Study of Data Exchange for Use by Construction Information Systems

Information technology (IT) that is achieving astounding progress has been applied to rationalize construction project management and is expanding the potential for the automation and use of robots in construction work. But the development of IT based systems has often resulted in cases where it is difficult for multiple systems to share electronic data because these systems were developed independently by different makers for use in different types of construction sites and to perform different types of work. In order to use information efficiently to gain the full benefits of such systems, it is vital to be able to transfer electronic data smoothly between construction information systems and between their sub-systems. This will also sharply reduce the cost of using construction information systems. The authors have organized data exchange concepts and studied the data exchange standards needed to realize these concepts in order to propose a method for the sharing and exchange of data by a number of different construction information systems used to support the execution of civil engineering work. And taking a compaction control system as an example, they have analyzed the categorization and hierarchical structure of data to prepare a data model as the foundation for the construction of data exchange standards.