Project openLAB : Interoperate – Machine Readable Handbook V440
Linked data and the Semantic Web for the construction industry
Linked data is a potential technology to realize the Bjørnafjorden Open Live Center (BOLC), a dashboard for the digital twin of the bridge crossing of Bjørnafjorden. If successful, the lessons learned about linked data could further be utilized in the national bridge registration system, BRUTUS. The project openLAB : Interoperate – Machine Readable Handbook V440 is organized by buildingSMART on behalf of the Norwegian Public Roads Administration / Statens Vegvesen and aims to create awareness about linked data and the Semantic Web for the construction industry.
The V440 Handbook
The V440 Handbook provides guidance on the registration of bridges and other structures in the national- and county road networks. Here you will find requirements for documentation and also instructions for identifying and classifying bridges. The handbook is a supplement to Handbook R411 “Bridge Management, Operation and Maintenance” and provides a detailed description of these guidelines.
Management, operation and maintenance is the key here because it is a missing and unclear part of the BIM cycle which is now being focused on. BIM experts have long pointed out that 3D building information models are natural documentation for FDV (“Forvaltning, drift og vedlikehold” = Management, operation and maintenance”.) By classifying 3D building information models according to the V440 Handbook the data can be re-used for such purposes. The question then is how to make the classification available in the authoring software?
Issue: "Classifications are published in manuals and should be digitized and made machine readable".
Image: Link to Handbook V440 / Håndbok V440
VIDEO: Workshop meeting with the projects participants, including demo
How to digitize the handbooks
Publishing the handbooks as PDFs is not enough to digitize the classifications. Instead, they should be made available on an international internet standard that machines can read and access.
Linked data and Semantic Web is one such Internet standard that consists of formats (RDF = Resource Description Framework) on which data is stored, and a so-called "(web) ontology" (OWL = Web Ontology languange) that describes the data. An ontology is a kind of advanced data model (such as a database schema or XML schema) and describes concepts and relationships between them.
Ontology
The ontology makes sense to a set of data, such as a column having the properties "pillars", "B35", "Axis 1 toward the hospital", where "pillars" is the bridge element the column is part of, "B35" is the material, and "Axis 1 toward the hospital" is the axis number of the element's starting axis.
It is structured data similar to IFC, XML, or a database, but it is more flexible in its application since everything is loosely linked. Using SPARQL (which is similar to SQL), you can query linked data and the ontology they are described by.
In the project openLAB : Interoperate – Machine Readable Handbook V440 it is the ontology itself that is interesting. The project is about using the ontology in various software, to facilitate the creation and reception of such data.
IMAGE: Example, the hierarchical structure of a pillar.
Task: "Classify user-design parts into own software based on the V440 ontologies"
Status per June 2020
Tekla Structures is a modeling tool that generates data, so the ontology can be used to find possible classifications to mark objects with. In V440, a classification is a text code that describes what the object is (A column has the code "C23").
So far, an application has been implemented that retrieves possible classifications from the V440 ontology with a SPARQL query. You can select objects and set user-defined attributes (UDAs) with classification information. In addition to the classification code itself, an accompanying readable text and reference to the source are also provided. With this classification, for example, one can organize the model into Organizer categories.
An IFC export variant has also been implemented that can add the classification code as a classification, and not just a common property.
Such an IFC can potentially be converted to linked data. The linked data then facilitates reuse towards solutions for digital twins and sensor data. Typically, IFC is not needed to create linked data, but for the construction industry, the geometry and capabilities that IFC provides are very important.
Further Work
Further work is to look at rules that describe the relationship between the V440 and the IFCBridge with a so-called Linking Rule Set, as well as investigate several possibilities that can be found from the ontology. Final results will be presented on the demo day organized by buildingSMART, for The Norwegian Public Roads Administration.
Want to see a demo?
> Register for the DEMO DAY on June 30th 2020