Applying Context to Systems Integration in AEC
Yimin Zhu · 2005
Large-scale capital programs, often involving many concurrent projects with huge amount of investment, multiple years of planning, design and construction and thus great social and economic impact, bear many features of dynamic, or ad-hoc, collaboration mainly due to the fact that they have multiple, volatile yet collaborative organizations, as well as heterogeneous supporting information systems. In order to provide an integrated information base for decision support, many previous studies focused on a strategy of sharing a common semantic model among heterogeneous data sources. Such a strategy has many obvious benefits; however, it works only when it is possible for heterogeneous data sources to share the common semantic model. For collaborating systems that cannot share a common semantic model, a different strategy is needed. This paper, based on the theories and the principles developed in the computer science, discusses the concept of context and its potential applications to AEC (Architecture Engineering Construction)-related systems integration, the dichotomy of semantics and context, and a conceptual solution of using context to assist systems integration. Limitations and future studies will also be discussed.