Semantic, Business Process and Natural Language Processing for eBuilding

This article presents an approach for semi-automatic and semantically supported verification of Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) modeled processes, data artefacts and workflows within the broad construction industry, which includes building, urban planning, infrastructure and the environment. The driving force of the work is to ensure compliance with the rules and constraints inherent to the application domain, with particular attention to urban planning regulations and tender requirements established by the sector. In the construction industry, several critical processes are examined, including the investigation, inspection, verification and approval of project artefacts. The investigation extends to different scenarios such as the verification and control of data for administrative documents, construction permits, authorizations, as well as the validation and management of tender documents and contractor commitments. The proposed methodology uses semantic and Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies, extracting knowledge from different sources such as Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), XML and textual information. A uniform semantic representation of the extracted knowledge is created, followed by the use of knowledge-based inference techniques, especially logical inference, for a verification of regulations. The approach proposed in this work delves into the intersection activities between semantic technologies, NLP and BPMN modeled processes in the construction sector.