Construction Information System: Integrating Data/Information Systems and Expert Systems

Within the academic and construction communities, there has been growing concern about how to deal accurately with the ever-changing nature of the whole construction business. In order to deal with the hostile construction environment, there is a great need in the construction industry to develop and implement a practical monitoring system which can handle the data bases, information systems, and management support systems such as an expert system. The construction information system (CIS) model is proposed to achieve integration of the knowledge-based expert system into the current, installed data/information systems to enhance the quality and efficiency of both computerised systems. This paper describes the rationale underlying the design of the CIS, and discusses the relevant issues relating to their integration, and describes briefly the architecture of a prototype system of knowledge representing facility called the Knowledge-based Expert system (KBES)