Hou, S (2015) An ontology-based holistic approach for multi-objective sustainable structural design. PhD thesis, Cardiff University, UK.
Abstract
Building construction industry has significant impact on sustainability. The construction, operation and maintenance of buildings account for approximately 50% of global energy usage and anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In recent years, the embodied energy and carbon are identified increasingly important in terms of sustainability throughout building life cycle. Incorporation of sustainable development in building structural design becomes undoubtedly crucial. The effective building design requires smart and holistic tools that can process multi-objective and inter-connected domain knowledge to provide genuine sustainable buildings. With the advancement of information and communication technologies, various methods and techniques have been applied to accomplish the multiple objectives of sustainable development in building design. One of the most successful approaches is building information modelling (BIM), which requires further enhancement of interoperability. The emergence of Semantic Web technology provides more opportunity to improve the information modelling, knowledge management and system integration. The research presented in this thesis investigates how ontology and Semantic Web rules can be used in a knowledge-based holistic system, in order to integrate information about structural design and sustainability, and facilitate decision-making in design process by recommending appropriate solutions for different use cases. A research prototype namely OntoSCS incorporating OWL ontology and SWRL rules has been developed and tested in typical structural design cases. The holistic approach considers five inter-connected dimensions of sustainability, including structural feasibility, embodied energy and carbon, cost, durability and safety. In addition, the selection of structural material supplier and criteria in sustainability assessment are taken into account as well. This research concludes that the Semantic Web technology can be applied to structural design at early stage to provide multi-criteria optimised solution. The methodology and framework employed in this study can be further adapted as a generic multi-criteria and holistic decision support system for other domains in construction sector.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | building information modelling; prototype development; semantic web; sustainability |
| Index terms: | semantic web, building design, building information modelling, information modelling, building life cycle, durability, holistic approach, interoperability, embodied energy, dimension, operation and maintenance, decision support, design process, information and communication technology, sustainability assessment, ontology, prototype, sustainable development, building construction, system integration, sustainable building, decision-making, methodology, emergence, knowledge management, greenhouse gas, structural design, construction sector |
| Subjects: | decision analysis, industry analysis, systems and processes, information systems, systems engineering, education and knowledge transfer, professional development, modelling and simulation, energy systems, health monitoring assessment and metrics, material degradation and durability, architectural engineering, business, design methods, computing systems, networking, building construction, asset management, sustainability assessment, research methods, maintenance engineering, organizational theory, health safety and environment, digital design, sustainable construction, architectural design, climate science |
| Topics: | Business Strategy, Research Practice, Information Management, Construction Materials, Construction Technology, Design Practice, Digital Applications, Health and Safety, Project Management, Engineering Principles, Risk Management, Sustainability |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCT |
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