Construction and resource short-term planning using a BIM-based ontological decision support system

Abstract

The dynamic nature and increasing complexity of the construction projects impose many challenges for project planning and control. As a project progresses, more information becomes available and the level of uncertainty decreases. It can be used to proactively check the validity of the previous decisions and develop revised and more detailed plans for the upcoming activities in construction planning meetings. For this purpose, this study implements ontological knowledge representation and semantic reasoning techniques to propose an intelligent information collection and decision support system framework for short-term collaborative construction and resource planning. Moreover, a new approach is suggested that allows for incorporating resource specifications and limitations, and complex multi-factor constraints in the ontological planning process. The framework was tested based on a real-world construction project and different application cases were discussed. The framework showed a promising performance for analyzing different scenarios and help the planners making informative decisions.