Browsing by Author "Boukamp, Frank"

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Ontology-Based Approach to Context Representation and Reasoning for Managing Context-Sensitive Construction Information
(2011-09-01)
Wang, Han-Hsiang
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Boukamp, Frank
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Elghamrawy, Tarek
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土木工程學系
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Department of Civil Engineering
The construction industry is an information-intensive industry and heavily relies on documents, including physical and virtual documentation and models, to exchange context-sensitive information among different project participants. Many research efforts have been made to help manage construction information; however, few of them considered the context-sensitive nature of the information. In this paper, the writers propose a new approach to facilitate the management of context-sensitive construction information that is stored in different textual documents. The approach addresses the context-sensitive nature of construction information by representing contexts in ontologies and by using contexts as indices of the information. The approach also presents a reasoning mechanism that leverages the semantically rich features of ontologies to reason about contexts to evaluate their applicabilities. Two case studies were conducted, and the results showed the proposed approach can effectively retrieve, classify, and manage construction information. Finally, the writers discuss the limitations of the proposed approach and future research directions. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)CP.1943-5487.0000094. (C) 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.
Ontology-Based Representation and Reasoning Framework for Supporting Job Hazard Analysis
(2011-11-01)
Wang, Han-Hsiang
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Boukamp, Frank
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土木工程學系
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Department of Civil Engineering
Job hazard analysis (JHA) is a process of identifying potential hazards for each step of an activity and proposing safety rules to prevent potential incidents related to these hazards. In the United States, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recommends performing JHA for construction activities to highlight and react to potential hazards. JHA commonly requires brainstorming sessions to identify steps and associated hazards within construction activities. A company's personnel involved in JHAs rely on their experience-and often also on the company's internal knowledge represented in the form of safety rules. However, the complexity and time-consuming nature of JHA prevent safety personnel from adjusting JHAs quickly when changes in the construction methods and the schedule are made. This paper presents a framework aiming to improve access to a company's JHA knowledge. The framework uses ontologies for structuring knowledge about activities, job steps, and hazards. It also includes an ontological reasoning mechanism for identifying safety rules applicable to given activities. The framework has been validated through several test cases using real JHA documents. The results of the validations are discussed, and conclusions for future research are drawn. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)CP.1943-5487.0000125. (C) 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.