Distributed ontology architecture for knowledge management in highway construction

The ongoing plethora of rehabilitation in the infrastructure domain requires more planning and integration during design and construction. To achieve this, there is a need for developing and using semantic (ontology-based) mechanisms for the exchange of development knowledge among all project stakeholders. This paper presents a distributed ontology architecture for knowledge management in highway construction. With every other utility tied to the highway geometry, the architecture is intended to be the base for a cross-discipline knowledge exchange in the infrastructure domain. The architecture presents highway knowledge on three levels: domain knowledge (an umbrella for infrastructure shared knowledge), application knowledge (representation of highway-specific knowledge), and user knowledge (an enterprise-specific representation of highway knowledge). The proposed architecture models highway concepts using six major root concepts: project, process, product, actor, resources, and technical topics (attributes and constraints). The architecture was developed using rigorous knowledge acquisition and ontology development techniques. It was developed as an extension for the e-COGNOS ontology. The architecture was validated through input from domain experts.