Automation in Construction 73 (2017) 145–165

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Automation in Construction
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/autcon

Review

Semantic web technologies in AEC industry: A literature overview

Pieter Pauwels a, * , Sijie Zhang b , Yong-Cheol Lee c
a
Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Ghent University, J. Plateaustraat 22, Ghent B-9000, Belgium
b
Chevron ETC, Houston, TX, United States
c
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, United States

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Article history: Over the recent years, the usage of semantic web technologies has notably increased in the domains of archi-
Received 11 March 2016 tecture, engineering and construction (AEC). These technologies are typically considered as complementary
Received in revised form 2 September 2016 to existing and often used Building Information Modelling (BIM) software. The usage of these technologies in
Accepted 23 October 2016 the AEC domains is thereby motivated by (1) a desire to overcome the interoperability issue among software
Available online 10 November 2016
tools used in diverse disciplines, or at least improve information exchange processes; (2) a desire to connect
to various domains of application that have opportunities to identify untapped valuable resources closely
Keywords:
linked to the information already obtained in the AEC domains; and/or (3) a desire to exploit the logical basis
Building Information Modeling (BIM)
of these technologies, which is currently undisclosed in the AEC domains. Through an extensive literature
Industry Foundation Classes (IFC)
Information technology study and survey, this article investigates the development and application progress of semantic web tech-
Interoperability nologies in the AEC domains in accordance with these three primary perspectives. These examinations and
Linked data analyses provide a complete strategical map that can serve as a robust stepping stone for future research
Web Ontology Langauge (OWL) regarding the application of semantic web technologies in the AEC domains. Results show that semantic
Resource Description Framework (RDF) web technologies have a key role to play in logic-based applications and applications that require informa-
Reasoning tion from multiple application areas (e.g. BIM + Infra + GIS + Energy). Notwithstanding fast developments
Rule checking
and hard work, challenging research opportunities are situated in (1) the creation and maintenance of the
Semantic web
links between the various data sets and in (2) devising beneficial implementation approaches that rely on
appropriate combinations of declarative and procedural programming techniques, semantic and legacy data
formats, user input, and automated procedures.
© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
1.1. Building Information Modeling (BIM) and beyond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
1.2. The advent of semantic web technologies in the AEC domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
1.3. Promises and expectancies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
1.4. Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
2. Semantic web technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
2.1. The RDF core . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
2.2. OWL semantics and OWL profiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
2.3. Closed World Assumption (CWA) vs. Open World Assumption (OWA) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
2.4. Linked data vs. semantic web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
3. Aim 1: interoperability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
3.1. Interoperability standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
3.2. A semantic alternative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
3.3. Binding parallel representations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
3.3.1. Link sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
3.3.2. Mapping schemas in formal rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (P. Pauwels), [email protected]
(S. Zhang), [email protected] (Y. Lee).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2016.10.003
0926-5805/© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
146 P. Pauwels et al. / Automation in Construction 73 (2017) 145–165

4. Aim 2: linking across domains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

4.1. Collaborative information management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
4.2. Product manufacturer data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
4.3. Building performance analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
4.4. Regulation compliance checking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
4.5. Geographical and infrastructure data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
5. Aim 3: logical inference and proofs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
5.1. Regulation compliance checking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
5.2. Interoperability and model handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
5.3. Inference processes within regular use cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
6. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
6.1. Application areas for semantic web technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
6.2. Key research challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

1. Introduction design and analysis, design code compliance checking, facility man-
agement, and architectural design. As BIM research in itself has a lot
1.1. Building Information Modeling (BIM) and beyond of focus on ‘information’, research in the areas listed above tends to
stress on the ways in which information can be made available for
For two decades now, the concept of Building Information Mod-
addressing the core research challenges in any of the twelve given
eling (BIM) [1] has had a tremendous impact on the architectural,
research areas. In addition, this significant focus on information has
engineering, and construction (AEC) industries, resulting in the gen-
led to increased attention on efficient usage and smooth exchange
eration and broad employment of BIM authoring and application
of data and information, across the various application areas in the
tools. This emerging trend has led to a paradigm change of the
building life-cycle.
industries in ways to define, tailor, and manage the semantics of
As an example, Dave et al. [3] gives an insight in the technol-
product models closely linked to geometry. As a result, industry
ogy requirements for construction management, which is the 7th
domains and software developers have become more interested in
research domain in the above list. They point towards the Internet
organizing and sharing the ‘semantics’ of a building. This interest
of Things (IoT) as a possible means to improve lean construction
is developed for the entire building life-cycle, including not only
management, which is typically based on many ad hoc decisions
design and construction, but also facility management (FM), oper-
and methods. Clearly, there is a high focus on information exchange
ational building management, building engineering, HVAC design,
and flows in this study. IoT standards have been proposed to allow
simulation, renovation, and demolition. Rather than just adopting
and improve communication between the multiple devices and sys-
software applications, which simply display geometric perspectives
tems available in the construction sites and offices, regardless of the
and views of a building, or lengthy textual descriptions and spread-
system or application features.
sheets of unstructured data, the industries have made significant
Some common concrete research challenges in the other areas of
progress towards the development of a robust semantic structure
research are given below:
and a well-organized semantic connectivity map.
The semantics advanced by BIM technology has also led to a sig-
• Enable vendor-neutral model exchange
nificant shift in research and development in the AEC industries. A
• Combine different information representations
number of the more recent outlook and review articles give an indi-
• Support use case based information exchange
cation of the latest research directions and themes in BIM research.
• Manage and share information
For example, Yalcinkaya and Singh [2] provide a list of 12 research
• On-site visualization of building information
themes, carefully obtained through a latent semantic analysis (LSA)
• Combine product manufacturer data with building data
study (which is a Natural Language Processing (NLP) technique) of
• Support building performance analysis and optimization
papers with BIM as a topic. The following 12 research themes are
• Generate BIM models from point cloud models
outlined, giving an indication of what is the main interest in current
• Model change management (versioning)
BIM research.
• Efficient combination of multiple models
• Connect BIM and GIS
1. Implementation and adoption • Enable automated regulation compliance checking
2. Energy performance and simulation • Check model consistency and completeness
3. Academy and industry training • Logical inference for building energy performance, construc-
4. Information exchange and interoperability tion safety, cost estimation, home automation, etc.
5. Safety management
6. Urban/building space design and analysis 1.2. The advent of semantic web technologies in the AEC domain
7. Construction and project management
8. Design codes and code compliance Each of the research challenges presented above requires the
9. As-is, as-built data presence of building information in some form. Various informa-
10. Promotion and technology development tion sources (e.g. BIM and GIS) need to be combined and federated
11. Maintaining and managing facilities for improving the availability and efficiency of information. Consid-
12. Architectural design process ering this high focus on combinations of information and data, it
comes as no surprise that there has been an increasing interest in
This list clearly shows how interests in BIM research expands the use of semantic web technologies and linked data technologies.
towards the entire building life-cycle, including areas like energy Semantic web technologies namely allow to represent information
performance and simulation, safety management, urban space in structured graphs and efficiently integrate building information of
 P. Pauwels et al. / Automation in Construction 73 (2017) 145–165 147

an entirely different nature (e.g. GIS data, FM data, city data, material to comprehend semantic documents and data”. So, from this
repositories, regulation data, cadaster data). As a result, the devel- hypothesis, one can assume that it should be possible to
opment of software applications that rely on multiple information apply these technologies in the construction industry and
sources is within reach. thus enable computers in this industry to understand the
Researchers started to propose the use of semantic web tech- information they are working with. As a result, one might
nologies in the AEC industries in the early 2000s. One of the earliest want to target semantic interoperability using semantic web
proposals for applying semantic web technologies in the AEC indus- technologies [16–21].
tries is outlined in Pan et al. [4] and Elghamrawy and Boukamp [5]. 2. Linking across domains: Second, semantic web technologies
Early articles focusing on the added value of semantic web tech- provide the option to link information stemming from diverse
nologies similarly see these technologies as one of the diverse sets domains (e.g. BIM, GIS, heritage, sensor data, simulation data,
of web technologies that can bring improvements to information smart cities) into one web of linked building data. To rephrase
exchange in the construction industry. For example, Aziz et al. [6,7] Berners-Lee et al. [22] again, “its unifying logical language will
consider semantic web technologies together with web services and enable these concepts to be progressively linked into a univer-
multi-agent systems. sal Web.”. This purpose has been the main driver behind the
Secondly, semantic web technologies were found useful to Linked Building Data (LBD) Community Group in the World
increase the value of BIM by enabling data integration and complex Wide Web Consortium (W3C) [23].
search queries across several data sources. An interesting viewpoint 3. Logical inference and proofs: A third and last topic that is often
on the added value of semantic web technologies to the construc- used in arguing for the adoption of semantic web technolo-
tion industry can be found in Shen and Chua [8]. They see semantic gies in the architectural design and construction industry, is
web technologies as one of three web technologies (semantic search, the underlying logical foundations of the language(s) used by
cloud computing and mobile computing) that are not commonly semantic web technologies. The semantic web namely relies
used in the construction sector, but that could provide considerable on OWL for the representation of the semantic meaning of con-
value in addition to the already existing technologies (such as BIM). cepts [24] , which is grounded in Description Logic (DL — [25] ).
With the increase of the application of sensing technology in the An appropriate usage of the language thus allows the inference
construction site, the third added value brought by semantic web of extra information from the originally represented informa-
technology is to incorporate sensing technology to manage construction tion. Moreover, several rule languages and rule engines allow
document information in the field. Elghamrawy and Boukamp [9] first to use more complex FOL statements.
incorporate sensing technology into semantic web technology and
present a use case in the field for managing construction document It is not always clear what the difference is between “interoper-
information using RFID-based semantic contexts. ability” and “linking across domains”. We nevertheless maintain this
Furthermore, Rezgui et al. [10] and El-Diraby [11] present invalu- distinction in this article. We consider interoperability to be the
able discussions and overviews on the reasons to shift from a model- challenge to load the same content in multiple applications. Three
centric approach towards a more distributed semantic approach. As dimensional representations are a typical example here, as one and
Rezgui et al. [10] indicates, a shift towards the usage of semantic the same geometric element can be described in many ways. Linking
web technologies implies that we need to “try to interpret, accom- across domains is considered here as the challenge to combine dif-
modate and model what is, rather than trying to change reality to fit a ferent content that is available in multiple applications (e.g. cost data,
single model. This inevitably results in different ontologies for different energy simulation data, geometrical data, GIS data). In this challenge,
communities, but the challenge then is to find ways to allow those com- there is little to no need to ‘convert’ or ‘map’ data. Instead, the focus
munities to collaborate effectively with one another whilst maintaining here is entirely on linking data, which can happen in a relatively loose
their existing, efficient, effective separate world views.” fashion (linked data approach) or a formally rigid fashion (semantic
This tendency of using semantic web technologies is recently also web approach).
embraced in the technical roadmap of BuildingSMART, which is dis- In Table 1, we give an indication of how the research challenges
played in Fig. 1. This figure illustrates the three long-standing levels outlined earlier for the AEC industry fit in these three topical axes.
of the technical roadmap, and this is supplemented by a fourth level
to the right with ‘semantic search in the cloud’ and a ‘cloud library’. 1.4. Methodology
To realize this part of the technical roadmap, the Linked Data Work-
ing Group (LDWG) [12] has been launched, aiming to support the We investigated the most recent articles pertaining to seman-
usage of semantic web technologies in the construction industry, tic web technologies in the AEC industry in order to identify the
such as the Resource Description Framework (RDF [13]) and the Web development and application progress of semantic web technologies
Ontology Language (OWL [14]). in this industry according to the three topical axes outlined above.
We focused on articles in SCI-indexed journals in this domain, in
1.3. Promises and expectancies particular:

