Development of ontology for concrete placing process
Arvind Venkata Pappu, Fall 2004
Brief:
Near the end of the 20th century, the construction industry has seen the emergence of two trends. The first trend is the decline of trained labor. There has been a sharp decline in the people willing to join the field of construction. Construction is a field where experience is of utmost importance. With the lack of new people coming into the industry, it can be safely assumed there will be a dearth of experience. A first step in optimizing construction operations is the representation of the constructed artifacts and of the processes through which they are constructed. The existing representations of construction processes are capable of representing human activities only at a macro level, namely at the level of whole activity. These representations cannot take into account the skill of the particular individual(s) who will perform the activity. To account for the human skill, activities need to be represented at the level of movement. Previous research has claimed that a so-called "Activity Breakdown for Skill Measurement" (ABSM) can be unequivocally defined for any construction method of any particular construction artifact. The ABSM contains the following levels: job, activities, tasks, sub-tasks, actions, and movements. In ABSM the term activity is defined as the multitude of operations performed on the continuum of an artifact, such as the face or an edge (no changes in the geometry). The problem that was left unsolved by the ABSM concept is the definition of the artifact continuum when the artifact (such as a building element) can be interrupted at any point. Examples of such situations are cast in place reinforced concrete structures or masonry walls. Decisions about how to apportion (where to interrupt) the element are made based on technology constrains. This research presents a methodology for describing the technology of concrete placing in a manner that allows automatic apportionment of the building elements and forms the basis for a technology ontology. A technology ontology enables computers to describe construction process and optimize the building process.