The issue of interoperability in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry represents a challenge on a scale that spans across the project life cycle. This is predominant in the infrastructure sector that usually comprises a more versatile Operations and Maintenance (O&M) phase in comparison with the buildings sector. To this end, an important stage in the information life cycle is the asset information capture and validation during product procurement at the O&M phase. The water industry in the United Kingdom relies on Product Data Templates (PDTs) to fulfil such task, which is usually an error prone manual process. This paper presents an ongoing research, which investigates the application of Semantic Web Technologies (SWT) for improving product data exchange during product procurement at the O&M phase for the water industry in the United Kingdom (UK). Therefore, focus group sessions with industry experts were held to discuss current inefficiencies and solution requirements. Based on these results, a semantic common model named Asset Specification Ontology (ASO) was developed to capture and validate asset information during product procurement at the O&M phase. The common model (ontology) is based on available technologies, namely Web Ontology Language (OWL) and Shapes Constraint Language (SHACL). This gives the advantage of semantically rich data which can be linked and queried in a meaningful way to facilitate the exchange and validation of water industry assets’ data. The uniqueness of this paper is manifested in the issue it tackles, as efficient product procurement, and hence, data exchange in the water industry is an industrial challenge that is seldom researched. Results from the focus group sessions showed that information exchange within the UK water industry is impeded due to the lack of structured and semantic data. However, for a robust semantic interoperability, there needs to be a robust semantic data infrastructure, which would require semantic mappings from standards to product properties, from standards to other standards, and from standards to dictionaries. These conclusions were further supported by the common model, which was created from existing schemas, standards, and dictionaries. Generally, this paper recommends a common model/product library for phase-specific product data exchange in the water industry.
The construction industry is considered to be lagging behind other industries in terms of the technological advancement. One of the main factors is the lack of integration of incoherent and heterogeneous data on a project level. Whilst the adoption of Building Information Modelling (BIM) technologies and processes was aimed to solve integration issues. The interoperability is still a problem to solve, as most information and data fields show inconsistencies in a number of cases. One of the aspects of the problem is that IFC EXPRESS schema is only machine readable, requires extensive mappings, and usually does not support infrastructure domains other than buildings. This research explores the possibility of utilising Semantic Web Technologies (SWT) to help achieving some of the desired goals of data interoperability and Whole Life Cycle (WLC) information flow. SWT support the creation of comprehensive, layered, shared, human and machines readable, and extendable knowledge repositories dubbed ontologies. The Resource Description Framework (RDF) which forms the core of SWT provides a rather elegant way of modelling datasets, that is, assigning an Internationalised Resource Identifier (IRI) to each class, instance, and property. SWT are ought to provide better information retrieval and inferencing than current systems used in the industry. The main objective of this paper is to present a framework to demonstrate how SWT can underpin WLC information flow in water infrastructure projects case study.
A survey was conducted to assess trainee perception of the cross-cultural communication competency of U.S. military trainers and their satisfaction with the training they received. Findings from the survey show that U.S. military trainers rely significantly on local interpreters. This indicates variability in the ability of the trainers to communicate effectively with host nation partners, the variability being dependent on the capabilities of the individual interpreter. The findings illustrate the importance of providing military health personnel with training on how to work effectively with interpreters. The use of supplementary resources such as electronic translation devises when the interpreter is not capable of conveying health-related training information with the desired level of accuracy is recommended. Expanding the availability of general cultural training, which provides baseline information on local values, traditions, and customs in addition to health-specific cultural orientation, is also recommended to help military health trainers customize their training content and methods to fit the local environment.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.