The primary question this article investigates is what has been • Automation in Construction
and can be obtained by adopting semantic web or linked data tech- • Advanced Engineering Informatics
nologies for the AEC industries. In this investigation, we consider • Journal of Information Technology in Construction
three main topics that are often used in arguing for the usage of • Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering
semantic web technologies in the design and construction industry. • Expert Systems with Applications
• Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
1. Interoperability: The usage of semantic web technologies has • Computer-Aided Design
been considered as an opportunity to improve interoperability
in the AEC industries [16–21], thus resulting in an integrated Instead of making a purely quantitative analysis of articles, as was
and successful data exchange environment. Namely, semantic for example done for BIM research in Yalcinkaya and Singh [2], we
web technologies appear to provide a way to describe infor- have made a qualitative assessment of the information in the sur-
mation in a computer-understandable manner. To rephrase veyed papers and critically analyzed to what extent contributions
Berners-Lee et al. [22]: “the Semantic Web will enable machines are made to validating any of the three outlined topical axes. Where
148 P. Pauwels et al. / Automation in Construction 73 (2017) 145–165

Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 beyond level 3

Technical roadmap for
product support

Product libraries Average state

of the industry
today

Main theme sheets vendor/market static open parametric cloud library ...
specific library open library

Working means 2D/3D downloadable open, online product libraries semantic search in the cloud
drawings components

Standards, open formats dxf, dwg, pdf, none ifc’s parametric ifc’s OWL/RDF
(skp, 3ds) mvdXML mvdxml / RDF

Way of communication product data proprietary open ifc open

sheets components components parameterized
ifc components

Fig. 1. The technical roadmap for product support by BuildingSMART, with web technologies represented in the right side of the graph (original figure in Ref. [15] ).

needed, we have included reference articles that were cited in the such in interlinked directed labeled graphs, a uniform representa-
core set of articles. Table 1 briefly illustrates the identified use cases tion of information is achieved, making information reusable by both
of semantic web technologies adopted in the AEC industries. humans and computer applications.
Similar to the aim of this paper, Abanda et al. [26] reviewed An RDF graph can be serialized using various syntaxes including
several studies pertaining to semantic web technologies and their RDF/XML (.RDF), N-Triples (.N_T), Turtle (.TTL) [27], and Notation-
applications on built environment domains. Abanda et al. [26] pur- 3 (.N3) [28]. RDF graphs can be given an improved semantic struc-
sues two objectives: (1) grasping overall trends of semantic web ture using RDF vocabularies or ontologies. The most basic elements
applications used in the built environment domain and (2) demon- describing such ontologies are contained in the RDF Schema (RDFS)
strating the different aspects of applied technology in the man- vocabulary [29], which consists of the specifications of classes, sub-
agement of built environment information. In addition, the paper classes, comments, and data types. An RDFS interpreter is able to
illustrates findings with regards to the emerging progress of seman- infer extra RDF statements that are implicitly available via the RDFS
tic web technologies. As there have been considerable developments constructs. More expressive elements to describe ontologies are
in this domain over the past few years, however, our work will go in available within OWL [14]. In short, OWL further enhances the RDFS
a considerable more depth, both in the technical overview and the concepts to allow making more complex RDF statements, such as
overall analysis and discussion. cardinality restrictions, type restrictions, and complex class expres-
The results of our assessment are discussed in Sections 3 to 5. In sions. The RDF graphs constructed with OWL concepts are called
Section 6, we give a qualitative overview of our conclusions from the OWL ontologies.
literature study and we outline recommended future directions for RDF(S) and OWL provide the basis to allow working with rules
research and industrial applications. But, first, the following section and proofs. By relying on rules and proofs, it is possible to build
gives a brief overview of the main concepts and current status of applications that reach particular levels of trust, precisely because
semantic web technologies. of the way in which they deploy their rules and build their proofs.
This idea of building semantic web applications is nicely displayed in
‘the semantic web stack’, as it was originally presented by Berners-
Lee [30]. There have been many versions of this semantic web stack.
An indication of the diversity and the kinds of discussions that
2. Semantic web technologies
have been circling around this semantic web stack can be found in
Horrocks et al. [31].
2.1. The RDF core

At the core of the semantic web stands a flexible and generic 2.2. OWL semantics and OWL profiles
language that allows to easily represent and combine information
from diverse knowledge domains, namely RDF [13]. The semantic The semantic expressiveness of the OWL language defines what
web thus becomes a semantic network in which information is rep- can be represented in an OWL ontology. This semantic expressive-
resented as directed labeled graphs (RDF graphs). Each node in such ness is specified in multiple W3C hosted specification documents.
a graph represents a concept or object in the world, identified with The first W3C Recommendation for OWL dates from 2004 [32].
a Unique Resource Identifier (URI). By describing all information as This version is now superseded by the OWL2 language specification

Table 1
Use cases of semantic web technologies in the AEC industries.

Interoperability Linking across domains Logical inference and proofs

• Enable vendor-neutral model exchange • Ontology-based information management and sharing • Check model consistency and completeness
• Combine different information representations • Combine product manufacturer data with building • Enable automated regulation compliance checking
• Support use case based information exchange data • Logical inference use cases including building energy
• Support building performance analysis and performance, construction safety, cost estimation, home
optimization automation and etc.
• Connect BIM and GIS
• Enable automated regulation compliance checking
 P. Pauwels et al. / Automation in Construction 73 (2017) 145–165 149

issued in 2012 [14]. All relevant references to the exact semantics of Many traditional software applications adopt a CWA, includ-
OWL2 can be found in Ref. [33]. Fig. 2 provides an overview picture ing BIM tools and common database systems. Semantic web
that we will use to explain the basics of OWL profiles. technologies, however, generally rely on an OWA because the tech-
As pointed out in Ref. [33], “the Direct Semantics assigns mean- nologies are supposed to be used on the Web, which is a system
ing directly to ontology structures, resulting in a semantics compatible with incomplete information. One cannot conclude that something
with the model theoretic semantics of the SROIQ description logic – is not true simply because no one specified it on the web. Hence,
a fragment of first order logic with useful computational properties”. an OWA needs to be adopted. The difference between CWA and
This leads to a semantic expressiveness for OWL2 that is properly OWA plays a key role when an ontology is used to represent a BIM
grounded in a particular description logic, namely SROIQ. This model, because if something is not specified, then one cannot con-
semantic expressiveness is graphically displayed as the outer ellipse clude much, except that it might still be true or false. A whole
in Fig. 2 (OWL2 Full). However, “some conditions must be placed on different kind of information usage and inference becomes available.
ontology structures in order to ensure that they can be translated into Mapping information representations in CWA to information rep-
a SROIQ knowledge base” [33]. For instance, transitive properties resentations in OWA is not that hard; the main difference lies in the
cannot be used in number restrictions. Whenever an OWL2 ontology usage of the information that is presented in both. Furthermore, it
satisfies these conditions, the expressiveness of the ontology is in the is even possible to run a CWA-based validation of an OWL ontol-
smaller outer ellipse in Fig. 2, namely OWL2 DL. An OWL ontology ogy [36,37]. However, the OWA of semantic web technologies is
should remain within this boundary if it is to be used by SROIQ- still something different from the traditional CWA features in cur-
based tools, which are the tools typically supplied by the semantic rent software applications. In many cases, both types of assumptions
web community. have their value (e.g. Terkaj and Sojic [38]). If adopted properly, the
As in the case of OWL, also OWL2 has a number of so-called usage of semantic web technologies is a fruitful addition to (and not
profiles, namely OWL2 EL, OWL2 QL and OWL2 RL [35]. Fig. 2 dis- replacement of) existing technologies such as BIM authoring tools.
plays the relationships between these three key profiles. As outlined
in Motik et al. [35], an OWL2 profile “is a trimmed down version of 2.4. Linked data vs. semantic web
OWL2 that trades some expressive power for the efficiency of reasoning”.
In short, in each of the given OWL2 profiles, a number of state- Other terms that can regularly be found in relation to semantic
ments that can be used in OWL2 DL is not allowed. By not allowing web technologies are linked data, web of data, and semantic web
these statements, and thus sacrificing some expressiveness, impor- (see also Abanda et al. [39]). Web of Data is commonly associated
tant improvements can be made in terms of performance. Namely, to linked data, whereas semantic web is commonly considered as
inference engines do not need to check a number of restrictions as quite a different thing. The term ‘semantic web’ was coined by Tim
they are not allowed (and thus not considered) in particular profiles. Berners-Lee in 2001 [22] and was quite visionary as it included all
More information about the expressiveness of each of the profiles features in the semantic web stack (OWL, rules, proofs, truth). The
can be found in Motik et al. [35]. term ‘linked data’, on the other hand, was coined in 2006, also by
Tim Berners-Lee [40], in response to the finding that quite some data
2.3. Closed World Assumption (CWA) vs. Open World Assumption was being published on the web, seemingly following the semantic
(OWA) web idea but actually never linking to outside data, and thus in fact
not realizing the initial core idea behind the semantic web, which is
Two distinct approaches to knowledge representation are rele- linking data [22]. Therefore, Berners-Lee [40] laid out four rules that
vant when dealing with traditional technologies (e.g. BIM) versus need to be followed in order to truly obtain linked data. These have
semantic web technologies: Closed World Assumption (CWA) and by now evolved into the five stars of linked data [41].
Open World Assumption (OWA). According to CWA, any statement Ontologies, rules and proofs are clearly not discussed in this
that is not known to be true, must be considered as false. When linked data proposal by Berners-Lee [40]. As a result, the linked data
applied to a BIM model, one can conclude that whenever some- or web of data field emerging out of this proposal typically leaves
thing is not specified in the model, it is most definitely not there. On aside most of the other elements in the semantic web, including
the other hand, according to OWA, a statement that is not known OWL, rules, proofs and so forth. A key result of this research domain
to be true, is not necessarily false, nor true, but unknown. In is the Linked Open Data (LOD) cloud, for which statistics and an
other words, it might be true or false in the future, when more overview are available in Jentzsch et al. [42], Auer et al. [43], and
information is supplied, but no conclusion can be drawn until then. Schmachtenberg et al. [44].

