The role of linked data and the semantic web in building operation

Effective Decision Support Systems (DSS) for building service managers require adequate performance data from many building data silos in order to deliver a complete view of building performance. Current performance analysis techniques tend to focus on a limited number of data sources, such as BMS measured data (temperature, humidity, C02), excluding a wealth of other data sources increasingly available in the modern building, including weather data, occupant feedback, mobile sensors & feedback systems, schedule information, equipment usage information. This paper investigates the potential for using Linked Data and Semantic Web technologies to improve interoperability across AEC domains, overcoming many of the roadblocks hindering information transfer currently

Improving software quality using an ontology-based approach

Ensuring quality in software development is a challenging process. The concepts of anti-pattern and bad code smells utilize the knowledge of reoccurring problems to improve the quality of current and future software development. Anti-patterns describe recurring bad design solutions while bad code smells describe source code that is error-free but difficult to understand and maintain. Code refactoring aims to remove bad code smells without changing a program’s functionality while improving program quality. There are metrics-based tools to detect a few bad code smells from source code; however, the knowledge and understanding of these indicators of low quality software are still insufficient to resolve many of the problems they represent. Minimal research addresses the relationships between or among bad code smells, anti-patterns and refactoring. In this research, we present a new ontology, Ontology for Anti-patterns, Bad Code Smells and Refactoring (OABR), to define the concepts and their relation properties. Such an ontological infrastructure encourages a common understanding of these concepts among the software community and provides more concise definitions that help to avoid overlapping and inconsistent description. It utilizes reasoning capabilities associated with ontology to analyze the software development domain and offer new insights into the domain. Software quality issues such as understandability and maintainability can be improved by identifying and resolving anti-patterns associated with code smells as well as preventing bad code smells before coding begins

Ontology-based metrics computation for business process analysis

Business Process Management (BPM) aims to support the whole life-cycle necessary to deploy and maintain business processes in organisations. Crucial within the BPM lifecycle is the analysis of deployed processes. Analysing business processes requires computing metrics that can help determining the health of business activities and thus the whole enterprise. However, the degree of automation currently achieved cannot support the level of reactivity and adaptation demanded by businesses. In this paper we argue and show how the use of Semantic Web technologies can increase to an important extent the level of automation for analysing business processes. We present a domain-independent ontological framework for Business Process Analysis (BPA) with support for automatically computing metrics. In particular, we define a set of ontologies for specifying metrics. We describe a domain-independent metrics computation engine that can interpret and compute them. Finally we illustrate and evaluate our approach with a set of general purpose metrics

Eco Global Evaluation: Cross Benefits of Economic and Ecological Evaluation

This paper highlights the complementarities of cost and environmental evaluation in a sustainable approach. Starting with the needs and limits for whole product lifecycle evaluation, this paper begins with the modeling, data capture and performance indicator aspects. In a second step, the information issue, regarding the whole lifecycle of the product is addressed. In order to go further than the economical evaluations/assessment, the value concept (for a product or a service) is discussed. Value could combine functional requirements, cost objectives and environmental impact. Finally, knowledge issues which address the complexity of integrating multi-disciplinary expertise to the whole lifecycle of a product are discussing.EcoSD NetworkEcoSD networ

Automatic detection of accommodation steps as an indicator of knowledge maturing

Jointly working on shared digital artifacts – such as wikis – is a well-tried method of developing knowledge collectively within a group or organization. Our assumption is that such knowledge maturing is an accommodation process that can be measured by taking the writing process itself into account. This paper describes the development of a tool that detects accommodation automatically with the help of machine learning algorithms. We applied a software framework for task detection to the automatic identification of accommodation processes within a wiki. To set up the learning algorithms and test its performance, we conducted an empirical study, in which participants had to contribute to a wiki and, at the same time, identify their own tasks. Two domain experts evaluated the participants’ micro-tasks with regard to accommodation. We then applied an ontology-based task detection approach that identified accommodation with a rate of 79.12%. The potential use of our tool for measuring knowledge maturing online is discussed