ABSTRACT
The paper presents a feasibility study for modelling a knowledge management and representation system as the world produces data and information in all fields of life day by day.
The knowledge about bridges, materials they are made of, about typical deterioration processes for the different materials and details, possible resulting defects, methods for identification of materials and the early detection of deviations from the original state and related causes for damage increases day by day, too. The amount of cross-disciplinary data, also referred to as big data- is impossible to process with traditional or manual tools.
The analysis of existing cross-disciplinary big data would create new findings and would allow representing existing knowledge in a new context. The task to solve is to create a system that is compatible to the extension of the current internet into a semantic web. The system shall organize, manage, understand and process data, information and finally knowledge. This requires the transfer of knowledge into a machine readable format. The designed system should be independent from any platform. Fig. 1 shows the components that could be included in such a system to be developed. Modern solution for a knowledge representation system for riveted bridges. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315207681/cd556cd4-4dcf-4efe-8e29-56fc67b8bfbd/content/fig244_1.tif"/>
The proposed design criteria for the set-up of a methodology for the formalization of knowledge for riveted steel bridges were used during the design of the bridge ontology:
Identification and scope of the domain: Riveted bridges, extendable to any other bridges of other materials.
A generic ontology was proposed and a related substructure for the organization of the domain of riveted steel bridges was designed.
Classification, formalization and definition of terms in the domain of riveted steel bridges before 1902 was carried out.
The proposed Protégé editor was populated with the knowledge from the domain of riveted steel bridges, data and object properties were added.
Examples for constraints and axioms between the objects in the ontology were presented.
Reasoning over the examples in the domain of riveted steel bridges was carried out to enable the user to extract knowledge from the ontology.
An appropriate modular system consisting of a generic structure (BrOntEx) for knowledge retrieval in the field of historic steel and iron bridges, supported by sub-ontologies for the related appropriate sub-domains complemented with individual data and knowledge has been successfully created and tested.