3. Aim 1: interoperability

With the key principles and concepts of semantic web technolo-

OWL 2 (Full) gies explained in Section 2, the current section (interoperability) is
the first of three sections documenting how semantic web technolo-
DL
gies can be deployed for added value in the AEC domains. In terms of
QL interoperability, one can distinguish between syntactic and seman-
RL
tic interoperability [45]. Reaching full semantic interoperability is
one of the long-standing desires in the architectural design and con-
struction industry. Hannus et al. [46] illustrates this desire using the
‘islands’ image depicted in Fig. 3. If one island is interoperable with
EL
another island, it would imply that a building model can be serial-
ized to a common data model so that it can automatically be parsed
into a different data structure (e.g. from BIM model to simulation
model), and back. Different representations of the same object would
Fig. 2. The OWL2 profiles EL, QL and RL each provide a certain kind of expressiveness,
which determines to what level of detail information can be semantically represented
thus be available (cfr. note the difference between interoperability
and which impacts performance as a result (more information, less performing). and linking across domains outlined in Section 1). This would allow
Original figure in Ref. [34] . product data models to perform well in diverse domains, processes,
150 P. Pauwels et al. / Automation in Construction 73 (2017) 145–165

Instance Files Schema Files

IFC-SPF EXPRESS

XML XSD

RDF ifcOWL

Fig. 4. IFC is available in an EXPRESS (native), XSD and OWL format on a schema level
(right). The IFC SPFF, ifcXML, and ifcRDF then follow the corresponding schema an
Fig. 3. Evolution of IT in construction over the last decades (original figure in Hannus
represent instance files.
et al. [46]).
Source: Adapted from original figure in Ref. [49].

and modeling platforms while preserving geometries, semantics,

binding structure of the IFC data model. Compatibility with the
relationships, and properties.
IFC schema, however, highly depends on implementation and
usage practice because heterogeneous IFC translation and bind-
3.1. Interoperability standards
ing processes of each BIM authoring tool could result in unin-
tended geometric transformations and semantic errors [48].
The desire for interoperability in the AEC domain was the key
These poorly implemented as well as poorly used import and
driver behind the International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI),
export features will only result in distorted and incomplete IFC
now commonly known as BuildingSMART International. The efforts
models, not interoperable IFC models.
by this community have evolved into the Industry Foundation
2. Adaptability: Another challenge is the limitation in quick adap-
Classes (IFC) data model, along with a number of other standards
tation of the schema. Indeed, various industry domains and
(mvdXML, IFD, IDM). The IFC data model allows users and soft-
software vendors require a tremendous amount of work to
ware vendors to uniformly represent building data according to the
agree upon and generate the compliant IFC schema and asso-
specifications of this IFC schema (latest version is IFC4). Building
ciated specifications. It thus requires a significant amount
model data in a BIM authoring tool can be exported and imported to
of time to reach consensus on its content, representation
another tool using the IFC STEP Physical File Format (SPFF) follow-
and definition scope, so that the schema typically does not
ing ISO 10303-21 [47]. Since almost all BIM authoring tools support
encompass state-of-the-art technology and newly-launched
data exchange using IFC, domain professionals are able to seamlessly
construction methods.
share their design and construction data throughout the life-cycle of
3. Extensibility: Somewhat related to the last point, the IFC
their facilities [48].
schema is also not easily extensible for relevant people who are
IFC is defined in the EXPRESS schema. The IFC release also con-
not highly familiar with the EXPRESS language. If one wants
tains the IFC schema defined in the XSD schema (ISO 10303-28),
to express information that is not available as such in the IFC
which allows building models to be shared as ifcXML files. The pur-
schema (and he does not know how to do this in EXPRESS),
pose of providing this alternative format is to leverage accessibility
IfcProxy concepts and custom IFC property sets can be used.
and applicability of the IFC schema through the XML format, which
However, these are semantically very loose additions, in the
has been broadly used in other industry domains. Similarly, the
sense that anybody who wishes to use this information will
ifcOWL ontology is proposed and maintained as a second alternative
need to manually interpret strings in their application logics.
schema [12]. This completes the situation as depicted in Fig. 4. Identi-
cal to the way in which individual building models can be expressed
in IFC/SPF and ifcXML, they can also be expressed as RDF graphs
(instance files in left-hand side of Fig. 4). Identical to the way in 3.2. A semantic alternative
which IFC/SPF and ifcXML follow the EXPRESS schema of IFC and the
XSD schema of IFC, respectively, the RDF graph of a building model In response to the earlier outlined challenges, it was therefore
follows the ifcOWL ontology of IFC (schema files in right-hand side investigated whether semantic web technologies might provide
of Fig. 4). Note that the EXPRESS schema is typically considered as an alternative technical means to address the interoperability
the master data model (gray in Fig. 4), with XSD and OWL being issue [16-21,50]. Making an agreed ifcOWL ontology available is a
‘derivatives’. first required step in being able to make this test. The BuildingSMART
There are a number of challenges in using the IFC schema in LDWG has therefore produced an ifcOWL ontology that can serve as
EXPRESS as a means for achieving interoperability. a domain ontology for the construction industry. The LDWG working
group has heavily relied on earlier proposals to convert the IFC schema
1. Binding: In the traditional setup, an IFC file serves as a ref- into an OWL ontology and to convert IFC STEP Physical Files (SPF)
erence data model for information exchange, which can be into RDF graphs that follow the ifcOWL ontology [51–58]. One of the
used by several BIM authoring tools through importing and most detailed and recent accounts of the conversion from EXPRESS
exporting features compliant with the syntactic and semantic to OWL for the construction industry (ifcOWL) is available in Pauwels
 P. Pauwels et al. / Automation in Construction 73 (2017) 145–165 151

and Terkaj [59]. The ifcOWL ontology has now evolved into a recom- which can be classified in two distinct approaches: (1) link sets and
mendable status. It closely resembles the ifcOWL ontology as it was (2) mapping schemas in formal rules.
proposed in Pauwels and Terkaj [59]. It is maintained in Ref. [12],
and a free IFC-to-RDF conversion service is provided and maintained 3.3.1. Link sets
in Ref. [60]. This conversion service allows to upload IFC files, which One interesting solution proposed in El-Gohary and El-Diraby [68]
are then returned to the user as RDF graphs that follow the ifcOWL is an ontology integrator (Onto-Integrator) for facilitating ontology
ontology. interoperability within the AEC domains. The Onto-Integrator offers a
Further modifications and extensions to the ifcOWL ontology heuristic for ontology merging, including the merging of concept tax-
are now proposed, based on critical ontological analysis and tested onomies, relations, and axioms. Furthermore, Törmä [69] argues for
alternative suggestions. For example, Terkaj and Sojic [38] have pro- the need for instance-level interoperability in addition to ontology-
posed an extension to the ifcOWL ontology, which encapsulates level or schema-level interoperability. This is particularly important
the EXPRESS WHERE rules in OWL class expressions that can be when actual exchange of partial models (requirement model, archi-
combined with the standard ifcOWL ontology. Furthermore, it is sug- tectural model, MEP model) takes place, in which the key challenge is
gested in Borgo et al. [61] and de Farias et al. [62] that the way to find out which elements in the diverse partial elements are actually
in which type information is now included in IFC can be improved, identical (e.g. diverse representations for one and the same wall, win-
especially within an ifcOWL ontology. This proposal has been further dow, slab). Törmä [69] points out, indeed, that “the difficult part, the
developed by de Farias et al. [62] into an ifcWOD ontology, which for- use of the exchanged information in the receiving tasks remains largely
mally extends the ifcOWL ontology. In addition, a fuzzy extension to unsolved: it requires human interpretation and manual work”.
the ifcOWL ontology has been proposed in Gómez-Romero et al. [63]. There is no mechanism or suggestion made in the semantic web
Another issue that is typically considered to be open for change, is domain to properly deal with this situation. This leaves a high risk
the way in which LIST data types in EXPRESS are translated into of redundancy and inconsistency of information (see also Törmä
OWL class expressions. This is an issue that has been briefly inves- et al. [70] and Scherer et al. [19]). This situation is investigated in
tigated in Pauwels et al. [58] and de Farias et al. [62]. This is closely Pauwels [71], leading to the schema displayed in Fig. 5. It shows a
related to the question whether geometric information, which car- decentralized web of linked data in the center, with many diverse
ries little semantic meaning, should actually also be converted into interlinked RDF graphs. The blue arrows require a transition mech-
an RDF graph. As is already indicated in Beetz et al. [64], an RDF anism such as mapping or conversion, which can in theory be
representation of this geometric information is rather inefficient and implemented in many ways, but which in practice typically requires
does not add much additional value as long as it is not used in a human interpretation. For example, Scherer et al. [19] and Törmä[69]
logical inference process. propose to implement this transition mechanism with linked data
technologies, which results in ‘linksets’: sets of links that repre-
3.3. Binding parallel representations sent the relationships between partial models (i.e. the blue circular
arrows in Fig. 5). These linksets still need to be managed through
Of course, adopting semantic web technologies (ifcOWL) cannot human intervention though. In other words, the interoperability
address bad implementation and usage practices. However, (1) as problem is moved to the data level (creation and management of
they provide a single data model (RDF) for representing any kind of links), but it is still undoubtedly there.
information; (2) as they allow adding a logical DL basis to this rep- If a manual approach is adopted for creating and managing the
resentation using OWL; and (3) as they focus intensively on linking links between multiple ontologies and datasets, automation support
diverse graphs of information together in a web-like fashion, seman- is available from ontology alignment tools. Ontology alignment typ-
tic web technologies might be the ideal technical means to provide ically occurs by the “automated comparison and mapping based on
interoperability while also allowing to flexibly handle new semantic
structures (see ‘extensibility’ and ‘adaptability’ above).
Simulation
For example, a semantic web approach has been suggested to
tool A
improve the interoperability of CAD information by Abdul-Ghafour
et al. [17]. The authors indicate how semantic web technologies CAD
allow the combination of information from several different knowl- System A
edge domains, enabling a seamless coupling of 3D information
Simulation Render
with non-geometric information, such as design intent and domain- tool A Platform A
specific product features. Also, García [65] proposed to capture core CAD
CAD file formats (e.g. DXF) in OWL ontologies in order to make CAD System A
Render
data available as a knowledge base. OWL is hereby proposed as a CAD Platform A

