Past, present and future of information and knowledge sharing in the construction industry: Towards semantic service-based e-construction

The paper reviews product data technology initiatives in the construction sector and provides a synthesis of related ICT industry needs. A comparison between (a) the data centric characteristics of Product Data Technology (PDT) and (b) ontology with a focus on semantics, is given, highlighting the pros and cons of each approach. The paper advocates the migration from data-centric application integration to ontology-based business process support, and proposes inter-enterprise collaboration architectures and frameworks based on semantic services, underpinned by ontology-based knowledge structures. The paper discusses the main reasons behind the low industry take up of product data technology, and proposes a preliminary roadmap for the wide industry diffusion of the proposed approach. In this respect, the paper stresses the value of adopting alliance-based modes of operation

Acquisition of Building Geometry in the Simulation of Energy Performance. In

ABSTRACT Building geometry is essential to any simulation of building performance. This paper examines the importing of building geometry into simulation of energy performance from the users' point of view. It lists performance requirements for graphic user interfaces that input building geometry, and discusses the basic options in moving from two-to threedimensional definition of geometry and the ways to import that geometry into energy simulation. The obvious answer lies in software interoperability. With the BLIS group of interoperable software one can interactively import building geometry from CAD into EnergyPlus and dramatically reduce the effort otherwise needed for manual input. The resulting savings may greatly increase the value obtained from simulation, the number of projects in which energy performance simulation is used, and expedite decision making in the design process

Virtual Building Environments (VBE) - Applying Information Modeling to Buildings

A Virtual Building Environment (VBE) is a ''place'' where building industry project staffs can get help in creating Building Information Models (BIM) and in the use of virtual buildings. It consists of a group of industry software that is operated by industry experts who are also experts in the use of that software. The purpose of a VBE is to facilitate expert use of appropriate software applications in conjunction with each other to efficiently support multidisciplinary work. This paper defines BIM and virtual buildings, and describes VBE objectives, set-up and characteristics of operation. It informs about the VBE Initiative and the benefits from a couple of early VBE projects

Early lessons from deployment of IFC compatible software

The Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) model of the International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI)-an object data model of buildings-is in its seventh year of development. The last three releases of the model (IFC 1.5.1, 2.0 and 2x) have been implemented by a number of "mission critical" industry applications. The deployment of such software in real life projects is just starting. The author is exploring lessons from early deployment that are related to end user and general industry readiness for software interoperability, project model population with data and issues with compatibility of project data, built-in limitations in applications and in the data model, exchange file size and the selection of interoperable software for a project, as well as benefits attainable today from the use of interoperable software. He concludes that software interoperability is beginning to work in this industry, although not as smoothly as first expected

Early Lessons From Deployment of IFC Compatible Software

The Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) model of the International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI)-an object data model of buildings-is in its seventh year of development. The last three releases of the model (IFC 1.5.1, 2.0 and 2x) have been implemented by a number of ''mission critical'' industry applications. The deployment of such software in real life projects is just starting. The author is exploring lessons from early deployment that are related to end user and general industry readiness for software interoperability, project model population with data and issues with compatibility of project data, built-in limitations in applications and in the data model, exchange file size and the selection of interoperable software for a project, as well as benefits attainable today from the use of interoperable software. He concludes that software interoperability is beginning to work in this industry, although not as smoothly as first expected