A SOCIAL SEMANTIC WEB SYSTEM FOR COORDINATING COMMUNICATION IN THE ARCHITECTURE, ENGINEERING & CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY by Jinyue Zhang A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Civil Engineering University of Toronto © Copyright by Jinyue Zhang (2010) ABSTRACT Title: A Social Semantic Web System for Coordinating Communication in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction Industry Name: Jinyue Zhang Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Department: Department of Civil Engineering, University of Toronto Year of Convocation: 2010 The AEC industry has long been in need of effective modes of information exchange and knowledge sharing, but their practice in the industry is still far from satisfactory. In order to maintain their competence in a highly competitive environment and a globalized market, many organizations in the AEC industry have aimed at a move towards the development of learning organizations. Knowledge management has been seen as an effective way to have every member of an organization engaged in learning at all levels. At the very centre of knowledge management and learning is knowledge sharing through effective communication. Unfortunately, however, there is a big gap in the AEC industry between existing practice and the ideal in this area. In order to effectively coordinate information and knowledge flow in the AEC industry, this present research has developed a framework for an information system – a Construction Information and Knowledge Protocol/Portal (CIKP) which integrates within it a publish/subscribe system, Semantic Web technology, and Social Web concepts. Publish/subscribe is an appropriate many-to-many, people-to-people communication paradigm for handling a highly fragmented industry such as construction. In order to enrich the expressiveness of publications and subscriptions, Semantic Web technology has been incorporated into this system through the development of ontologies as a formal and ii interoperable form of knowledge representation. This research first involved the development of a domain-level ontology (AR-Onto) to encapsulate knowledge about actors, roles, and their attributes in the AEC industry. AR-Onto was then extended and tailored to create an application-level ontology (CIKP-Onto) which has been used to support the semantics in the CIKP framework. Social Web concepts have been introduced to enrich the description of publications and subscriptions. Our aim has been to break down linear communication through social involvement and encourage a culture of sharing, and in the end, the CIKP framework has been developed to specify desired services in communicating information and knowledge, applicable technical approaches, and more importantly, the functions required to satisfy the needs of a variety of service scenarios. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is true that pursuing Ph.D. studies is a challenging undertaking, and it has been a life-changing experience for me. This thesis would not have been possible without the support I have received from many people in various ways. I would like to convey to them my heartfelt gratitude and sincere appreciation. First and foremost, it would be hard to overstate my gratitude to my Ph.D. supervisor, Professor Tamer El-Diraby, for his continuous support and thoughtful guidance. With his wisdom, efforts and enthusiasm, many obstacles have been overcome smoothly. I also wish to thank Professor Hans-Arno Jacobsen and Professor Baher Abdulhai, my supervisory committee members, Professor Giovanni Grasselli, my additional examination committee member, and Professor Chimay Anumba, my external appraiser and examiner. I am indebted to all of them for their expert advice and constructive comments. I would never have endured these many years without emotional support from my family. I will be forever thankful to my parents who have provided me with their deepest love and support throughout my lifetime and the course of my doctoral studies. I would also like to express my warmest thanks to my wife, Jiangyan, for her companionship and understanding throughout the long journey that I have undertaken. Finally, I must mention our lovely daughter, Annan, who has been my greatest joy throughout many hard-working days. I am also very grateful to all the professors in the CEM Group and all my colleagues at the i2c Lab for sharing my struggle and making it possible for me to finish the program. I must thank the many domain experts who have provided valuable input and comments in the course of evaluation interviews and focus group study. Last, but not least, I would thank Patricia Bishop for her professional proofreading work. iv TABLE OF CONTENT ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.............................................................................................................. iv TABLE OF CONTENT ................................................................................................................... v LIST OF TABLES......................................................................................................................... ix LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................................ x 1 INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Research Motivation............................................................................................ 4 1.2 Problem Statement: A Micro Assessment of Coomunicaiton in AEC ................. 5 1.3 Proposed Solutions...............................................................................................9 1.3.1 An Publish/Subscribe System to Accommodate Industry Specialties .......... 9 1.3.2 Ontologies to Empower the Semantics....................................................... 10 1.3.3 Social Involvement to Harness Collective Intelligence...............................11 1.4 Research Objectives........................................................................................... 12 1.5 Scope, Contributions and Limitations................................................................ 15 1.6 Thesis Organization ........................................................................................... 18 2 LITERATURE REVIEW...................................................................................................... 20 2.1 Knowledge Management and Learning Organizations...................................... 24 2.1.1 Knowledge Management Practices in the AEC Industry............................ 25 2.1.2 Barriers and Limitations to Knowledge Management ................................ 26 2.2 Communication in the AEC Industry................................................................. 27 2.2.1 Social Interaction of Communication in Construction ............................... 28 2.2.2 Technical Communication in Construction................................................. 29 2.3 Publish/Subscribe Systems ................................................................................ 31 2.3.1 Types of Publish/Subscribe Systems .......................................................... 32 2.3.2 Advantages.................................................................................................. 33 2.3.3 Limitations .................................................................................................. 34 2.3.4 Potential Improvement................................................................................ 37 2.4 Web 2.0 and Social Web .................................................................................... 38 2.4.1 Weblogging (Blogging)...............................................................................38 2.4.2 Wiki............................................................................................................. 39 2.4.3 Social Networking ...................................................................................... 40 2.4.4 Social Tagging............................................................................................. 41 2.4.5 Social Involvement in Information Systems............................................... 41 2.5 Semantic Web and Ontology.............................................................................. 42 2.5.1 Ontology as Knowledge Representation..................................................... 42 v 2.5.2 Ontology Types........................................................................................... 44 2.5.3 Ontology and Publish/Subscribe Systems .................................................. 45 2.6 Role Representation........................................................................................... 45 2.6.1 Roles in Social Settings .............................................................................. 46 2.6.2 Approaches to Modelling Roles.................................................................. 47 2.6.3 Role Representation in the AEC Industry................................................... 48 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY............................................................................................ 50 3.1 Methodology for the Development of the AR-Onto.......................................... 52 3.1.1 Definition of Application Scenarios and Scope.........................................