Ontology Driven Concept Modeller for Urban Development

Hans Schevers, Post Doc, CSIRO Manufacturing and Infrastructure Technology, Highett , 3190 Victoria. Email: Hans.Schevers@csiro.au

Robin Drogemuller, Teamleader Integrated Design and Construction Systems, CSIRO Manufacturing and Infrastructure Technology, Highett , 3190 Victoria, Email: Robin.Drogemuller@csiro.au

Keywords

Urban development, Ontology, Modelling, Concept Design.

Abstract

The water and energy usage per capita is in Australia one of the highest in the world and is currently unsustainable. New urban development will be more sustainable if a range of sustainable solutions such as water recycling methods, rain water use, sustainable energy systems (solar panels, wind energy, etc), increase of density to reduce traffic, etc are used. Currently there are software tools available which are capable of assessing aspects of urban design. These tools can help asses the impact of rainwater tanks on the total water demand for a certain location, as an example. Similarly tools are available for assessing the impact of using solar energy, different road layouts, etc. While powerful and informative in their own right, there have been limited attempts to draw the capabilities of a number of these tools together. Besides the technical complexity of using these tools, bringing the results of all of these different tools together in one stage can be very cumbersome. The focus of this research is the use of ontologies to support the integration of urban design software. A range of software packages can be created adding behaviour, user interfaces, visualisation, etc to standard design packages such as 2D geometry viewers, charting functionality, decision tables, geometry analyses, etc. Each software package can be linked to an ontology. For example the 2D geometry viewers can be used to visualise geometry related instances. The ontologies and their functionality can then be used together when the ontologies are aligned. Extending these ontologies and inserting the necessary rules supports the development of the Concept Modeller which can assess urban designs. The paper demonstrates three uses of the Concept Modeller which use the same software components but have different ontologies.