Virtual Construction (V-Con) and TopBraid CDE – a Linked Data/Semantic Asset Management Solution

The Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment and the Swedish Transport Administration are responsible for the management, construction, operation and maintenance of the main road networks in the Netherlands Sweden, respectively.
 
For an National Road Authority who procures road infrastructure design, construction, operation and/or maintenance from different construction companies, the V-Con Solution is to be a modularised solution that supports the Linked Data/Semantic approach and open information exchange/sharing between different stakeholders using various software solutions, tools and standards during the various life-cycle stages. These tools and standards must concern areas such as Building Information Modelling (BIM), Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Systems Engineering (SE) data.
 
The aim of V-Con was to build a commercial market for a semantic asset management solution and to identify gaps in existing technical capabilities to be filled by standards-makers and software providers. The V-Con project initiated a multi-phase pre-commercial, competitive EU research project to build commercial interest in providing the V-Con solution. There were three project phases, which down-selected from 14 to 2 contractors, included solution design, prototype development and finally pre-commercial solution development which ended in April 2017.

Each National Road Authority who procures road infrastructure design, construction, operation and/or maintenance from different construction companies in a variety of formats in multiple disciplines across Building Information Modelling (BIM), Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Systems Engineering (SE).

Approach and IT-Solution

The customer-driven V-Con approach is to create a software solution that can be a hub for all project data and that can enable links across disciplines. That "V-Con Solution" is to be a modularised solution that supports the Linked Data/Semantic approach and open information exchange/sharing between different stakeholders using various software solutions, tools and standards during the various life-cycle stages.

The project requirements specified the handing of IFC STEP datasets, CityGML XML datasets and linked data datasets in RDF/OWL format. TopQuadrant's approach is to build capability directly over an RDF database using and extending our TopBraid suite of tools as the basis.

Success Criteria for / Benefit of the Semantic Solution

The aim of V-Con was to build a commercial market for a semantic asset management solution and to identify gaps in existing technical capabilities to be filled by standards-makers and software providers. The V-Con project initiated a multi-phase pre-commercial, competitive EU research project to build commercial interest in providing the V-Con solution. There were three project phases, which down-selected from 14 to 2 contractors, included solution design, prototype development and finally pre-commercial solution development which ended in April 2017.

Prospects and Recommendations

The V-Con EU PCP project was driven by two National Road Authorities and investigated the use of linked data/semantic technology for the interchange and linking of physical asset design, build and maintenance data. TopQuadrant was one of two companies selected to build a pre-commercial solution and this talk explains the V-Con project requirements and the approach taken to satisfying those requirements.

TopQuadrant built a pre-commercial solution tentatively using a concept found in some BIM specifications call a Common Data Environment (CDE). The strategy with TopBraid CDE is that it is configurable for different industries, with Roads/Infrastructure being the first. However, it can be tailored for use in the Oil and Gas industry, for example, based on the ISO 15926 series of standards.

Demo

As part of the V-Con project a series of test scenarios including test case datasets were provided. We will demonstrate the TopBraid CDE and show a few key aspects of those scenarios including:

- handling data from multiple disciplines in multiple formats
- creating and managing links between data from different disciplines
- the use of inferencing, rules and data constraints on that data
- 3D visualisation of BIM data with links to other disciplines