Process modeling is used in construction to plan and manage the construction process and to support various simulation tasks. A major problem is that due to the one-of-a-kind character of construction projects a lot of work is spent manually developing an overall process schedule for each project. However, the total individual process is typically structured into multiple stages containing a number of recurring similar, but unequal, subprocesses that can be standardized, if appropriately generalized, to generic reusable process patterns. Moreover, not only processes, but also many general construction methods and strategies can be standardized and stored in the form of patterns and configuration rules, which will improve the consistency of modeling and also improve modeling time. The presented work addresses these issues and presents a new approach for the ontology-based process modeling and its combination with the rule-based process configuration. The proposed system supports the generation of process workflows for construction projects that could be later used in discrete-event simulation software or workflow programs. A formal high-level model for construction processes and a methodology for using process patterns in the configuration of complex construction tasks are the main focuses of this work. The base idea of the proposed approach is the development and use of two separate, but interrelated, ontologies and their integration with a general-purpose rule-engine. The first ontology is the Process Pattern Ontology, which is used to store reusable process patterns. The second is the Process Instance Ontology, which has similar taxonomy to the Process Pattern Ontology but is uniquely populated with specific process assertions for each construction case. The developed approach also suggests the application of the process patterns for the configuration of construction processes. This includes the mechanism of the process pattern retrieval, describing the extraction of the required process pattern from the Process Pattern Ontology, the intermediate adaptation step and the configuration step. The configuration step focuses on the integration of the rule-engine with the ontological knowledge-base, as well as on the application of different configuration strategies. With the help of these configuration strategies, realised by means of hierarchical rule sets, first a variation of the process and second a solution for the quick process configuration can be found. As a practical implementation of the proposed methodology a software prototype called Process Configurator is implemented within this work. This prototype realizes the interaction between all components of the ontology-based configuration approach presented in this work and supports the generation of process schedules for construction projects with the help of reusable process patterns and configuration rules.:1. Introduction 13 1.1. Motivation 13 1.2. Problem statement 14 1.3. Hypotheses 15 1.4. Objectives 15 1.5. A new approach of process modeling and configuration 17 1.6. Thesis outline 20 2. Process modeling 22 2.1. Basic issues 22 2.2. Business process modeling 25 2.3. Process modeling techniques 28 2.3.1. Integration Definition IDEF 28 2.3.2. UML 30 2.3.3. EPC 32 2.3.4. BPMN 35 2.3.5. Traditional modeling techniques 37 2.4. Process modeling in construction industry 41 2.4.1. Main features of process modeling in construction industry 41 2.4.2. Existing approaches in construction industry 44 3. Ontology-based modeling 58 3.1. Knowledge-based models 58 3.2. Ontology 64 3.2.1. Ontology description languages 65 4. Modeling of construction processes and process patterns 78 4.1. Reference modeling 78 4.2. Process pattern 81 4.2.1. Examples 83 4.3. Ontological framework 88 4.3.1. Motivation for using ontologies instead of databases 88 4.3.2. Ontology for process patterns 93 4.3.3. Ontology for process instances 99 5. Configuration of construction processes 103 5.1. Generation and configuration 103 5.2. Process pattern retrieval 104 5.3. Process adaptation 107 5.4. Process configuration 109 5.4.1. Configuration rules 109 5.4.2. Homogenous approach 111 5.4.3. Hybrid approach 115 5.4.4. Types of rules 119 5.4.5. Configuration strategies 122 6. Implementation 128 6.1. System architecture and its components 128 6.2. Process configurator 130 6.2.1. BPMN mapping 136 7. Case study 140 7.1. Case 1 140 7.2. Case 2 146 8. Conclusions and future research 149 8.1. Conclusions 149 8.2. Outlook 150 9. Appendix A. 156 A.1. Process Pattern 156 A.2. Rules overview 158 A.3. Rules implementation 160 10. References 163 / Prozessmodellierung wird im Bauwesen für die Planung des Bauablaufes genutzt, sowie insbesondere für die Unterstützung unterschiedlicher Simulationsprozesse. Das Hauptproblem ist, dass man wegen des Unikatcharakters der Bauprojekte viel Aufwand und Zeit braucht, um jedes Mal einen Prozessablaufplan des Projektes manuell zu erstellen. Allerdings besteht ein einzelner Gesamtprozess normalerweise aus mehreren Teilen, die ähnliche, aber nicht gleiche Subprozesse beinhalten. Diese Subprozesse können standardisiert, abstrahiert und dann als wiederverwendbare Referenzprozesse generalisiert werden. Außerdem lassen sich nicht nur Prozesse, sondern auch viele Baumethoden und Baustrategien in Form von Konfigurationsregeln formalisieren und speichern. Dies kann die Wiederspruchfreiheit der Modellierung gewährleisten und hat auch das