data exchanger. This short article only looks into one CAD standard,
Render
but proposes to do the same for other CAD data formats (cfr. interop- Render Platform B
Simulation
erability of CAD data). Similar arguments and conclusions were made Platform B tool B
in Pauwels et al. [18] and Argüello et al. [66].
So, semantic web technologies seem to provide interoperability CAD
System B Virtual Simulation
by allowing the co-existence and linking of multiple ontologies, often World tool B
to represent the same physical elements. Indeed, semantic web tech-
nologies allow to combine different representations of information,
CAD
e.g. a box-like wall in IFC, X3D and STL [67]. However, how such par- System B
allel representations of information are to be combined and used is
entirely left open for the developer’s and user’s choice. This investi- Virtual
gation is related to the ‘binding’ challenge listed in Section 3.1. An
World
IFC, X3D and STL representation of a box can all be interlinked in
Fig. 5. In a linked data approach, information is linked on a data level. This results in
diverse ways, but if one of these representations changes, the same a web of linked data that is accessible for any application that wants to use it. Also
changes should also be made for the other two representations in the interface points between information systems (blue circular arrows) are now to
an interoperable system. We found several proposals in literature, be implemented on a data level (original figure in Pauwels [71]).
152 P. Pauwels et al. / Automation in Construction 73 (2017) 145–165

the ontology structures and the linguistic similarity between concepts” The two main components in this architecture, the Federal Control-
(Cheng et al. [72]). As a result, the result of an automated ontol- lor (FC) and the Federal Descriptor (FD) are placed in-between a
ogy alignment procedure should always be checked for misinter- knowledge base and a user interface (Fig. 6). These two components
pretations caused by erroneous linguistic associations (hypernyms, take into account the ontologies used in the query coming from the
homonyms, synonyms). As is outlined in Cheng et al. [72], however, user interface and translate the query via ontology alignments and
they can prove to be of invaluable help in mapping several ontologies inference mechanisms to the ontology structures used in the knowl-
or semantical data sets. edge base. A technical overview of the query translation process and
SWRL rule selection process is given in de Farias et al. [77]. Hence,
3.3.2. Mapping schemas in formal rules data and custom data structure become available in an on demand
An alternative automated method for dealing with the mentioned kind of fashion. Yet, also in this case, we are not close to a practical
interface points and providing interoperability was suggested in implementation in construction industry.
Refs. [62,67,73]. Assuming that all RDF graphs in the central web of
data follow a specific OWL ontology, and thus have a solid formal 4. Aim 2: linking across domains
structure, it should be possible to devise a mapping schema between
specific pairs of schemas. By representing that mapping schema in An aim that might be easier to reach using semantic web tech-
formal rules, one can use an inference engine to automatically infer nologies involves linking (instead of mapping) information stemming
data in alternative ontologies, starting from data in a master ontol- from diverse domains (e.g. BIM, GIS, heritage, sensor data, simulation
ogy or central ontology [67]. This inference process can occur on data, smart cities) into one web of linked building data. This pur-
demand: one geometric description (e.g. IFC) is available in an RDF pose has been the main driver behind a myriad of individual research
graph and descriptions following a different schema (e.g X3D, STL) initiatives. Some of these approaches are more closely affiliated to
are generated on demand by a rule engine and a set of inference linked data rather than semantic web technologies (see Section 2.4),
rules. although ontologies equally often play a crucial role as well. When
In this regard, Beetz et al. [74] proposed to use Semantic Web specifically relying on ontologies, the key research question is often
Rule Language (SWRL) rules and SPARQL queries to convert on- related to the creation of domain ontologies, which aim at provid-
demand IFC geometry into alternative geometric representations, ing a shared representation for the concepts within a domain of
e.g. topological space-centered geometry used by energy simulation knowledge [11], and how they should be linked together and still
software. de Farias et al. [73] propose to use SWRL rules to gener- remain useful (see also Törmä [69,78]). A highly recommended set of
ate a simplified version of the ifcOWL ontology. As SWRL rules match guidelines has been proposed in this regard by Radulovic et al. [79],
particular patterns in an IFC/RDF graph, alternative representations focusing specifically on construction industry use cases.
of that graph are produced on demand. In the case of de Farias et
al. [62], the focus is entirely on the adaptation of IfcRelationShip 4.1. Collaborative information management
instances into simpler constructs. Note however, that such a rule-
based approach to managing the interface points in Fig. 5 also The building industry is divided in many specialized disciplines
requires implementers to nominate a master ontology and devise to design, construct, and operate a building. Hence, construction
a solid set of mapping rules, which will again require a consider- projects are characterized by a strong need for close collaboration
able amount of human interpretation, and which is in itself not that between AEC team members and require an effective approach to
different from a traditional IFC approach (Fig. 3). the management of information from diverse sources [6,21,80,81].
In theory, this approach of mapping schemas in formal rules can One of the earliest examples of ontology-based information manage-
also be used in the context of Model View Definitions (MVDs). An ment was proposed by Lima et al. [82–84] (e-Cognos project) in their
MVD is a subset of the building product model schema (the IFC proposal to build a domain ontology for the construction domain,
schema) that provides a complete representation of BIM exchange
data needed for a particular domain of the AEC industries. MVDs are
currently captured in mvdXML files. The information that is currently
captured in an mvdXML file can also be captured using semantic web Onto1 Onto2 ... OntoN
rules (SWRL, N3Logic, and other) or SPARQL CONSTRUCT queries,
as is proposed in Beetz et al. [64] and Weise and Pauwels [75]. In
principle, this would allow to ‘query’ the complete IFC/RDF file and
automatically output the required subset on demand. One advantage Federal Descriptor (FD)
of this approach is that the process can be implemented using reg-
Federal Logical Federal Concept
ular semantic web technologies, including out-of-the-box inference
Schema (FLS) Instantiation (FCI)
engines, triple stores and query interpreters. The greatest advantage
of this approach, however, is likely that it allows a far more flex-
ible mechanism to generate subsets. Both semantic web rules and
SPARQL construct queries namely allow to output information that Federal Controller (FC)
does not have to follow the IFC schema (as opposed to a regular
Rule Selector (RS)
MVD subset). As such, output might be generated that automatically
matches the semantic information structure of a target program,
hence supporting interoperability in an alternative fashion (mapping Rule (SWRL) Engine OWL Reasoner
schemas in formal rules).
The approaches that were suggested by de Farias et al. [62]
Pauwels et al. [67], and de Farias et al. [73] can be considered the
extreme examples of this semantic subset selection and publication Knowledge
method, as they all start from IFC data and output it partially to Base (KB)
an alternative schema. de Farias et al. [76] moves this further and
documents a federated ontology architecture (FOWLA) that is based Fig. 6. The FOWLA architecture as proposed in de Farias et al. [76] (original figure in
on ontology alignments, logical rules, and inference mechanisms. de Farias et al. [76]).
 P. Pauwels et al. / Automation in Construction 73 (2017) 145–165 153

which describes four key elements in construction, namely actors,

resources, processes and products. In addition, Katranuschkov et 3D Engineered model
al. [85] can be counted among the early explorers of ontology-based (Civil 3D, InRoads, etc.)
collaborative information management. Many of the lessons learned

He
from the e-COGNOS project are documented in El-Diraby [11], which

ter aye
og r
presents a domain ontology for construction knowledge (DOCK 1.0),

L
en
r
starting from the earlier work spanning 2005 to 2013 in build- pe

eo
ap
Wr

u
RD
Un Lay

s
ing a domain taxonomy for the e-COGNOS platform [86–92] and

F
ifie er
building a beta DOCK ontology for construction products and pro- ery

d
Qu
Decision
cesses [93–95]. The objective of this ontology is “not to exhaustively
Framework
list concepts, but rather to build a conceptual architecture of key terms

