Context Aware Information Delivery for On-Site Construction Operations

The information intensive nature of construction projects requires the site personnel to have an on-demand access to project information. Current information delivery methods are primarily static and do not take into account the site personnel's changing context. Delivering information to site staff, based on their context (such as location, time and profile) has the tremendous potential to improve construction productivity. In this paper a prototype application for context-aware information delivery is discussed. The implementation is based on a Pocket-PC platform and makes use of wireless local area networking (WLAN) to capture context parameters. A semantics-based Resource Description Framework Schema (RDFS) is used for both context interpretation and to define construction documents and project task structure. Conclusions are drawn about the possible future impact of context-aware applications for the construction industry.

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