Potential, die Modellierungszeit zu reduzieren. Die vorliegende Arbeit zielt darauf ab, diese Aspekte zu analysieren und einen neuen Ansatz zur Kombinierung der ontologiebasierten Prozessmodellierung mit der regelba-sierten Prozesskonfiguration vorzustellen. Das dargestellte System unterstützt die Erstellung der Prozessablaufpläne für die Bauprojekte, die danach mit Hilfe von Simulationssoftware simuliert werden. In dieser Dissertation werden die Entwicklung eines formalen Modells für Bauprozesse und die Methodologie der Nutzung der Referenzprozesse bei der Konfigurierung komplexer Bauaufgaben beschrieben. Die grundlegende Idee des vorgeschlagenen Ansatzes ist die Entwicklung und die Verwendung zweier Ontologien. Die erste Ontologie wird als Process Pattern Ontologie bezeichnet und zur Speicherung der wiederverwendbaren Referenzprozesse eingesetzt. Die zweite Ontologie mit der Bezeichnung Process Instance Ontologie speichert die Prozessinstanzen für die spezifischen Bauprojekte. Die beiden Ontologien haben ähnliche, aber nicht gleiche, Strukturen und sind über eine Regel-Engine integriert. Der entwickelte Ansatz beinhaltet ebenfalls die Nutzung der Referenzprozesse im Konfigurationsprozess. Dies umfasst sowohl einen Mechanismus zur Abfrage der Referenzprozesse, welcher das Extrahieren des benötigten Referenzprozesses aus der Ontologie beschreibt, als auch die Anpassung der Referenzprozesse sowie deren Konfiguration mit Regeln. In der Konfiguration liegt der Fokus auf der Integration der Regel-Engine mit der ontologischen Wissensbasis und die Anwendung unterschiedlicher Konfigurationsstrategien. Mittels Konfigurationsstrategien, die mit Hilfe von hierarchischen Regelmengen realisiert werden, kann eine intelligente Lösung für die schnelle Prozesskonfiguration gefunden werden. Als praktische Implementierung der vorgeschlagenen Methodologie wird ein Prototyp, als Process Configurator bezeichnet, entwickelt. Der Process Configurator realisiert die Interaktion zwischen allen Komponenten des Systems und unterstützt die Erstellung der Prozessablaufpläne mit Hilfe der Referenzprozesse und Konfigurationsregel.:1. Introduction 13 1.1. Motivation 13 1.2. Problem statement 14 1.3. Hypotheses 15 1.4. Objectives 15 1.5. A new approach of process modeling and configuration 17 1.6. Thesis outline 20 2. Process modeling 22 2.1. Basic issues 22 2.2. Business process modeling 25 2.3. Process modeling techniques 28 2.3.1. Integration Definition IDEF 28 2.3.2. UML 30 2.3.3. EPC 32 2.3.4. BPMN 35 2.3.5. Traditional modeling techniques 37 2.4. Process modeling in construction industry 41 2.4.1. Main features of process modeling in construction industry 41 2.4.2. Existing approaches in construction industry 44 3. Ontology-based modeling 58 3.1. Knowledge-based models 58 3.2. Ontology 64 3.2.1. Ontology description languages 65 4. Modeling of construction processes and process patterns 78 4.1. Reference modeling 78 4.2. Process pattern 81 4.2.1. Examples 83 4.3. Ontological framework 88 4.3.1. Motivation for using ontologies instead of databases 88 4.3.2. Ontology for process patterns 93 4.3.3. Ontology for process instances 99 5. Configuration of construction processes 103 5.1. Generation and configuration 103 5.2. Process pattern retrieval 104 5.3. Process adaptation 107 5.4. Process configuration 109 5.4.1. Configuration rules 109 5.4.2. Homogenous approach 111 5.4.3. Hybrid approach 115 5.4.4. Types of rules 119 5.4.5. Configuration strategies 122 6. Implementation 128 6.1. System architecture and its components 128 6.2. Process configurator 130 6.2.1. BPMN mapping 136 7. Case study 140 7.1. Case 1 140 7.2. Case 2 146 8. Conclusions and future research 149 8.1. Conclusions 149 8.2. Outlook 150 9. Appendix A. 156 A.1. Process Pattern 156 A.2. Rules overview 158 A.3. Rules implementation 160 10. References 163

Made available in DSpace on 2014-07-29T14:57:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 dissert hellen c de o matos 2009.pdf: 739133 bytes, checksum: 9d1af5a358c8c0557777b622be79970a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-09-01 / Information organization became a fundamental process in face of the exponential increasing of available information, motivated by technology advances, Internet in particular. It demands effective approaches of information filtering and searching, like the information retrieval systems. Such systems depend on the document s semantic representation, which can be implemented through conceptual and semantic relationship representation instruments, as ontologies. The ontology construction is a complex and time-consuming process. It s difficult to know whether a given ontology is wide enough to represent the documents semantic information. Up to date ontologies are developed according to Ontology Engineering standards and methods, although there is no any universal solution. This work presents a methodology for semi-automatic construction of ontologies. It also demonstrates an ontology construction for grid computing domain, aiming to validate the proposal. Such domain is strongly associated to resources sharing to solve problems on dynamic and heterogeneous environment. The allocation of these resources is an essential task in the grid and depends on the quality of available information. The constructed ontology aims to provide a description of the resources available in a computational grid to help on the qualification of information contained