Objective
This project aims at specifying and developing an open model-based infrastructure and a set of tools that promote consistent knowledge management within collaborative construction environments. The work will rely on a deep understanding of knowledge management activities of European construction companies. The analysis of the semantics within and across documents will lead onto the development of ontologies and adaptive mechanisms that can organise documents according to their contents and interdependencies. The web-based infrastructure will include services allowing the creation, capturing, indexing retrieval and dissemination of knowledge. It will also favour the integration of proprietary tools. The e-COGNOS approach will be tested and evaluated through a series of field trials. This will be followed by the delivery of business recommendations regarding the deployment of e-COGNOS in the construction sector.
The project's outcome consists of 3 main e-COGNOS products:
(1) the e-COGNOS Knowledge Management Infrastructure (e-CKMI),
(2) the e-COGNOS Ontology Server (e-COSer), and
(3) the e-COGNOS Ontology. Integrated pilots have been set-up, tested and evaluated in each of the four end-user organisations of the consortium.
(1) The e-CKMI solution (full version) is available in one single package (including the e-COSer and ontology) as a GPL OpenSource Software. Essentially, the e-CKMI is a Web-based solution supported by a domain ontology. It operates as a middleware solution in which the concept of service plays the main role. Broadly speaking, the e-CKMI provides Web-services to support the major functionalities identified in the classical KM cycle, namely: acquisition, cleansing/transformation, indexing, updating, refreshing, searching/discovering, and sharing/dissemination. These services are supported by an ontology service, the e-COSer. Additionally, following the need to keep developing and enriching the e-COGNOS Ontology, the e-COSer has built-in functionalities to support the management of the e-COGNOS ontology. - Within the e-CKMI, each individual piece of knowledge (e.g. documents, areas of expertise, experts, etc.) is represented through a set of ontological entities (concepts and relations). This representation or description is called a Knowledge Representation (KR). - The e-COGNOS User Portal/Manager represents the human interface to the e-CKMI and comprises two applications, the Portal and the Manager. The former is used by ordinary users to capture, browse and search knowledge through the system. The latter, used by the e-CKMI administrator, supports the maintenance of the infrastructure, including the management of users and their respective access rights, security, data repositories and databases, ontology-related issues, indexes, links and so on. - The e-CKMI API describes all the services provided by the "core" e-CKMI to support the requests coming from the client applications. Both the e-COGNOS Portal and Manager are considered as client applications regarding the "core" eCKMI. - The KM Services have been structured into seven categories of knowledge-related functionalities (acquisition, cleansing / transformation, indexing, updating, refreshing, searching / discovering, and sharing / disseminating). - The e-COGNOS Kernel plays the role of backbone where the KM services are registered and unregistered. It relies on the e-CKMI repository where all information is handled, which includes the KRs. - The e-COGNOS Wrapper is intended to support interoperation between the External Services and the e-CKMI. However, taking into account that the e-CKMI is fundamentally a Web-oriented solution, the e-COGNOS Wrapper is likely to be converted into an integration mechanism based on XML, UDDI, WDSL, and SOAP. In this case, a formalised wrapper would only be required if non web-enabled services require integration. - The External Services represent any specific service provided by a third party application which is not vital to the operation of the e-CKMI but may contribute to improve its performance or to extend its functionalities.
(2) The e-COGNOS Ontology Server (e-COSer) (also a GPL software) provides the functionalities required to make the selected ontology available to the other e-COGNOS services. It handles all the ontology-related issues within e-CKMI. As a server, it has two types of clients: the ontology manager and the other KM core services. The former is a human actor responsible for the management of the e-COGNOS ontology, which means mainly its maintenance. The latter are the software components that request the ontology-related services. It is also important to emphasise that the normal users of the ontology are allowed to make suggestions about the ontological entities. These suggestions are stored in a "quarantined way" before being evaluated and approved or rejected by the ontology manager.
(3) The e-COGNOS ontology focuses on construction concepts as they relate to e-COGNOS main objective: consistent knowledge representation of construction knowledge items. DARPAs DAML was selected as the language to write the e-COGNOS ontology. The e-COGNOS ontology has been designed as a collection of coherent sets of concepts in an object-oriented fashion. It contains to date 13,000 concepts. Additionally, all the information produced in the development of the e-COGNOS solution is also included in the project's actual outcome and has contributed to accomplish the e-COGNOS objectives. All these elements were used in the dissemination and exploitation activities in e-COGNOS. The project has produced twenty-three deliverables through six workpackages. The public deliverables are available for download from the e-COGNOS web site.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesknowledge engineeringontology
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencessoftware
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesdatabases
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Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
75012 PARIS 12
France