A Model for Integrating Construction Design and Schedule Data
Zhigang Shen, Raja R. A. Issa, William James O'Brien · 2003
The difficulty of timely retrieval of useful information from heterogeneous data sources is a major cause of low productivity in the construction industry. The goal of this research is to provide a new methodology to handle the data-heterogeneity problems encountered in a construction project. This research proposes a tree-structured product model, which binds design knowledge, cost data and schedule data together, as a feasible solution for the data integration problem in construction projects. The methodology uses the knowledge representation of construction projects based on an ontology. Meta-data are used to describe the conceptual structure of the project knowledge. The concept of views is used to answer particular queries from different domains. A general methodology is under development to support queries about a particular construction project from different user perspectives based on heterogeneous construction data sources in a dynamic environment. The research is composed of two major parts: (1) organize the heterogeneous construction data into a tree structure; and (2) retrieve information and obtain domain views by specifying the ways of traversing the tree. The future goal is to develop a prototype that will support some of the major functions needed in today's construction projects. Functional examples are used to demonstrate the validity of the proposed methodology.