“Computational Civil Engineering - "Intersections" International Journal

“Computational Civil Engineering 2005”, International Symposium 45The source files are based on text, emphasizing rather semantics then syntax with ahigh degree of definition possibilities. As such, they are also a better alternativeversus proprietary binary files, considering portability, handling and securityagainst data corruption.The development of bcXML (Building and Construction XML –http://www.bcxml.net/) based on the EU IST-10303 “eConstruct” initiative from1999, was an important stepping stone in this direction beyond other internationalprojects like aecXML (Architecture, Engineering and Construction XML – startedby Bentley, http://www.aecXML.org/), gbXML (Green Building XML – developedby GeoPraxis, http://www.geopraxis.com/), LandXML (Land Development andTransportation XML, http://www.landxml.org/), eBIS_XML (Electronic BusinessInterchange Standard XML, http://www.ebis-xml.net/) etc. For data modeling theIFC (Industrial Foundation Classes) developed through IAI (International Allianceof Interoperability, http://www.iai-international.org/) offered a strong support [3].“The goal of eConstruct (http://www.econstruct.org/) was to harness thepossibilities of the Internet for the building industry, concentrating on thecommunication in the buying and selling phase. Conceptually, three things areneeded for communication: a vocabulary, a grammar and a communicationmedium” [4]. As vocabulary of terms, taxonomy was used (with specializationhierarchy, property definitions and multilinguality) upon the ISO/DIS 12006-3developments. The resulting grammar (data format) was bcXML and thecommunication medium was the Internet.The moment “eConstruct” finished, another project called “E-cognos”(http://www.e-cognos.org/) started and took the development into the direction ofknowledge management: “Harnessing the existing and available, but not wellfindable,knowledge contained in documents and in people” [5]. In this project theterm ontology was used instead of taxonomy, defining a formal way of describingthe set of concepts used in a certain field, from a certain viewpoint.The goal was to create multiple cooperating ontologies in order to provide multiplecooperative ways to access, find and classify information. As data format XML andRDF/OWL (Resource Description Framework/Ontology Web Language – an XMLformat for ontologies and ontology-based data) was used, and like in eConstruct,the Internet was the communication medium. The main innovation of this projectwas the proof of the possibility of superimposing ontological richness onto existingdocument management systems and databases. In terms of communication,ontologies and the information that uses them can be accessed and exchanged inthe familiar open and standardized way using the Internet. “This semantic weballows you to make explicit statements and explicit links about (and in) Internetaccessibleresources using ontologies as loosely-coupled, expandable vocabularies.This greatly enhances the semantic richness of Internet-based informationexchange” [5].