An ontology-based cost estimation for offsite construction

Vakaj, Edlira and Cheung, Franco and Cao, Jianpeng and Tawil, Abdel-Rahman H. and Patlakas, Panagiotis (2023) An ontology-based cost estimation for offsite construction. Journal of Information Technology in Construction, 28. pp. 220-245. ISSN 1874-4753

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Abstract

Design for manufacturing and assembly (DfMA) has been widely applied to support the decision-making process in offsite construction. With a DfMA approach, cost estimation requires taking product design and production processes into consideration. Current studies conduct cost estimation built upon quantity take-offs. However, they do not provide a vocabulary to relate cost estimates to offsite construction processes. This paper presents a new domain ontology, Offsite Housing Ontology (OHO) using the NeOn methodology framework to support cost estimation considering products, resources, and production processes. OHO semantically defines offsite construction domain terminology and relationships. This supports a unified model, required for efficient collaborative design management. The efficiency and effectiveness of the OHO approach are demonstrated in a real-world DfMA scenario through the development of a Knowledge-Based Engineering tool to automate cost estimation. The approach can be adapted and extended to accommodate a very wide range of offsite housing, delivering important optimization and automation benefit from DfMA solutions.

Item Type:	Article
Identification Number:	10.36680/j.itcon.2023.011
Dates:	Date Event 29 March 2023 Accepted 1 April 2023 Published Online
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Offsite Construction, Ontology Engineering, Building Information Modeling, DfMA, Linked Building Data
Subjects:	CAH11 - computing > CAH11-01 - computing > CAH11-01-01 - computer science CAH11 - computing > CAH11-01 - computing > CAH11-01-02 - information technology CAH11 - computing > CAH11-01 - computing > CAH11-01-05 - artificial intelligence CAH13 - architecture, building and planning > CAH13-01 - architecture, building and planning > CAH13-01-02 - building
Divisions:	Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment > College of Computing
Depositing User:	Edlira Vakaj
Date Deposited:	30 Mar 2023 13:47
Last Modified:	18 Apr 2023 09:25
URI:	https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/14295

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