Ontology-Based Information Integration and Decision Making in Prefabricated Construction Component Supply Chain

With rapid developments in cloud computing, the creation of a cloud based prefabricated component supply chain platform marks an important initiative signifying an industry breakthrough and innovation. The application of this cloud platform will effectively integrate the social resources of the prefabricated components supply chain and realize the reconfiguration of distributed resources. In order to facilitate this, much research is needed to develop a flexible prefabricated component data integration model using ontologies and semantics. Such a model can support adaptive heterogeneous system integration and interaction based on dynamic process optimization. In addition, this cloud platform can be used to support coordination within the supply chain using ontology rules. This can greatly enhance managerial decision support. This paper proposes a flexible distributed information integration mechanism and develops an ontology-based management support application, which will play an important role in resource integration and the optimal allocation of prefabricated components within the supply chain

Structural sustainability appraisal in BIM

The provision of Application Programming Interface (API) in BIM-enable tools can contribute to facilitating BIM-related research. APIs are useful links for running plug-ins and external programmes but they are yet to be fully exploited in expanding the BIM scope. The modelling of n-Dimensional (nD) building performance measures can potentially benefit from BIM extension through API implementations. Sustainability is one such measure associated with buildings. For the structural engineer, recent design criteria have put great emphasis on the sustainability credentials as part of the traditional criteria of structural integrity, constructability and cost. This paper examines the utilization of API in BIM extension and presents a demonstration of an API application to embed sustainability issues into the appraisal process of structural conceptual design options in BIM. It concludes that API implementations are useful in expanding the BIM scope. Also, the approach including process modelling, algorithms and object-based instantiations demonstrated in the API implementation can be applicable to other nD building performance measures as may be relevant to the various professional platforms in the construction domain