Co
in construction, their relationships, and behavior” [11]. In this article,

etc t
nd IDA

le, en
.)
(L
itio R,

du gem
it is argued that the main contribution of building an ontology is an

n s etc
improved understanding of the actual domain of discourse (concep-

sc ana
ur .)
tualization over mere formalization). Indeed, one is typically more

st, t m
he
ve
yin

(co ojec
critically challenged when modeling an ontology from scratch rather

g
then formalizing it in a new syntax. One could follow this idea to

Pr
argue for an ontology design for IFC (or other legacy data models)
starting from scratch, in order to avoid inconsistencies in the ontol-
ogy because of the transition from an alternative syntax to the OWL
syntax [20,61]. Fig. 7. The life-cycle data exchange mechanism as proposed in Le and Jeong [21]
Of the other efforts in building domain ontologies for improved (original figure in Le and Jeong [21]).
collaborative information management, Ruikar et al. [80] proposed
an extensible set of modular ontologies (design-process ontology
and team profile ontology), which are then deployed in an ontology- from the interoperability aim discussed in Section 3. Hence, very sim-
based knowledge-sharing environment (OnToShare) for usage by ilar issues and challenges reside in the research initiatives focusing
various stakeholders in the construction industry. Later, Anumba on this kind of inter-domain linking:
et al. [81,96] discussed the role of ontologies in information and
knowledge management in construction and developed a frame- • How to keep parallel representations of the same thing consis-
work for semantic web-based information management (SWIMS) tent and complete [20,71];
for effective collaborative information management. Zhang and El- • How to keep the links between partial models effectively man-
Diraby [97] proposed a social semantic web portal (SSWP) for effec- ageable [70];
tive social communication in construction. Zhang and El-Diraby [98]
furthermore proposed a construction information and knowledge Indeed, creating RDF graphs with construction data, linking and
portal (CIKP) as an information and knowledge management sys- using them for querying and reasoning is often explained, but the
tem that addresses the challenges in information exchange and way in which the links between data sets (the blue circular ‘human
knowledge sharing. A similar social networking website is pro- interpretation’ arrows in Fig. 5) need to be created and managed,
posed by Niknam and Karshenas [99] for improving collaboration in typically remains unexplained. This challenge is also specifically
AEC projects. Both Niknam and Karshenas [99] and Zhang and El- mentioned by Kiviniemi [101].
Diraby [97] take a service-oriented approach in the implementation.
Furthermore, applications targeting the support of collaboration 4.2. Product manufacturer data
also typically look at the entire life-cycle of a building, aiming at pro-
viding a holistic view of the building and the building process. For Another typical example in direct support of the construction
instance, Scherer et al. [19] uses semantic web technologies to allow industry is the combination of product manufacturer data with build-
an integrated lifecycle energy management. This work is closely ing data. In a number of pilot cases, product manufacturer data are
related to the work in Scherer and Schapke [100], in which a multi- represented in building product catalogs using semantic web tech-
model driven construction management system is proposed with a nologies, making it possible to integrate these data directly with build-
layered ontology framework at the center. The ontology framework ing data in RDF (e.g. ifcOWL). A key semantic repository of building
includes a Project Collaboration Ontology (PCO), which is composed material data is the BauDataWeb Materials Database [102]. Another
of five sub-ontologies: a Construction Core Ontology (CCO), a multi- example is provided by the BAUKOM repository [103–105]. [105] fur-
media visualization ontology, a software service ontology, an orga- thermore makes an integration with regulation data with the aim
nization ontology, and an information process ontology [100]. The of enabling building product recommendations based on the build-
system aims at sharing distributed, yet interrelated, engineering and ing model and applicable local building regulations. [106] designed
management application models in so called multi-models. So, also and implemented an open knowledge base to capture, distill, analyze
this approach focuses on a linking data implementation plan rather and share information on building sustainability among the stake-
than a centralized information model plan. Management of the links holders. As another example, [107,108] illustrate how the semantic
between the models is done using separately managed link models connection of a building model with product data and cost data can be
(LMs). As another example, Le and Jeong [21] aim at supporting, with used to enable automatic construction cost estimation. Niknam and
linked data techniques, decision making and asset management for Karshenas [108] specifically use an approach that relies on semantic
the preventive treatment selection process for flexible pavements, web services. Such semantic web services are also used for building
which requires the comprehensive analysis of multiple factors in a social networking website for AEC projects [99] and for building
many domains in all phases of the entire life-cycle of that particular an energy analysis application [109]. Also Staub-French et al. [110]
pavement. In this case, all native data are wrapped into a ‘unified RDF focused on construction cost estimating, as early as 2003, and pro-
layer’, which can then be queried for decision support (see Fig. 7). posed a feature ontology that is designed as an enrichment of the IFC
The goal of supporting collaboration through a common platform schema for those features that are relevant for construction cost esti-
using semantic web technologies is clearly not that much different mating. Although it is not mentioned whether this feature ontology is
154 P. Pauwels et al. / Automation in Construction 73 (2017) 145–165

designed using (semantic) web technologies, the principles explained Suggested Upper Merged Ontology (SUMO [121]), which captures
in Staub-French et al. [110] are close to the idea of using semantic domain independent concepts. The system also relies on rules and
web technologies. specifically indicates that computational performance can very sig-
As soon as product data catalogs are to be used on more inter- nificantly depending on which reasoning approach is taken (amount
national scales, the required formal representation of product man- and expressiveness of input data and reasoning strategy), as is also
ufacturer data rather quickly leads to the need for classification in one of the key points in Pauwels et al. [122].
building elements as part of large concept libraries. Building such an These energy performance analysis studies typically attempt to
international concept library is one of the main goals of the Build- make a combination of core building data (e.g. IFC) and energy sim-
ingSMART Data Dictionary (bSDD). Such a multilingual dictionary of ulation data. One primary example of energy simulation data is the
terms or concept library can be used to clarify what products are SimModel, which was devised as an interoperable data model for
made available. As is explained in Ref. [111], however, “content own- exchange of simulation data between energy simulation tools. This
ership, trust and reliability issues can be identified as some of the main model is made available in an OWL ontology [123], which can be used
obstacles for the large-scale adoption of the bSDD/concept libraries: Users to generate RDF graphs of these model data [124]. By porting the data
and implementers alike hesitate to rely on a single location and provider into an RDF data model, they can be more easily combined with other
for the access of content due to issues with overwhelming number of RDF data. However, how IFC and SimModel graphs are actually going
concepts, the dependency of a centralized system and the fact that the to have to be combined and managed is open for discussion.
vocabulary is subject to constant evolution”. As a remedy, Beetz [111] Abanda et al. [125] developed and proposed an OWL ontology
proposes to rely instead on networked, distributed/decentralized con- for photovoltaic (PV) technology. The system developed on top of
cept libraries relying on semantic web technologies for the publication this ontology (PV-TONS) then allows to size and select PV-system
of concept libraries. Three approaches are outlined in this regard: a components for different types of buildings. This work relied on
single centralized concept repository, distributed peer-to-peer con- the work initially done in Tah and Abanda [126]. More precisely,
cept repositories, and a hybrid network architecture. Decentralizing Tah and Abanda [126] resulted in a PV ontology, which needed
the bSDD using semantic web technologies could then result in a to be further enriched for this study with external factors (sun-
multi-tiered and cascading management of concept libraries [111]. light availability, tree shades) to allow the considered practical
This management architecture would contain a centrally man- use case implementation. In yet another energy-focused research
aged international reference concept library (bSDD) that is first initiative [127,128], a ThinkHome OWL ontology was developed,
surrounded by and directly linked with national concept libraries, including concepts related to resources (white and brown goods),
which are in turn surrounded and directly linked with more local building (layout, spaces, material), actors (schedules, preferences,
concept libraries. The content in the more local dictionaries can be context), energy (environmental impact, energy providers), com-
more specialized and relaxed, hence responding to local needs. Yet, fort (thermal and visual), and exterior influences (weather, climate).
as they are linked to the central curated bSDD, the curators of the This ThinkHome ontology is combined with an OWL ontology that
bSDD can be more easily informed of desirable changes. Also here, a captures gbXML building geometry and data (instead of IFC). An
critical open issue remains the way in which links between concepts agent-based system then interacts through SPARQL queries and DL
and concept libraries are actually to be created and managed over inference with the data (Fig. 8) in order to autonomously con-
time. This open issue is again closely affiliated to the required human trol the smart home in an energy-efficient and comfort-oriented
interpretation steps indicated with the blue circular arrows in Fig. 5. manner [128]. The ThinkHome ontology and project relies heav-
ily on the data coming from household appliances. This is inspired
4.3. Building performance analysis to some extent by the ontology-based household device models
in DomoML [129] and the Domotic OSGi Gateway (Dog) Ontology
Many research initiatives developed applications to support (DogOnt) [130]. The DOG ontology is also used for energy man-
building performance analysis and optimization leveraging seman- agement purposes in Rosselló-Busquet et al. [131], in combination
tic web technologies. These building performance analysis use cases with a set of SWRL rules, the Jess rule engine [132], and the SWRL-
typically focus intensively on the design stage of a building, as well as JessBridge [133] that allow to automatically apply energy saving
the operational stage of a building (monitoring). For instance, Curry strategies.
et al. [112] combined scenario modeling and linked data to sup- Schevers et al. [134] provides an example focused on the com-
port building design decisions in both stages. Curry et al. [113] and bination of IFC data with FM data that is available in relational
O’Donnell et al. [114] further extended the usage of linked data for databases for the Sydney Opera House. By doing so, a digital facil-
combining diverse cross-domain building data in support of oper- ity model is made available that gives transparent and integrated
ational building management support. This work focuses a lot on access to the available information. In this work, a well-balanced sys-
the objectives (events) and scenario’s in which the building data tem is devised that combines the best of relational database, OWL
is meant to be used. Corry et al. [115] discussed using semantic ontologies, a geometric visualization engine and existing software.
web technologies to aid the integration of ‘soft’ AEC data (qualita- The COMANCHE system presented in Meshkova et al. [135] deals
tive social media messages) into an existing building performance with home devices and appliances as well, but it focuses its ontol-
measurement framework for evaluating building performance in ogy more on the complex relations between services, software, users,
the operational phase. Further work towards the development of and providers. Furthermore, Ricquebourg et al. [136] proposes to
a full performance assessment application, relying on a perfor- implement smart home services using a combination of RDF (ABox),
mance assessment ontology, is documented in Corry et al. [116]. OWL (TBox) and SWRL (RBox). This would allow to automatically
Also Tomasevic et al. [117] focuses on the operational phase and process incoming sensor data using SWRL rules and make actions
discusses how the same ontology-based approach to building per- in the smart home accordingly, e.g. switch on the kitchen lights
formance analysis can be relied upon to provide direct and useful when it is sensed to be occupied. SESAME is a similar system that
feedback to the facility manager. Furthermore, Dibley et al. [118,119] is proposed in Tomic et al. [137], aiming at the integration of a
proposed an OntoFM system, in which real-time building monitor- smart metering system with a building automation system through
ing is supported through the combination of a multi-agent system a middle-ware semantic layer. This approach relies heavily on logi-
with access to semantic building data. The building data follows a cal inference (SWRL) and semantic web services, while putting a full
building ontology based on IFC, a sensors ontology that relies on context model of the building (smart metering + building automa-
the OntoSensor ontology [120], and a general purpose ontology — tion) at the center. Also Shah et al. [50] proposes an ontology for
 P. Pauwels et al. / Automation in Construction 73 (2017) 145–165 155

