| The expedient introduction of emerging construction technologies into practice is one of the most effective methods for improving product quality and decreasing costs. For advanced technology to be incorporated in the construction industry, it must first be identified and evaluated during the design and construction planning phases. However, the industry still lacks an efficient system for the rapid identification and evaluation of potential technology solutions. Even though information proliferates, it is too unstructured to be readily used at a moment's notice. This lack of organization, when coupled with the natural human tendency to stay with the tried and true, is probably the major cause of the slow rate of technology transfer and adaptation in the construction industry. The situation can obviously be improved by providing the industry with a sufficient information management system. This system must have a convenient user interface and an integrated data structure which encompasses all the technology information that might be required for planning and design decisions, while satisfying the users' needs for various degrees of detail at different design and planning stages. The research proposes a construction technology information system (CTIS) that can meet the above requirements.;The semantic data model (SDM) is used for representing the conceptual schemata of construction technology information. It is a first attempt to explicitly specify the technologies and their relationships using an object-oriented approach. There are several benefits to this approach: it is easy to construct a hierarchical structure that can satisfy the various needs at different design and planning stages and a huge, integrated information system can readily be developed by identifying technology objects and their relationships.;A CTIS prototype developed in this research demonstrates the sufficiency of the object-oriented approach. The prototype was implemented using a hypertext-structured database system which also adheres to the object-oriented concept. Objects are used to store all possible forms of data types, including text, graphics, etc., and relationships are regarded as explicit links which let users search and browse the "information space". Due to its modularity, future extensions of the system can be done easily. |