in this environment. This will allow the semantic discovery of grid resources to run applications on an efficient way / A organização da informação tornou-se um processo fundamental à medida em que vem crescendo exponencialmente o volume de informações disponíveis, motivado pelo avanço tecnológico, em particular da Internet. Isto originou uma necessidade de meios automáticos de pesquisa e filtragem de informação, como os sistemas de recuperação de informação.Esses sistemas dependem da representação semântica dos documentos, que pode ser feita através de instrumentos de representação de relacionamentos semânticos e conceituais, como as ontologias. O processo de construção de ontologias é complexo e demorado. É difícil saber se uma ontologia é suficientemente abrangente para a informação semântica (informação que possui significado contextual para um sujeito) dos documentos. Atualmente, ontologias são desenvolvidas segundo padrões e métodos da Engenharia de Ontologia. Porém, não existe uma solução universal. Esta dissertação propõe uma metodologia para a construção semiautomatizada de ontologias a partir de um conjunto de documentos textuais. É proposta também a construção de uma ontologia para o domínio de grades computacionais, com o objetivo de validar a proposta. O domínio de grades computacionais é fortemente associado ao compartilhamento de recursos para a resolução de problemas em ambientes distribuídos dinâmicos e heterogêneos. Alocar esses recursos são tarefas essenciais na grade e dependem da qualidade das informações disponíveis. A ontologia construída objetiva prover a descrição dos recursos disponíveis no ambiente de grade, auxiliando na qualificação das informações contidas neste ambiente. Isso irá permitir a descoberta semântica dos recursos da grade para execução de aplicações, de modo eficiente.

Ce travail vise à permettre un accès efficace à des informations pertinentes malgré le volume croissant des données disponibles au format électronique. Pour cela, nous avons étudié l’apport d’une ontologie au sein d’un système de recherche d'information (RI).Nous avons tout d’abord décrit une méthodologie de construction d’ontologies. Ainsi, nous avons proposé une méthode mixte combinant des techniques de traitement automatique des langues pour extraire des connaissances à partir de textes et la réutilisation de ressources sémantiques existantes pour l’étape de conceptualisation. Nous avons par ailleurs développé une méthode d’alignement de termes français-anglais pour l’enrichissement terminologique de l’ontologie. L’application de notre méthodologie a permis de créer une ontologie bilingue de la maladie d’Alzheimer.Ensuite, nous avons élaboré des algorithmes pour supporter la RI sémantique guidée par une ontologie. Les concepts issus d’une ontologie ont été utilisés pour décrire automatiquement les documents mais aussi pour reformuler les requêtes. Nous nous sommes intéressés à : 1) l’identification de concepts représentatifs dans des corpus, 2) leur désambiguïsation, 3), leur pondération selon le modèle vectoriel, adapté aux concepts et 4) l’expansion de requêtes. Ces propositions ont permis de mettre en œuvre un portail de RI sémantique dédié à la maladie d’Alzheimer. Par ailleurs, le contenu des documents à indexer n’étant pas toujours accessible dans leur ensemble, nous avons exploité des informations incomplètes pour déterminer les concepts pertinents permettant malgré tout de décrire les documents. Pour cela, nous avons proposé deux méthodes de classification de documents issus d’un large corpus, l’une basée sur l’algorithme des k plus proches voisins et l’autre sur l’analyse sémantique explicite. Ces méthodes ont été évaluées sur de larges collections de documents biomédicaux fournies lors d’un challenge international. / This work aims at providing efficient access to relevant information among the increasing volume of digital data. Towards this end, we studied the benefit from using ontology to support an information retrieval (IR) system.We first described a methodology for constructing ontologies. Thus, we proposed a mixed method which combines natural language processing techniques for extracting knowledge from text and the reuse of existing semantic resources for the conceptualization step. We have also developed a method for aligning terms in English and French in order to enrich terminologically the resulting ontology. The application of our methodology resulted in a bilingual ontology dedicated to Alzheimer’s disease.We then proposed algorithms for supporting ontology-based semantic IR. Thus, we used concepts from ontology for describing documents automatically and for query reformulation. We were particularly interested in: 1) the extraction of concepts from texts, 2) the disambiguation of terms, 3) the vectorial weighting schema adapted to concepts and 4) query expansion. These algorithms have been used to implement a semantic portal about Alzheimer’s disease. Further, because the content of documents are not always fully available, we exploited incomplete information for identifying the concepts, which are relevant for indexing the whole content of documents. Toward this end, we have proposed two classification methods: the first is based on the k nearest neighbors’ algorithm and the second on the explicit semantic analysis. The two methods have been evaluated on large standard collections of biomedical documents within an international challenge.