Structured vocabularies in construction: Classifications, taxonomies and ontologies

Abstract

Structured vocabularies are an important means of defining and structuring the meaning of concepts and terms used in the building industry to ensure their consistent use by all stakeholders over the life cycle of a construction. In their traditional form as text documents and tables they are designed for use by domain experts to facilitate the creation and use of unambiguous specifications, requirement documents and mutual agreements. In their digital, machine-readable form, they can be used in a Building Information Modeling context for the semantic annotation of model objects to further enhance exchange and interoperability in data exchange scenarios. This chapter introduces the fundamental concepts, application areas and technical implementations of such terminologies and structured vocabularies.