A provenance data management system for improving the product modelling process

Improvement of the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) product model management process is a long-term objective for the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) and the Facility Management (FM) field. Ontology centred environments may become the infrastructure for managing the IFC product models. The ontologies form the core of the semantic layer that holds all of the knowledge of various business functions. The goal of this study is to show that management of complex product models may be improved by using time-related metadata. We achieved this goal by designing and implementing a semantic provenance data management system. One part of the system is a provenance grid service, and the system is accessible through a web portal. We show that the provenance service, and in particular the supported provenance data extraction and saving mechanisms, may be used to improve the management of complex product models without significant processing time delays. Additionally, the use of the grid infrastructure may increase the trust in the product modelling process and its security. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.