A proposal for ontology-based integration of heterogeneous decision support systems for structural health monitoring

Abstract

This contribution deals with an approach to ontology-based integration of Decision Support Systems for Structural Health Monitoring, specifically the implementation of a damage detection strategy for identifying and localizing damages to (civil) infrastructure (e.g., bridges, piping systems or wind turbines). Different institutions operate a large variety of systems for measurement planning, recording and analysis and each of these systems has its advantages and disadvantages depending, for instance, on the type of structure to be monitored. To combine the advantages of such heterogeneous systems, computer-supported collaboration is useful, which leads each institution to consider developing its own domain ontology. This knowledge can be integrated by means of a higher-level ontology to use different operations and approaches together for cumulative advantages. Hence, a concept for ontology-based integration building upon ideas of semantic data integration was developed, which stands out from other approaches as it uses a single ontology as its meta-vocabulary and a mediator-driven architecture.