Lin, K-Y (2005) Knowledge-assisted retrieval of online product information in A/E/C (architecture/engineering/construction). PhD thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA.
Abstract
Product cost is a significant expenditure in a construction project where project participants have had to search for and dealt with a large amount of product information. With more product information, industry practitioners can make more informed project decisions. However, current approaches that support A/E/C information acquisition do not provide a comprehensive market scan. While the Internet provides an ever-growing resource for product information, none of the existing approaches is able to make use of this virtual market. Therefore, this research has developed a knowledge-assisted approach to tackle issues related to online searching to help retrieve A/E/C product information from the Internet. The research goal particularly is to increase the number of distinct manufacturers identified for a given product. The research investigated issues related to online product information searching and reviewed related literatures to identify tools for handling these issues. Then, a research model was built accordingly utilizing domain knowledge, information retrieval (IR) techniques, and strategies that incorporate domain knowledge into knowledge-supported IR approaches. Specifically, domain knowledge represented in the form of a thesaurus was used with query expansion strategies under the framework of an adaptation of the extended Boolean model. A prototype was implemented with five data sets for research validation. It was concluded from the testing results that domain knowledge can be helpful and the developed approach can effectively increase the number of distinct product manufacturers identified.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor: | Soibelman, L |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | market; construction project; information retrieval; validation |
| Index terms: | product information, information retrieval, strategy, internet, prototype, practitioner, acquisition, adaptation, construction project, manufacturer, validation, testing |
| Subjects: | production management, professional development, professional practice, business, modelling and simulation, data management, computing systems, practitioner, user focus, innovation studies, management |
| Topics: | Engineering Principles, Design Practice, Business Strategy, Information Management, Digital Applications, Roles and Professions, Project Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 2 PC |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here