Ontological foundations for agent support in constructability assessment of steel structures - a case study

Ontologies are the foundation on which knowledge-intensive problem solvers depend. Ontologies encapsulate domain concepts, tasks, problem-solving knowledge, and methods. This paper reports on a research project on ontology development for constructability assessment in steel frame structures. It discusses the conceptualisation and formal knowledge representation for the problem domain. The resulting knowledge structures facilitate reasoning in intelligent systems. The paper uses a case study to demonstrate the potential applications of ontologies in developing intelligent rule-based agents for constructability assessment, and reports on the experiments conducted to teach problem-solving agents. The results indicate great potential in developing high utility ontology-driven agents for use in organisational corporate knowledge management. The paper discusses the findings from the research project. The authors propose a constructability ontology for steel structures and an agent framework for constructability design knowledge acquisition. Recommendations are given for further work in developing ontologies for construction applications. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.