The article is Open Access. It was originally published on September 2019 on Reasearch Gate. Link to article.
Since the early 2000s, the building industry has been steadily embracing the concept of Building Information Modelling (BIM). Currently, the BIM focus lies on file-based collaboration, although with the rise of semantic web technologies, the benefits of web- and data-based collaboration for the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry come within reach. A web-based AEC industry that relies on Linked Data can provide various advantages compared to ‘classic’ BIM practice, e.g. regarding interdisciplinarity, linking across domains and logical reasoning. In this paper, we investigate Linked Data rule checking mechanisms on decentralised building datasets. The recent Semantic Web standard Shapes Constraint Language (SHACL) is used to check a Linked Data building model that is hosted on multiple data pods. After a short introduction to Linked Building Data and rule checking approaches, a minimal distributed building model will be checked with basic SHACL patterns, generating a report to inform both end users and tools. In this case study, we make use of the Social Linked Data (Solid) ecosystem, a set of conventions and tools for creating decentralised applications.
Jeroen Werbrouck (*1, 2), Madhumitha Senthilvel (*1), Jakob Beetz (*1) and Pieter Pauwels (*2)
*1 Chair of Design Computation · Schinkelstraße 1 · 52062 Aachen ·
*2 Dept. of Architecture and Urban Planning · Ghent University, Belgium