Álvaro Sicilia et al. [147], and Corrado et al. [148]. As indicated in

Corrado et al. [148], “semantic technologies have been used to create
ThinkHome models of urban energy systems able to assess the energy performance
of an urban area”. This system relies on the semantic combination
Global goalsetting of census data, land registry data, energy data, building system data,
Cost Energy User User
preferences and climate data (see Fig. 9). One of the main drawbacks outlined by
reduction efficiency comfort
the authors [148] is the fact that the described data keeps being mod-
Global goals ified, now and in the future, which will require continuous updates
Intelligent multi-agent agent
system and maintenance efforts. The main issue is thus again situated in
Context the creation and management of the links. However, it seems that in
Control User agents
inference agent
agent User prefs
many of these approaches, it is considered a useful approach to take
Auxiliary
this semantic approach and rely on engineers for link management.
KB interface
data agent BAS interface
agent
agent
(SPARQL) 4.4. Regulation compliance checking
Knowledge base
OWL
Reasoning As for construction-specific applications, researchers have looked
Ontology
into regulation compliance checking as well (see also Section 5). One
RDFS
History of the most commonly known industrial cases in automated regu-
RDF
data lation compliance checking, although not relying on semantic web
storage
technologies, is the ePlanCheck system in Singapore [149]. According
to Eastman et al. [150], rule-based systems are understood as sys-
tems that “apply rules, constraints or conditions to a proposed design,
Fig. 8. Overview of the ThinkHome system (original figure in Reinisch et al. [127]).
with results such as ‘pass’, ‘fail’ or ‘warning’, or ‘unknown’ ”. In the con-
text of regulation compliance checking [149], a number of logical
frameworks has been considered that could produce these outcomes.
the home energy management domain. This ontology is meant to For example, Kerrigan and Law [151] indicated the usefulness of a
be used for uniformly describing and classifying the many diverse logical basis in regulation compliance checking, as early as 2003. At
appliances that are produced and used in homes, so that the result- that moment, this process was implemented as an addition to plain
ing representations are interoperable and can be used for electrical XML. Alternatively, the usage of conceptual graphs, which is based
energy management purposes. Interoperability is meant to be real- on First Order Logic (FOL), has been proposed for the formalization
ized by making the ontology compatible with the SUMO. Also the of the regulation compliance checking process by Solihin and East-
RÉPENER ontology [138,139] is built as a global ontology that sub- man [152]. Furthermore, a number of open standard rule engines
sumes SUMO concepts and aims at providing energy consumption have been proposed for the representation of regulatory knowl-
evaluations throughout the entire building life-cycle. edge for compliance audit purposes. In particular, DROOLS and its
Also, Wicaksono et al. [140] developed an ontology for monitor- DROOLS Rule Language (DRL) has been suggested and used by Beach
ing and controlling energy consumption, as part of an intelligent et al. [153] and Solihin and Eastman [152].
energy management system for buildings. They propose to build As semantic web technologies typically rely on the decidable
an RDF representation of a building model, using an OWL ontol- subsets of FOL, including DL, we will focus on these proposals.
ogy for building information. This ontology includes concepts for the Yurchyshyna and Zarli [154] proposed a formal ontology-based
appliances present in the building (dishwasher, fridge). The OWL approach for the formalization and semantic organization of confor-
ontology can then be combined with a number of rules expressed mance requirements based on SPARQL. Zhang et al. [155] demon-
in SWRL [141], to enable an inference engine to infer if there are strated a use case on BIM-based hazard identification and mitigation
any anomalous activities occurring (e.g. ‘heaters’ that are ‘work- showing detailed ontology development, instance generation, a com-
ing’ AND ‘windows’ that are ‘open’). Wicaksono et al. [142] extends bination of SWRL rules and a rule engine, and finally visualization of
this work and includes an OWL ontology inspired by IFC. In this
extended proposal, the authors rely on a rule engine based on
SWRLJessBridge [133], which allows the execution of rules com-
bined with the Protégé API. A SPARQL endpoint is made available Energy

on top of this rule engine, so that the end user only has to query Census
for the results of the rules. Furthermore, Kadolsky et al. [143] devel-
Land Building
oped an energy enhanced BIM-ontology-based framework applying registry systems
inference rules to pre-check concepts and relations to facilitate the
semantic integration of different domain models for supporting the
design of energy efficient buildings. Similar to this work, Baumgärtel Building
typologies
et al. [144] specifically show how rules can be used to allow a thermal Climate
insulation check for building energy performance analysis.
Linking data for energy performance analysis also occurs at the
urban level. An early example study in this regard is made by
Schevers et al. [145], focusing on the integration of a water ontol- Energy analysis
ogy, a GIS ontology, an urban ontology, and an energy ontology. This Energy assess- (e.g. data mining)
ment (e.g. SAP)
study outlines the possibility to provide an integrated view over
Energy simulation
many data sources in an urban environment, thus allowing a bet- (e.g. URSOS)
ter integrated overall assessment for urban development. Another
excellent example in the usage of linked data for urban energy per- Fig. 9. In the SEMANCO project, an integration is done of census data, land registry
formance analysis is the SEMANCO project for which the usage of data, energy data, building system data, climate data.
semantic web technologies is discussed in Madrazo et al. [146], Source: Figure adapted from Álvaro Sicilia et al. [147].
156 P. Pauwels et al. / Automation in Construction 73 (2017) 145–165

checking results in a BIM authoring tool. Zhong et al. [156,157] used a models, overlapping with many of the concepts and conclusions
domain ontology for assisting construction quality compliance check- outlined in Section 3.
ing and supporting the plan definition and verification process in pit The combination of geographical and building data is most com-
excavation. Furthermore, Pauwels et al. [158] aimed at implementing monly required in large infrastructure projects. A number of pro-
acoustic regulation compliance checking for BIM models. posals and pilot applications can be found. These use cases tend
Note however, that the outlined research initiatives typically to rely primarily on their own domain ontologies, as is also indi-
conclude that only about 70 to 80 % (estimated) of the regulatory cated in Le and Jeong [21]. In terms of urban infrastructure products,
knowledge in a building regulation can be explicitly and unambigu- El-Gohary and El-Diraby [93] developed a domain ontology describ-
ously be formalized (see also Nawari [159] for an outline of the ing the multi-stakeholder project development process to support
difficulties). The other 20 to 30 % is too vague or qualitative, and knowledge-enabled process management and coordination across
therefore requires human interpretation in the regulation compli- various stakeholders, disciplines, and projects for urban infrastruc-
ance checking process. This will likely remain a key issue in this ture. Similarly, El-Diraby and Osman [174] developed a domain
domain. Note here that choosing more expressive (rule) languages ontology for construction concepts in urban infrastructure products
allows to express more of the rules in a regulation, but using these to provide a conceptualization for knowledge in civil infrastructure.
languages on the other hand also results in more complex (often Also Montenegro et al. [175] developed an LBCS OWL ontology based
undecidable) representations and lower run-time performance (it on the Land Based Classification Standards (LBCS). This ontology is
takes longer to process the rules). proposed as a basic structure to allow city information modelling
Besides the expressiveness of the rule language (see also (CIM).
Section 5), also the conversion from a natural language regula- Ideally, however, infrastructure projects that include GIS and BIM
tion text to a formal representation (or reverse) remains a critical data also rely on the data models and ontologies provided in those
research issue. A recent research effort specifically aiming at this two domains. To achieve this, it has been attempted within Build-
challenge is the Requirement, Applicability, Selection, Exception ingSMART to extend the available EXPRESS schemas with infras-
(RASE) tagging mechanism [160,161]. This RASE system suggests tructural schema extensions (leaving out GIS schema extensions out
to add XML tags to regulation texts, which can then be automat- of scope for now). As a result, the Infrastructure Room of Build-
ically interpreted in order to obtain a formal representation of ingSMART is developing an IFC Bridge, IFC Road, and IFC Alignment
the regulation (in SWRL, DRL, IfcConstraint instances, SPARQL extension in the EXPRESS information modeling language. However,
queries or whichever). An alternative approach is to rely on Natu- as already indicated in Section 3.1, the usage of EXPRESS would again
ral Language Processing (NLP) techniques, as proposed in Salama and limit extensibility and adaptability, not to mention the difficulties in
El-Gohary [162], Zhang and El-Gohary [163], and Yeung et al. [164]. binding to the diverse available commercial software solutions. An
alternative approach was therefore proposed by Beetz et al. [176]
towards enriching existing BIM systems with GIS and infrastruc-
4.5. Geographical and infrastructure data ture data. This is demonstrated for quay walls in Rotterdam [176].
This approach is closely associated to the way in which a semantic
Semantic web technologies also benefit the integration of data web version of the bSDD is proposed to be used (see Section 4.2).
in the AEC domain with data that is typically outside this domain. Namely, existing BIM environments remain to be used for modeling
For example, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are applied building information, but schema extensions or relations to infor-
throughout the different phases of any civil infrastructure project. mation outside the schema, like bSDD URIs, Infra domain ontologies,
GIS data standards (e.g. CityGML) are managed by the Open Geospa- quay wall ontologies, GIS ontologies, are made by incorporating a
tial Consortium (OGC). This community has been turning towards property URI and a value or object URI in the name and value of an
the usage of web technologies and semantic web technologies over IfcPropertySingleValue instance. If properly published, these
the last 10 to 15 years. This has resulted in a higher availability URIs then provide access to formally represented information that is
of GIS data on the web, allowing better and more usability of the made available outside of the BIM environment (material data, bSDD
data [165,166]. Also when remaining in the geographical domain, the data, Infra data, GIS data). A schema of this approach is provided in
issue of managing multiple models containing the same information Fig. 10, with the legacy IFC model on the left and the external RDF
(interoperability) remains a key issue, as is explained in Métral et graphs on the right.
al. [165] by investigating a combination of a CityGML ontology, an Another approach towards the combination of BIM, GIS, and Infra
ontology for transportation systems (OTS), and an ontology of urban data is provided in the COINS project [177]. In this approach, diverse
planning process (OUPP). Métral et al. [167] furthermore combines legacy files can be combined in one container, allowing the contin-
this approach with archaeological urban data, maintaining CityGML ued usage of standard BIM, CAD and GIS systems. An additional OWL
as the central ontology. file in the container then describes how the diverse elements in all
The integration of GIS, BIM and CAD using web technologies has legacy files are related or linked to each other [178]. If all data is avail-
been a topic in the AEC industries as well as in the OGC. This is able in RDF graphs, however, making and managing links between
turning towards the adoption of semantic web technologies in more such files would likely become a lot more convenient (see slide 26 in
recent work. For example, Akinci et al. [168] propose a web-service Ref. [179]).
based approach that enables semantic interoperability between CAD
and GIS platforms. El-Mekawy and Östman [169] propose the usage 5. Aim 3: logical inference and proofs
of an intermediate reference ontology, the Unified Building Model
(UBM) to implement the bi-directional mapping between IFC and A third and last topic that is often used in arguing for the adop-
CityGML. Mignard et al. [170] propose a SIGA3D system that extends tion of semantic web technologies in the architectural design and
BIM information with geographical information to allow urban facil- construction industry, relates to the logical foundations available in
ity management. Irizarry et al. [171] integrate BIM and GIS into a semantic web technologies. Using generic inference engines, extra
system for improving visual monitoring of construction supply chain information can be inferred from the information in RDF and OWL
management. Karan et al. [172] and Karan and Irizarry [173] further through simple DL principles. Moreover, it is possible to represent
utilized semantic web technologies to facilitate such integration and IF-THEN rules, for example using SWRL [141], thus allowing rea-
interoperability of BIM and GIS. Note that all these approaches focus soning within FOL. When chaining these rules and combining them
a lot on semantic interoperability of geographical data and urban with original building data and a reasoning engine, a considerably
 P. Pauwels et al. / Automation in Construction 73 (2017) 145–165 157

