5.1 Specification of modelling objectives

A construction site is a dynamic environment and the workspaces, supporting the execution of each construction activity, are one of the most relevant resource that affects efficiency and productivity of the construction project (Kassem et al., 2015). As a matter of fact, in order to handle their simulation, is of prior importance to dynamically manage over time workspaces requirements in terms of geometries, locations and interactions with all those other spaces that describe the life-cycle spatial evolution associated with the construction activities. For these reasons, once again, the use of an ontology is crucial to incorporate workspace planning from the spatial and temporal perspectives in the Knowledge Base architecture. The next paragraph describes the in-depth study carried out to develop the proposed Construction Space Ontology.

5.1 Specification of modelling objectives

The most challenging work of the Space-Ontology has been to define appropriate default attributes to define workspaces in order to support and manage the following aspects: i. Workspace physical entity. Regards the definition of a set of default Spatial Data (e.g., dimensions, orientations and positions) to be associated to workspaces in order to support a planning process in software or system applications. ii. Workspace structure. Indicates how workspaces are organized within a construction site, defining a Spatial Data Structure which is the base for describing the spatial relationship between entities based on their geometry locations. iii. Workspace modelling. This aspect considers the need to model workspaces efficiently by using and application, avoiding a manual modelling process that would mean an extensive input work by the user. iv. Workspace analysis and management. Such aspect aims to foster the development of a

Knowledge-base that includes an ontology to analyze workspaces allocation.

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5.1 Development plan and objectives specification of the workspace ontology

The aforementioned aspects are graphically specified in the following Figure 5.1. Capture and compute, by using an ontological structure, the concepts in the domains from (i) to (iv) along with their mutual relationships within the core of the ontology, is described in the next paragraphs.