A semantic web based Knowledge Management system in construction industry

Currently, Knowledge Management (KM), which involves in capturing, managing, sharing and reusing knowledge from one project to the next, has been identified as one of the critical. success factors to effectively improve the performance of organizations in construction industry. However, KM for project construction is now facing problems brought out by the nature of construction project: information, overload, heterogeneous information integration, and inefficient keyword searching and geographically distributed intranet problems. In response to these problems, many research initiatives and enterprises have been set up to explore the use. of new ICT technology for sharing of knowledge among all project actors during the project process. Resource Description Framework (RDF) can provide meta-level data structures. Semantic web with the use of Extensible Markup Language (XML), RDF, Ontology, and embedded reasoning techniques can make the knowledge machine-readable. This paper explains that there are many problems related to KM in current KM system in construction industry. In order to resolve the problems and improving the performance of construction, a semantic-based framework that consists of four layers that provide an intelligent approach to knowledge sharing, retrieving, and renewing the knowledge resource. The framework provides an effective platform to simulate KM process for geographically dispersed team members and facilitate collaboration and communication.