Fig. 10. Linking legacy IFC models with external vocabularies using semantic web technologies, as proposed in Beetz et al. [176] (original figure in Beetz et al. [176]).

powerful inference process can be realized, an approach which is after querying for information (SPARQL SELECT), rule checking by
schematically represented in Fig. 11. querying (SPARQL CONSTRUCT), and semantic rule checking with
In principle, the formal logical basis of semantic web languages dedicated rule languages (SWRL).
allows to do more than simple inference. This basis also allows to
automatically generate the proofs for what is inferred in a reason- 5.1. Regulation compliance checking
ing process. These proofs can be used by semantic web applications
to build trust around their results (see Section 2.1). At this moment, The logical basis supplied by semantic web technologies is most
however, most semantic web applications are limited to the usage commonly relevant to rule checking use cases such as regulation
of RDF(S), OWL, and rules, especially in the architectural design and compliance checking (see Section 4.4). The way in which the infer-
construction industry. ence process and the actual ‘rule checking’ is understood, how-
The inference process with semantic web technologies can take ever, tends to differ among implementation plans and backgrounds.
a quite diverse number of forms. A full technical overview of those ‘Checking’ is most commonly interpreted as ‘checking for consis-
forms is clearly out of scope here, but initial outlines are given tency and completeness’ [181]. This is clearly of high relevance in
elsewhere [122,180]. Moreover, Pauwels et al. [122] provide a quan- combination with MVD information exchange: one needs to check
titative assessment of some available rule-checking procedures in whether the resulting model views actually also contain the required
the form of a performance benchmark in the AEC industries. Pauwels information [182]. However, the kind of checking required for MVD
and Zhang [180] distinguish between hard-coded rule checking typically benefits from a CWA. In an OWA, the fact that information
is not there cannot lead to a fail message (see Section 2.3). This is
a crucial context that needs to be taken into account in any discus-
sion in the AEC domains on the topic of rule checking. Although it is
possible to perform a CWA-based inference process using semantic
User
web technologies, it is not the main virtue of this set of technologies.
interface Instead, the inference process should mainly be used to assert addi-
tionally derived information, both in the case of OWL reasoning and
responses in reasoning with dedicated rule languages (see Section 2.1).
RDF graphs If limiting to OWA-based regulation compliance checking, one
queries of the earliest semantic approaches in this domain relies exten-
sively on ontologies and SPARQL, rather than considering dedicated
semantic rule languages (see also Ref. [180]). Namely, the approach
inference engine
presented by Yurchyshyna et al. [183] and Bouzidi et al. [184] relies
entirely on SPARQL SELECT and CONSTRUCT queries for regulation
IF-THEN rule repo RDF repo OWL ontologies compliance checking. This approach of querying a model or ontology
with a query language is still regularly used for regulation compli-
Fig. 11. Graphical schema of the combination of data, ontology rules and a reasoning ance checking. A similar proposal has been proposed by Dimyadi
engine to enable semantic inference, for instance for building data. et al. [185] for regulation-compliance audits in general. A second
158 P. Pauwels et al. / Automation in Construction 73 (2017) 145–165

example of an OWA-based reasoning process for regulation com- challenge in this domain is again linking one ontology (domain ontol-
pliance checking is the effort by Pauwels et al. [158], which aims ogy) with another ontology (regulation ontology), which leads to the
at accommodating acoustic regulation compliance checking for BIM same challenges as in Section 3.
models using N3Logic rules.
A more recent and probably also one of the most elaborate 5.2. Interoperability and model handling
approaches is proposed by Beach et al. [186]. With the semantic
approach for automated regulatory compliance checking in the con- Obviously, rules and reasoning engines are not only relevant for
struction sector, Beach et al. [186] primarily aim to allow domain regulation compliance checking. As an RBox, rules form a very impor-
experts to formally represent and maintain their own rules in a tant third element next to the TBox (ontology) and ABox (instances).
rule-checking system (as opposed to the closed rule sets in propri- This has become clear from the number of times that rules and
etary platforms). In addition, an increased understanding would be rule engines were mentioned in the last two sections (Sections 3
obtained of what the regulatory compliance system is actually check- and 4). The examples given regarding the on-demand application
ing [186]. The schema of the proposed system and how it can be of rules for query rewriting [77], subset selection and subset pub-
used for regulation compliance checking is repeated in Fig. 12. The lication [62,67,73] (see end of Section 3.3.2), including the FOWLA
system uses five ontologies: an abstract regulation ontology, a core architecture [76], are excellent examples of how the logical basis pro-
domain ontology, a data format ontology, a regulation ontology, and vided via semantic web technologies can be used at its maximum.
a regulation mapping ontology. These ontologies allow to semanti- The examples used in de Farias et al. [73] particularly propose to sim-
cally represent building data on the one hand and regulation data on plify IfcRelationShip instances following the ifcOWL ontology,
the other hand, both using their own terms and vocabularies. Indeed, and to simplify the representation of external versus internal walls.
the vocabulary used in a regulation is typically quite different (see Automatically generating these parallel representations allows end
also Refs. [180,187,188]) from the vocabulary used in a BIM model users to make far simpler and more intuitive queries.
(core ontology), let alone in one of the data models used to capture The example rule-checking implementation that is documented
that building model (data format ontology, like ifcOWL). in Lee et al. [189] might be considered similar to these last proposals,
The rules in the regulation ontology of Beach et al. [186] are in the sense that it also targets the inference of information in
built semi-automatically from the regulation texts by first annotat- one representation (as required for cost estimation) based entirely
ing the texts using the RASE approach [160,161] and then parsing on information in another representation (IFC), which relates to
and converting from these RASE annotation tags. Other approaches the same interoperability challenge. Lee et al. [189] propose two
proposed to use natural language processing (NLP) techniques for small OWL ontologies, a work item ontology and a work condi-
this step [162–164]. A mapping ontology then allows to link the tion ontology, which are engineered with the purpose of helping in
regulation and domain ontologies, making both compatible. In the the building cost estimation process. The authors propose to extract
case of the BREEAM regulations studied in Beach et al. [186], it information from an ifcXML file and parse this information as RDF
resulted in 180 procedures to map 854 data items in the IFC ontol- instances of the work item and work condition ontologies. Using
ogy to the BREEAM ontology. In conclusion on this topic, the linking these RDF instances and the OWL ontologies, an OWL reasoning
between the diverse domains is being done here using program- engine (in this case the RETE-based Bossam reasoner) is able to
ming code. Alternative approaches have already been discussed, infer additional properties and class memberships. A user interface
including a mapping through logical rules [158], a pure engineer- then allows a user to query a SPARQL endpoint holding the result-
ing approach [147,148], and a linkset engineering approach [69]. ing graph. The query results can be used more intuitively in a cost
Whichever approach is taken, it must be clear that the key research estimation application. This example relies not on explicit IF–THEN

Semantic Framework

Core Domain Data Format

Ontology Ontology
Procedures Abstract
Database Regulation
Ontology
Regulation
Regulation
Mapping
Ontology
Ontology

Data File Semantic Specific SWRL Rule Results

Translator Ontology Engine

1. Submit Data File for 4. Supply required 2. Perform Compliance

Compliance Checking additional data Checking 3. View Results

Compliance Checking
User

Fig. 12. The semantic approach to the compliance checking process, as proposed by Beach et al. [186] (original figure in Beach et al. [186]).
 P. Pauwels et al. / Automation in Construction 73 (2017) 145–165 159

rules but rather on a combination of SPARQL queries and OWL class found in the home automation domain. The ThinkHome system men-
expressions. tioned in Section 4 is one such an example [127,128], as it relies on
agents that interpret information from home sensors and devices and
5.3. Inference processes within regular use cases then react in terms of home automation.

