Wiki-Con: A Pragmatic Approach for Semantic Interoperability for Construction Projects
Iván Mutis, Raja R. A. Issa · American Society of Civil Engineers eBooks · 2015
This research addresses semantic interoperability by conceptually exploring the activities of communication when individuals aim dissimilar commitments to concept meanings in construction projects (i.e., addressing multiple commitments to the meanings of the same object or, alternatively, multiple ways to define such object). This research proposes a conceptual approach based on relevance theory to conceptually define multiple independent knowledge contexts in projects, which are user, community of practices, and modeler contexts. The conceptual approach gives clarity on the way the commitments to the meaning of representations take place in construction projects. The approach is pragmatic since it is concerned with the importance of the project participant dynamic as fundamental conceptual elements. The approach defines ontological categorizations to analyze the project social fabric, which dynamic establishes its underlying mechanisms. The claim is that when the dynamic is captured by the use of mediation technology, it is possible to register the participants’ positive cognitive effect and cognitive processing effort. Such effects and efforts are in terms of perception, memory, and inference, required to choose an input from the mass of competing stimuli. Therefore, the underlying mechanism mirrors the dynamic of social fabric for the participants, which translates into what is relevant to the participant within the context. To demonstrate this approach using mediation information technologies, this project built as semantic resource system, Wiki-Con. Semantic resources are all sort of artifacts with mediation meaning capability through sign systems. Wiki-con’s functionality is akin to a knowledge broker system. At the core of the Wiki-Con system is domain ontology that focuses on relating concepts from independent knowledge context rather than on building formal concept-correctness using formal linguistic-rigor. Wiki-Con serves as controlled vocabulary engine, which in turns provides class (concept) definitions for the construction project.