An Extensible Construction Ontology to Guide Job-Site Sensing and Support Information Management

Real-time sensing data and continuously updated project documents pose challenges to project managers who need to analyze these data and documents to derive meaningful information necessary for decision-making. To collect and incorporate heterogeneous data both from offsite and onsite sources, the authors: (1) developed a construction tasks, resources, and techniques integrated (ConTaRTI) ontology to classify construction site information that is extensible; and (2) encoded recommendations regarding sensing technique selection into the proposed ConTaRTI ontology, which aims to help collect data for meeting real-time construction information needs. The proposed ConTaRTI ontology offers a novel way to classify construction information that needs to be collected, measured, and detected on the site, given its real-time decision contexts. The ConTaRTI ontology also helps provide sensing technique recommendations to guide the selection of methods and tools for the data collection on specific construction tasks and resources. Therefore, the ontology enables a new method for construction information management by linking construction site information with suitable data collection methods. In addition, the extensibility and flexibility of the proposed ontological model opens a new door to organizing and integrating specific information needs with its collection/process methods to support information management. The quantitative and qualitative evaluation results indicate that the developed ontology can recommend sensing techniques that effectively support field data collection and information management.