Ontology-Based Service Composition Framework for Syndicating Building Intelligence

Building information model (BIM) encompasses building geometry, spatial relationships, geographic information, and quantities and properties of building components; however, it does not include any information related to the functions that a building might require. On the other side, service-oriented computing emerged as a promising technology to enable fast, efficient software development. Even though features such as standard protocols, loosely coupled components, ontology-enabled dynamic discovery and composition of SOA seems a perfect fit for the building construction domain, the potential gain of applying SOA techniques has not really been discovered. In the paper, an ontology-based service composition framework for construction domain is proposed, and BIM is extended to include function requirements and service specifications. An example is shown to demonstrate the advantages over traditional techniques also.