A Modular Ontology Framework for Building Renovation Domain

Building renovation is a complex collaborative process requiring the interaction between planners, architects, civil engineers, energy experts, and managers of (pre-)manufacturing plants supplying building elements, components of energy supply and distribution systems “just in sequence” to densely used urban spaces – where the majority of buildings under renovation are located. Therefore, the availability of a complete, comprehensive Building Information Model, amalgamating current and future product and process models is of outstanding importance. Approaches, suggesting so-called “monolithic” building information models did not deliver the expected “value for money” since the efforts required to set up and maintain such digital models requested more resources than available. Therefore, the authors present in this paper an alternative approach to information, knowledge management, and sharing in the AECO-sector, i.e. modular ontologies. The flexible and dynamic approach to combine new and available modules of information addresses more responsively the needs of the AECO sector. Furthermore, such BIM models overcome limitations in adaptability, extensibility, etc. of current “openBIM models”. Due to this the shift towards using semantic web technologies for knowledge base and semantic interoperability has been increased in the AECO industry. The work presented in the paper introduces a recently developed linked data, an ontology-based framework that harmonizes and orchestrates ontologies recently developed for the construction domain. It studies inter-model and inter ontology relationships to address concepts that are currently absent from “building ontologies”. The developed framework can be used to support collaborative environments in the engineering and manufacturing sector supporting the efficient sharing of information between architects, engineers, manufacturing plants, and assembly crews on the construction site.