facilitating semantic interoperability among computer systems. However, recognizing that no single universally agreed-on ontology can ever be defined for a domain, a tool that allows ontologies to interoperate becomes essential to semantic interoperability. This paper presents an ontology integrator (Onto-Integrator) for facilitating ontology interoperability within the architectural, engineering, and construction (AEC) domain. The Onto-Integrator offers a heuristic for ontology merging, including the merging of concept taxonomies, relations, and axioms. Unlike existing tools, the integrator addresses ontology merging requirements that are specific to the AEC domain. The integrator heuristic was implemented into a prototype Web-based tool and was evaluated through a focus group.

Domain Ontology for Construction Knowledge

AbstractAn ontology is a claim on/for knowledge that attempts to model what is known about a domain of discourse. A domain ontology does not aim to exhaustively list all concepts in a domain, but rather to build an abstract (yet extendable) philosophical (yet practical) conceptualization of the essence of knowledge in a domain. At the core of any ontology is an ontological model—an architecture of how the world (in a domain) behaves (or becomes). The ontology categorizes construction knowledge across three main dimensions: concept, modality, and context. Concept encompasses five key terms: entity (further subdivided into generic and secondary), environmental element, abstract concept, attribute, and system (combinations of the previous four types). Modality is a means for generating a variety of types for each of the described concepts. Context allows for linking concepts in a variety of ways—creating different worlds.

SSWP: A Social Semantic Web Portal for Effective Communication in Construction

In the construction industry, there is a pressing need for computer systems that will facilitate information exchange and knowledge sharing among all industry practitioners. The Social Semantic Web Portal (SSWP) proposed in this paper will accomplish three tasks: (1) the streamlining of information exchange about any individual project, (2) the encouragement of knowledge sharing in general, and (3) the virtual grouping of people with similar interests to form communities of practice. A domain ontology is developed in order to encapsulate knowledge about industrial actors and their roles in relation to sibling ontologies that conceptualize construction products and processes. This domain ontology is then tailored to be the cornerstone (the knowledge base) that will enable the semantics of Web services. The concept of the Social Web is employed to validate knowledge items and to connect users with similar interests. The information flow is realized through a content-based publish/subscribe system. The SSWP will semantically connect a user with knowledge items and socially link a user to his/her peers.

Social Semantic Approach to Support Communication in AEC

Communication systems in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry face many challenges. This paper proposes construction information and knowledge portal (CIKP), an information and knowledge-management system that utilizes three technologies to address the challenges in information exchange and knowledge sharing. First, a semantic web that is unlike typical data-exchange standards because ontologies present human knowledge in a machine-interpretable manner. This provides for more linguistic-friendly representation of tacit/subjective knowledge, which increases the level of human-friendliness of communication systems. Second, a social web, which links people (instead of documents) to create communities of practice (CoPs) and allows people to share, reconfigure, and generate knowledge. Finally, publish/subscribe (pub/sub) systems, which provide for a push-pull scenario for information exchange. In the proposed system, any knowledge item (KI) (e.g., a document, website, and blog) will b...

Ontological Modeling of Infrastructure Products and Related Concepts

The large number of infrastructure renewal projects taking place along congested urban transportation corridors poses several challenges for all project proponents. As such, closer integration of processes between all stakeholders is required throughout a project life cycle. This integration can be accomplished through enhancing interorganizational information interoperability. This paper presents ontologies, an emerging tool that is gaining momentum in the computer science field and has great potential to facilitate knowledge sharing and interoperability. A four-layer distributed ontology for representing infrastructure products and related concepts is presented. The root level is a representation of the abstract superclasses (entities and supporting concepts) on which the next levels construct their semantics. The next two levels are considered ontologies specific to the domain of infrastructure products but are created at different levels of detail to maintain consistency with other ontology development efforts. The final level is the application ontology that uses the core knowledge defined at the domain level to create sets of task-specific ontologies. In this paper, an urban infrastructure design coordination ontology is presented. The ontology was then used to build a collaborative system based on the geographic information system to support design coordination of utilities along urban transportation corridors. The system demonstrates how ontologies can be used to streamline the utility design coordination process among utility companies and municipalities.

Civil Infrastructure Decision Making as a Chaotic Sociotechnical System: Role of Information Systems in Engaging Stakeholders and Democratizing Innovation

