Precedence for a taxonomy to facilitate design and construction processes in building renovation, is evident through current research in a related area by Valra et al. (January 2021). A taxonomy such as the one described here, could support data sharing in their proposed common data environment for example.
The tool facilitating design and construction processes in building renovation ontology is described as:
- Purpose: To facilitate design and construction processes in building renovation.
- Scope: Provides terminology and relationships between concepts across all phases of a renovation process, from thermal and structural analysis of design options to implementation of logistics for construction works.
- Intended end-users: Various design and construction domains including architects, energy and structural engineers, as well as construction managers and quantity surveyors.
- Intended use: Establishes agreed terminology and relationships among concepts in the domain which may be used for defining project plans, supporting contracts and agreements or facilitating focussed communication.
- Re-use: Future development could provide a queryable knowledge base which returns inferred new knowledge based on logical reasoning between concepts and instantiations. May be extended further to facilitate, for example, financial analysis.
Limitations: A limitation of the reorganised ontology is that we have not fully implemented object property relationships or instantiations for the ontology. It is considered that establishing the taxonomy and some examples was sufficient to demonstrate this integration. Likewise, a functioning reasoner was not implemented into the ontology at this stage.