As indicated, inference processes regularly take place within 6. Conclusion

‘common’ use cases as well. The cases that we consider here over-
lap with a considerable number of the cases outlined in Section 4. 6.1. Application areas for semantic web technologies
In these cases, the choice for a semantic web-based inference pro-
cess is most commonly motivated by the desire to implement a part In this article, we have identified three key application areas of
of an application in a declarative rather than a procedural way. As semantic web technologies and articulated the opportunities and
soon as data is available, part of the conclusions can be generated by challenges of their current practices. A large number of relevant
a generic inference engine in terms of logical declarative assertions, papers has been taken into account to make a contribution along
thus extending the data set that is available at the source. Procedural these three axes. An overview of the listed papers is given in Tables 2
programming can then be limited more to straight-forward imple- to 4, indicating which use cases they respond to, what advantages
mentation tasks (like a GUI and finding datasets), and to those kinds semantic web technologies could offer for them, and what the cur-
of assertions that cannot be expressed in a formal language (like the rent status of research is.
20–30% of regulation text that cannot be formalized).
An example showing the way in which rules can be deployed 1. Interoperability: Semantic web technologies are often asso-
for construction industry and building information management is ciated to the long-standing interoperability challenge in the
provided by Kadolsky et al. [143] and Baumgärtel et al. [144]. In architectural design and construction industry. Even though
this example, the authors propose to represent a building in an the term interoperability entails diverse connotations and
ifcOWL ontology, after which rules can be used to retrieve infor- interpretations, this paper pinpointed that no solid proposal
mation that is relevant for building energy performance. Baumgär- exists so far for fully resolving interoperability issues in these
tel et al. [144] specifically shows how rules can be used to allow disciplines using semantic web technologies. At least, there is
a thermal insulation check: the right-hand side of one of the no proposal that solves it any better than existing approaches.
SWRL rules includes the statement ?summ eeBIM:definition In that regard, most domain professionals currently aim first
“Thermal insulation check failed”. For resolving inconsis- at providing semantic data exchange rather than full interop-
tency issues during design coordination, Kim and Grobler [190] erability. Such an approach leaves room for implementers and
describe how potential conflicts can be detected through an ontolog- engineers to interpret and restructure incoming and outgoing
ical consistency checking system, after which a repair or modifica- information, thus embracing interpretations, heterogeneous
tion of the inconsistencies can be achieved. standards, and versatile adaptation.
In the area of Health and Safety (HS) measures, the “Job Haz- Semantic web technologies have capabilities to extend and
ard Analysis” (JHA) application proposed by Zhang et al. [155,191] add functions, features and possibilities towards an improved
provides another excellent example of a semantic rule-checking pro- information exchange, as the usage of the RDF data model
cess. The authors propose to combine an RDF representation of the implies a common data model across islands of information.
building model, contained in Tekla Structures, with a number of But, in order to reach interoperability, which is more asso-
ontologies and SWRL rules that allow the analysis of the construction ciated with consensus and agreements on conceptual data
project in terms of jobs, tasks, safety procedures, and the resources models and data exchanges among stakeholders, it is more
that are required to allow the safe execution of these job steps. important that domain professionals make agreements about
Abanda et al. [192] relies heavily on SWRL rules to compute labor how their conceptual data models are related. This should ide-
cost in construction projects. In the use cases documented by Abanda ally start in the earliest phase of data exchange specifications,
et al. [192], a lot of manual modelling occurred to allow the combi- which is in fact the purpose of the IDM and MVD specifica-
nation of RBox (SWRL rules) with TBox (OWL ontologies) and ABox tion processes. An IDM allows to define and maintain distinct
(RDF instances), dealing mostly with challenges in merging seman- data exchanges and their specifications, hence this is the best
tically close concepts like labor productivity and labor efficiency. medium to employ the technology for generating formalized
Furthermore, a proposal is made in Benevolenskiy et al. [193] to rely domain semantics and offering a robust base for integrating
on formal ontologies and rules to model construction processes, so diverse disciplines.
that they can be better organized and managed, which is much in line 2. Linking across domains: As was indicated already in Section 2.4
with the proposal made by Zhang et al. [155,191]. This work on pro- (linked data vs. semantic web), there is a difference between
cess modelling relies heavily on earlier work in ontology engineering semantic web and linked data applications. Linked data was
for business process objects (BPOs) [194,195]. Other use cases that hereby explained as a response to the finding that quite some
often include reasoning engines and semantic web services can be data was being published on the web, seemingly following

Table 2
Use cases of semantic web technologies in the AEC industries in line with the interoperability aim.

Use cases Semantic web applicability and advantages Research status and challenges

• Enable vendor-neutral model exchange [16-21,50] • Provides a single data model for representing any • Human intervention and manual work required
• Combine different information representations kind of information for ontology alignment and interface
[19,62,68,69,71-74] • Allows adding a logical basis to this representa-
• Support use case based information exchange tion using OWL and rule languages
[20,60,62,64,67,73,76,77] • Focuses intensively on linking diverse graphs of
information together in a web-like fashion
• Allow to combine different representations of
information
• Exchange partial models (requirement model,
architectural model, MEP model)
160 P. Pauwels et al. / Automation in Construction 73 (2017) 145–165

Table 3
Use cases of semantic web technologies in the AEC industries in line with the Linking across domains aim.

Use cases Semantic web applicability and advantages Research status and challenges

• Ontology-based information management • Support collaboration through a common platform • How to keep parallel representations of the same thing
and sharing [11,80-99] • Enable network based publication of concept consistent and complete [20,71] ?
• Combine product manufacturer data with libraries • How to keep the links between partial models effectively
building data [99–111] • Description logic basis manageable [70] ?
• Support building performance analysis and • Links between concepts and concept libraries need to be
optimization [50,112-131,134-148] created and managed over time
• Connect BIM and GIS [21,165-179] • At least 20% to 30% of regulation codes are too vague or
• Enable automated regulation compliance qualitative, and therefore requires human interpretation
checking [149-158,160-164] in the regulation compliance checking process
• Conversion from a natural language regulation text to
a formal representation (or reverse) remains a critical
research issue

the semantic web idea but actually never linking to outside 1. How to define and manage semantic links? In all three applica-
data [40], and thus in fact not realizing the initial core idea tion axes outlined above, the most prevalent problem revealed
behind the semantic web at all, which is linking data. When throughout the literature review, is the open question of how
taking a linked data approach, one uses only a subset of to create and manage the links between distinct submodels,
the stack of available semantic web technologies. For many partial models, rule sets, and so forth. This critical question
researchers and developers, linked data is thus the ‘fast track’ typically requires human input (cfr. blue circular interface
forward. points in Fig. 5). This is considered to be a key reason why
Not surprisingly, applications and use cases that focus entirely semantic web technologies will likely not solve the interoper-
on linking data are also the most rapidly emerging applica- ability issue, but will at best improve information exchange.
tions and use cases. Because of the limited number of involved Semantic web technologies provide a semantic or formal bet-
technologies and the simpler approaches, they are easier to ter grounding to information, but agreements between ontolo-
conceive and implement. Within the construction industry, the gies and schemas still need to be made.
highest number of valuable use cases lies in this axis. Undoubt- 2. Where is the optimal balance between procedural and declara-
edly, this will be a fruitful area for future research initiatives tive implementation efforts? Less prevalent in the considered
and application development initiatives. articles, but closely associated with the question on how to
3. Logical inference and proofs: Applications and use cases that create and manage links, is the challenge of finding a balance
focus on the logical basis of OWL and SWRL are less com- between the diverse semantic web and other technologies that
mon than the use cases focusing on linking across domains. are available to effectively build an application in support of a
In fact, the exact opposite situation can be perceived here. practical use case in the construction industry. This is a ques-
OWL and SWRL, but also inference engines and proof engines, tion that drives many researchers and implementers in this
are technologies that are not commonly present in linked area, but that is not so often elicited in the articles. Some of
data-inspired applications and use cases. Since these tech- the considered articles propose building a central ontology and
nologies are the upper parts of the semantic web technol- build everything around that; others aim to manage data in
ogy stack, it takes considerably more effort to implement a fully decentralized manner, almost entirely using semantic
and use them effectively in practical use cases. Yet, for an web technologies (ABox, TBox, RBox); others make an effective
important research area in the construction industry as rule- combination of semantic web technologies in the data layer,
checking and regulation-compliance checking (Section 5.1), it but rather quickly switch to procedural programming lan-
is totally worthwhile to make this effort. Even more so, assum- guages as soon as integration of data is required; others rely
ing that linked data applications mature and become more very intensively on semantic web services in a service-oriented
common, also other logic-based applications as documented in architecture (SOA); and yet others focus on minimal use cases
Section 5.3 will undoubtedly become more mainstream. in an otherwise traditional software environment. It is impos-
sible to make out in this article what the best approach is.
The best answer is likely that a good evaluation and assess-
6.2. Key research challenges ment needs to be done of the targeted use case and application,
before the actual implementation is being done, and a solid
By making a qualitative assessment of the diverse proposals made conceptual use case and implementation plan needs to be con-
in these domains, we have also been able to retrieve where the ceived that takes the best of the available technologies, which
key research challenges lie in the usage of semantic web technolo- is a pure software engineering challenge.
gies. These research challenges are very closely related to practical 3. How to effectively bring in input by a human user? A last research
engineering challenges in construction industry. challenge that can be pinpointed is the need to build a good

Table 4
Use cases of semantic web technologies in the AEC industries in line with the Logical inference and proofs aim.

Use cases Semantic web applicability and advantages Research status and challenges

• Check model consistency and completeness • Description logic basis • How to link/map domain ontologies to regulation
[69,147,148,158,160-164,180,182-188] • Automatic availability of proofs (trust) ontologies?
• Enable automated regulation compliance checking
[62,67,73,76,77,189]
• Logic inference use cases including building energy
performance, construction safety, cost estimation,
home automation and etc. [143,144,155,190-192]
 P. Pauwels et al. / Automation in Construction 73 (2017) 145–165 161

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