Process Oriented Collaboration in Grid-Environments: A Case Study in the Construction Industry

This paper addresses the process-oriented collaboration based on a grid-based platform for the support of virtual organizations (VO), illustrated on the example of the construction industry. Distributed, organizational and IT-structures of teams involved in vintage complex projects cannot be managed with conventional methods in an appropriate manner. Both using a grid platform and grid-based services, in conjunction with semantic methods for consistency saving and goal-oriented process management can increase the efficiency of collaboration processes in large-scale projects. A hybrid grid- and web service-based architecture for the next generation of VO service and a gateway solution was developed integrating the process-oriented perspective and prototypically implemented. The problem, as well as the solution on the basis of the hybrid system architecture combing the benefits of the cutting-edge technologies, the methodical concept for modeling VO processes and their automated execution on a grid platform are discussed in detail

User Requirements Capture in Distributed Project Environments: A Process-centred Approach

Efforts to define standards for representing AEC/FM data have been fairly successful. However defining a standard reference process model has not met with the same success. Yet almost every conceptual modelling or software development project starts by defining the business processes to be supported and the related requirements to be satisfied. This paper describes a new process-centred methodology for user requirements capture developed in the ICCI project (IST-2001-33022). Its essence is in recognising user requirements and use cases in the context of the real construction process, identifying the actors and roles for each individual activity and associating these activities with information, communication and standardisation requirements on the basis of a formalised specification, named the Process Matrix. In the paper we outline the history of process matrix development, introduce the basic structure of the matrix and show how it can be further extended and refined. We present also a web-based software implementation of the developed approach, describe how it has been used in ICCI and outline further perspectives

Generic Services for the Support of Evolving Building Model Data

Many problems related to data integration in AEC can be better tackled by an approach that takes into account the heterogeneity of tasks, models and applications but does not require continuous consistency of the evolving design data, at each data management operation. Such an approach must incorporate adequate services that can facilitate reintegration of concurrently modified data at reasonably selected coordination points. In this paper we present a set of methods which, used in combination, can achieve that goal. After a description of the principal envisaged cooperative work scenario each of these methods is discussed in detail and current observations drawn from their software realisation are given. Whilst the suggested approach is valid for any EXPRESS-based data model, the practical focus of work has been on facilitating IFC-driven integration

SEMANTIC SERVICE ENVIRONMENTS FOR INTEGRATING TEXT WITH MODEL-BASED INFORMATION IN AEC/FM

In distributed project organisations and collaboration there is a need for integrating unstructured self-contained text information with structured project data. We consider this a process of text integration in which various text technologies can be used to externalise text content and consolidate it into structured information or flexibly interlink it with corresponding information bases. However, the effectiveness of text technologies and the potentials of text integration greatly vary with the type of documents, the project setup and the available background knowledge. The goal of our research is to establish text technologies within collaboration environments to allow for (a) flexibly combining appropriate text and data management technologies, (b) utilising available context information and (c) the sharing of text information in accordance to the most critical integration tasks. A particular focus is on Semantic Service Environments that leverage on Web service and Semantic Web technologies and adequately support the required systems integration and parallel processing of semi-structured and structured information. The paper presents an architecture for text integration that extends Semantic Service Environments with two types of integration services. Backbone to the Information Resource Sharing and Integration Service is a shared environment ontology that consolidates information on the project context and the available model, text and general linguistic resources. It also allows for the configuration of Semantic Text Analysis and Annotation Services to analyse the text documents as well as for capturing the discovered text information and sharing it through semantic notification and retrieval engines. A particular focus of the paper is the definition of the overall integration process configuring a complementary set of analyses and information sharing components

Defining the matrix of communication processes in the AEC/FM industry: Current developments and gap analysis

A formal approach for the analysis of AEC/FM related processes has been undertaken in the frames of the EU ICCI cluster project (IST-2001-33022). The approach is based on a modified application of the Generic Process Protocol (GPP) proposed in a research project funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, coupled with a dedicated usage of the UML technique. GPP is applied on high-level, for the definition of a multi-dimensional matrix capturing the classification of roles, activities and communication, together with their interrelationships, whereas UML diagramming is used for detailed representation of sub-processes. The original GPP matrix is modified in accordance with two objectives: (1) to prepare the matrix in a suitable form for database management as well as Web-based presentation and processing, and (2) to improve the capabilities for information capture so that various analyses can be easily performed and reported. In this paper, first the suggested modelling approach is outlined, and then already available results of an ongoing study of current developments are presented and discussed. The reported study synthesises the performed examination of the ICCI member projects OSMOS, ISTforCE, eConstruct, DIVERCITY, eLEGAL and GLOBEMAN and of several other large efforts and literature sources. At the end, future directions for work are extrapolated and some general conclusions regarding further development efforts are drawn. Process modelling, generic process matrix, user requirements, user scenarios, IFC, ICCI

Multimodel-Based Exploration of the Building Design Space and Its Uncertainty

New challenges have raised in parallel to the expansion of Building Information Modeling (BIM) like applying it for optimizing building design already in early stages. This implies analysis of many changes in building design which should be all evaluated in terms of performance but also in terms of uncertainty. The presented research proposes a methodology and information models for enabling systematic and on-demand energy simulation of many building design scenarios