Overview and Analysis of Ontology Studies Supporting Development of the Construction Industry

Being information-intensive, the construction industry has the feature of multiagents, including multiparticipants from different disciplines, multiprocesses with a long-span timeline, and multidocuments generated by various systems. The multistakeholder context of the construction industry creates problems such as poor information interoperability and low productivity arising from difficulties in information reuse. Many researchers have explored the use of ontology to address these issues. This study aims to review ontology research to explore its trends, gaps, and opportunities in the construction industry. A systematic process employing three-phase search method, objective analysis and subjective analysis, helps to provide enough potential articles related to construction ontology research, and to reduce arbitrariness and subjectivity involved in research topic analysis. As a result, three main research topics aligned with the ontology development lifecycle were derived as follows: information integration based on ontology, ontology building, and ontology application. In addition, research gaps and the corresponding research agenda were identified. This detailed review provides the basis for further studies on the use of ontology in the construction industry. The research trends and gaps can serve as motivation for researchers and practitioners to work on the next generation of ontology studies to support the development of the construction industry.