Semantic Web for an Integrated Urban Software System

Many software applications are available to support the assessment of urban development for specific domains such as land use, transportation, energy usage, rainfall run-off and urban water systems. However, addressing all these applications in one project is hardly feasible. Currently no framework is available for integrating these applications. This means that integration efforts in this domain largely rely on proprietary solutions. For the past few years, a lot of effort has been made to develop the next generation of the internet, called Semantic Web. The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web, and offers technology to make data on the web machineinterpretable (Figure 1). machine-interpretable information, which can work in collaboration with other services. In order to establish this collaboration, interoperability is necessary. By relating machineinterpretable information to each other, inference support can help consistency and can support further interoperability. For example, consider that a, b and c are information pieces that are necessary for different applications to run. When a = b and b = c, then you could infer that a = c. This means that information piece a can also be used as c for another application. Semantic Web supports these kinds of reasoning processes. This paper proposes to use Semantic Web technology for integrating applications for urban development. A prototype implementation has been developed based upon this technology as a proof of concept (Figure 2). Establishing proof and trust Security and digital signature for e-business Reasoning (forward/backward chaining) If …. then …. Concept definitions on different levels of complexity Standardized syntax Unique addressing enabling global acces

Ontology-based demand support systems for urban development

Demand support systems (DSSs) can help clients by presenting design solutions using virtual reality, and by offering relevant feedback such as costs, energy usage, distances and density. Using these systems, clients and stakeholders can run 'what-if' scenarios on different design solutions and see the consequences of their changes. To make sure that a DSS is suitable, it needs to cope with the project situation at hand. This paper investigates DSSs that can be built 'on-site' and that are flexible enough to model project-specific issues. A custom-built DSS can be tailored for each project. Therefore this paper explores the use of ontologies. The use of an ontology enables further reuse of software components and software models. With this approach, several parts of software components can be reused and put together to quickly develop a customised DSS. This paper describes this approach and demonstrates a prototype implementation that is useful for urban design projects in early design phases

Ontology Based Communications Through Model Driven Tools: Feasibility of the MDA Approach in Urban Engineering Projects

Enterprises today face many challenges related to lack of interoperability. Enterprise applications and software systems need to be interoperable in order to achieve seamless business across organisational boundaries and thus achieve virtual networked organisations. IEEE defines interoperability as “the ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged”. MDA is the OMG instantiation of an approach to software development kown as Model Driven Engineering (MDE) or Model Driven Development (MDD). MDD focuses on Models as the primary artefacts in the development process, with Transformations as the primary operation on models, used to map information from one model to another. There is presently an important paradigm shift in the field of software engineering that may have important consequences on the way information systems are built and maintained. Model-driven development (MDD), and in particular OMG's Model-Driven Architecture ® (MDA®), is emerging as the state of practice for developing modern enterprise applications and software systems. The MDD paradigm improves the way of addressing and solving interoperability issues compared to earlier non-modelling approaches. However, developing correct and useful models is not an easy task. We believe that there is a need for an interoperability framework that provides guidance on how MDD should be applied to address interoperability. A key to the success of MDD is the development of ontologies supporting the mapping from one model to another, either at the same level of abstraction or at different levels. Various approaches have been proposed and tested, starting from common ontologies, shared by all the models, to local ontologies, specific to each software. We propose here to discuss the applicability of MDD to the urban civil engineering (UCE) field. This should help to establish the requirements for ontologies to be applied for interoperability of systems commonly used in this domain. In the first section of this paper, we briefly introduce some key principles of the MDA approach and the role of ontologies in model transformation approaches. The following section describes the Model Driven Development (MDD) interoperability framework. The last part presents a way of applying the MDA techniques to urban civil engineering projects, with the objective of testing the feasibility and relevancy of the approach to this domain

3D spatial infrastructure for the Port of Rotterdam

This report presents the investigations, developments and the result of the project 3D spatial data infrastructure, funded by Next Generation Infrastructures, Maasvlakte 2.OTBArchitecture and The Built Environmen

Strategic perspectives on the use of virtual reality within the building industries of four countries

This paper presents results from the first stage of an analysis of the use of virtual reality (VR) within the building industries of strategically selected countries, namely, China, Sweden, the UK and the US. The aims of the research are to assess VR usage and its benefits within the building industries of these countries and to identify perceived barriers to VR usage and ways of overcoming them. The countries selected offer a range of experience in the adoption of VR technologies and the paper provides an initial analysis of developments at an international level. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with senior professionals from each of six leading construction companies within each country. The findings included the rationale for the adoption of VR and the barriers to doing so, as well as some divergence between the respondents in their working definition of what visualization and, specifically, VR actually represents