| Ontologies support knowledge management through the use of common taxonomies, axioms and non-taxonomical relationships. This research thesis presents distributed ontology architecture for knowledge management in highway construction. The architecture presents highway knowledge on three levels: domain knowledge, application knowledge, and user knowledge. The architecture was developed as an extension for the e-COGNOS ontology. A highway engineering taxonomy (HiOnto) of more than 1,800 concepts is specified. Taxonomic and non-taxonomic relationships are established. Application ontologies for five sub-domains of highway engineering provide a framework for the future extension of HiOnto as a full fledge ontology. The architecture was validated through input from domain experts. |
