Towards developing a sustainable building technology ontology

Construction has a significant effect on human quality of life in the context of sustainable development. The UK government has long recognised this and is taking the lead towards a more sustainable approach to construction processes. Success towards a more sustainable construction can be achieved if the stakeholders are informed of the new technologies, innovations and knowledge emerging in the sector. Unfortunately, researchers and practitioners have pin-pointed some limitations with the current approaches in the management of knowledge within the construction sector. Interestingly, Semantic Web technologies, the next generation of the Web technologies, can be used to overcome these limitations. Semantic web technologies can considerably improve information representation, sharing and re-use. This paper investigates the extent to which Semantic Web technologies could be used in representing knowledge on emerging sustainable building technologies. This is done by reviewing the current state-of-the art of sustainable technologies in the UK construction industry. Furthermore, it examines the development of an ontology-driven knowledge base and its usage in the development of a semantic web application