ITcon Vol. 11, Special Issue Decision Support Systems for Infrastructure Management , pg. 225-236, http://www.itcon.org/2006/17

Towards integrated assessments for urban development

SUBMITTED: June 2005
REVISED: December 2005
PUBLISHED: May 2006
EDITOR: Dana J. Vanier

Hans A.J. Schevers, Dr.
CSIRO Manufacturing and Infrastructure Technology
email: Hans.Schevers@csiro.au and http://www.cmit.csiro.au

Gerardo Trinidad, Dr.
CSIRO Manufacturing and Infrastructure Technology
email: Gerardo.Trinidad@csiro.au and http://www.cmit.csiro.au

Robin M. Drogemuller
CSIRO Manufacturing and Infrastructure Technology
email: Robin.Drogemuller@csiro.au and http://www.cmit.csiro.au

SUMMARY: The role of sustainability in urban design is becoming increasingly important as Australia’s cities continue to grow, putting pressure on existing infrastructure such as water, energy and transport. To optimise an urban design many different aspects such as water, energy, transport, costs need to be taken into account integrally. Integrated software applications assessing urban designs on a large variety of aspects are hardly available. With the upcoming next generation of the Internet often referred to as the Semantic Web, data can become more machine-interpretable by developing ontologies that can support the development of integrated software systems. Software systems can use these ontologies to perform an intelligent task such as assessing an urban design on a particular aspect. When ontologies of different applications are aligned, they can share information resulting in interoperability. Inference such as compliancy checks and classifications can support aligning the ontologies. A proof of concept implementation has been made to demonstrate and validate the usefulness of machine interpretable ontologies for urban designs.

KEYWORDS: urban development, semantic web, integrated assessments, software interoperability.

FULL TEXT: file.pdf (903,880 bytes)

CITATION:

Schevers H A J, Trinidad G and Drogemuller R M (2006) Towards integrated assessments for urban development, ITcon Vol. 11, Special Issue Decision Support Systems for Infrastructure Management , pg. 225-236, http://www.itcon.org/2006/17