The web is no longer simply a medium for people to exchange text. Thanks to social media (Web 2.0), it is morphing into a new socioeconomic space where e-citizen, e-democracy and crowdsourcing are becoming not only cultural paradigms, but also business drivers. Web 3.0 (the semantic web) is promising to integrate meaning, text mining, and lexical analysis into web transactions. Beyond commenting and sharing media, the upcoming Web 4.0 (some call it the intelligent web) aims to foster the realization of the knowledge society, where people harness collective intelligence to achieve not only social goals, but more importantly, codevelop knowledge products (apps or analysis tools) that can be sold in the global marketplace (Hendler and Berners-Lee 2010). In such a connected, knowledge-savvy society, a future where communities really lead decision making in urban infrastructure is not far-fetched. Empowered by apps and interactive authoring tools, communities will be able to develop project ideas (technical and nontechnical). They will also be able to analyze ideas by others and collaborate to bridge gaps and collate ideas. In such a situation, the roles (and value-added) of public officials and engineers shift from developing/presenting project ideas to communities into a realm where they work and develop tools for enabling and facilitating the self-organization of citizens’ own ideas. This paper presents a vision for the future of infrastructure development and decisionmaking in light of emerging socioeconomic and technical forces that are shaping our society—mainly the increasing desire for sustainability, globalization, e-society, and the knowledge economy. The objective of this rather hypothetical (and certainly fallible) scenario is not to predict the future. Rather, the aim is to stimulate a discussion about such a future, with specific emphasis on the role of engineers in the evolving knowledge economy. Metaphorically, in the typical mode of operation of infrastructure, the customer (the general public) delegates decision powers to public officials. Public officials retain engineers to provide professional technical services. The introduction of environmental review and community engagement (CE) legislation in the 1970s was supposed to bring some bottom-up input (views from the community) to the planning and decision-making processes. However, CE processes typically exemplified a “decide, announce, defend” mentality (Beierle 1999). Lately, the lack of suitable understanding of the needs of the web-native stakeholders contrasts with social trends and the very essence of sustainable development (where social needs are at the center). Consequently, increasing community opposition to projects have been documented in many cases with impacts on total project costs and duration. One way that cities are trying to catch up is through the use of social media tools for CE, such as crowdsourcing. For example, SeeClickFix (a Facebook-like site) is a new application that enables users in many cities to report issues with infrastructure (Nash 2009). The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) used a virtual game along with an online news story to let readers generate and study funding options for the mushrooming infrastructure deficit (CBC 2011). As interesting as these reactive applications may be, knowledgeempowered communities are starting to develop more proactive applications. It is hypothesized that, like other issues of life, the public will want to be the direct source of all ideas—technical and nontechnical. They will want public officials and engineers to use their professional knowledge in technology and business to help them analyze and collate their own ideas, resolve conflicts, and professionally produce their ideas into a viable project. As a case in point, in 2004, the Mayor of Paris announced renovation plans for the Les Halles Garden. A local residents’ association objected due to the inadequate level of residents’ involvement. As a countereffort, they bid the design job to users of Second Life—a virtual reality/parallel world web site, where people create avatars (virtualdoubles) of themselves. As an incentive, the winning project was to receive 275,000 lindens (the e-currency of Second Life). Virtual teams from across the world worked together to develop a new design for the facility. The winning design was developed by a French group with global virtual help from Canada, China, and Germany (L’association ACCOMPLIR 2010).

Integrating Value Engineering and Context-Sensitive Solutions: The St. Clair Avenue West Transit Improvements Project

The designers of transportation infrastructures are increasingly using the term “context-sensitive design” (CSD) or the broader term “context-sensitive solutions” (CSSs) to refer to a design process that strives to be more cognizant of its surrounding environment. Transportation infrastructures, especially in urban environments, are part of a much larger urban ecology that consists of a complex set of natural and human-made systems. As such, design guidelines that solely address engineering and safety considerations have proved themselves incapable of delivering street designs that respond to the functional requirements of the multitude of stakeholders within urban environments. Analysis of these requirements is a necessary first step for any successful CSD-CSS. In this regard, value engineering has been identified as a successful tool for product functional analysis. Several phases of value engineering overlap with the guiding principles of CSD-CSS. As such, this paper presents a value engineering framework that can be used for the analysis of the functional requirements of urban streets within a CSD-CSS approach. To place the proposed framework into context, a major transit improvement project in the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, was studied. Seven of the main design elements were analyzed against the primary and secondary objectives identified by the value engineering process. Almost all objectives were attained by the design elements selected. The proposed framework and analysis of the case study show that the value engineering methodology can be efficiently used to address the needs of CSD design of urban streets.

Implementation of subsurface utility engineering in Ontario: cases and a cost model

This paper investigates a relatively new engineering service that is being introduced in Ontario: subsurface utility engineering (SUE). This service combines civil engineering, surveying, geophysics, and nondestructive excavation for the accurate mapping of underground utilities. This paper presents the results of a one-year study that investigated the use of SUE on large infrastructure projects in Ontario. The study involved performing a detailed cost analysis of nine successful SUE projects, four of which are presented in this paper. Potential cost savings were estimated for each case study and all indicated that SUE has a positive return on investment. In addition, two industry-wide surveys were conducted to investigate the effects of inaccurate utility information on projects. Results indicate that inaccurate utility information has a significant impact on project cost, schedule, and damage to existing utilities. Using the results of the case study analysis and the survey, a generic cost model for SUE...

Infrastructure development in the knowledge city

This paper presents a roadmap for establishing a semantic Web-based environment for coordinating infrastructure project development. The proposed roadmap uses semantic knowledge management and web service concepts to integrate all aspects of infrastructure project development. The roadmap focuses on integrating business, safety and sustainability dimensions in addition to traditional engineering aspects. The roadmap also emphasizes a process-oriented approach to the development of e-infrastructure.