Safety in the construction industry remains a major challenge despite the technological advancements made in recent years. In recent years, ontologies are applied to give a formal structure to the knowledge in different domains. Ontologies also facilitate the integration of various domain knowledge and thus allow for better cross-functional developments (e.g., operator support systems that consider safety and productivity at the same time). The authors have previously developed a comprehensive Earthwork Ontology (EW-Onto). However, there has been no linkage between safety regulations and EW-Onto. Therefore, this research aims to: (1) develop a formal representation of earthwork safety regulations knowledge, and (2) integrate this knowledge with EW-Onto. A case study is developed to validate the integrated ontology. It is shown that the integrated ontology can be used to bridge the gap between high-level safety regulations and task-level instructions.
PurposeThis study proposes a framework for Earthwork Ontology (EW-Onto) to support and enhance data exchange in the project and the efficient decision-making in the planning and execution phases.Design/methodology/approachThe development of EW-Onto started from defining the concepts and building taxonomies for earthwork operations and equipment following the METHONTOLOGY approach. In addition, several rules have been extracted from safety codes and implemented as SWRL rules. The ontology has been implemented using Protégé. The consistency of EW-Onto has been checked and it has been evaluated using a survey.FindingsThe assessment of EW-Onto by experts indicates an adequate level of consensus with the framework, as an initial step for explicit knowledge exchanges within the earthwork domain.Practical implicationsThe use of an ontology within the earthwork domain can help: (1) link and identify the relationships between concepts, define earthwork semantics, and classify knowledge in a hierarchical way accepted by experts and end-users; (2) facilitate the management of earthwork operations and simplify information exchange and interoperability between currently fragmented systems; and (3) increase the stakeholders' knowledge of earthwork operations through the provision of the information, which is structured in the context of robust knowledge.Originality/valueThis paper proposes a framework for Earthwork Ontology (EW-Onto) to support and enhance data exchange in the project and the efficient decision-making in the planning and execution phases. EW-Onto represents the semantic values of the entities and the relationships, which are identified and formalized based on the basic definitions available in the literature and outlined by experts.
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