ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: The structural calculation document of bridge is the important information set to be maintained because it contains core information which can be reused for the diagnosis of structural safety and the damage assessment during the lifetime of bridges. In general, most of the structural calculation documents are managed through the paper-based documents or the electronic files generated by software such as word processor, spreadsheet program, etc. Such management way, especially in development of a decision support system, has a limitation in reusing the structural calculation information. Therefore, in the digitalization of structural calculation documents, a scheme which assures the flexible use of the document in the heterogeneous computing environment should be established. In the recent studies, the extensible markup language (XML) is widely used for the interoperability of document information. For example, Zhu et al. (2001) proposed a framework for the construction process based on XML-based technology; Tserng & Lin (2003) developed XML schema for scheduling based on the aecXML framework; Zhilian et al. (2004) provided an in-formation exchange method in the construction project based on XML technology and they use it to develop a decision support system for the construction phase (Zhilian et al. 2005); and Lee et al. (2004) developed an XML-based framework for bridge design documents. In general, the document schema is used to operate the XML document and the data schema can be seen as a semantic model for the document. Therefore, as Song et al. (2002) pointed out, it is generally true that the standardization of the document data requires a large degree of agreement upon format, contents and responsibilities. However there are few researches that are reported in the literatures for the efficient standardization of the document model.
