Facilitating Knowledge Transfer during Code Compliance Checking Using Conceptual Graphs

Abstract

The rules in building codes are composed of language, logic structure, and the embedded knowledge that requires further articulation from rule experts. This greatly increases the complexity of rule interpretation. The conceptual graph (CG) is used as a graph-based representation method to capture such knowledge and transfer it to other actors in the compliance checking process. However, due to its subjectivity, it is difficult to ensure the quality of the CG to achieve minimal knowledge loss. This paper proposes a method using reusable CG patterns to reduce the knowledge loss caused by the opacity of concepts in rules, hence better facilitating knowledge transfer using CGs. The rules and their corresponding CGs are analyzed and compared. An assessment framework is used to assess CGs for correctness, completeness, complexity, and comprehensibility. A group of reusable CG patterns is then generated based on the analysis results of concepts in existing CGs. In a case study, rules selected from two types of building codes are used to validate the proposed methods. The results successfully demonstrate the effectiveness of the CG in facilitating knowledge transfer. Moreover, the comparison of quality between original CGs and improved CGs shows that using reusable CG patterns can effectively ease the creation of new CGs and improve its consistency.