Ontology-based semantic modeling of construction safety knowledge: Towards automated safety planning for job hazard analysis (JHA)

Construction safety related knowledge and project specific information are scattered and fragmented. Despite technological advancements of information and knowledge management in the building and construction industry, a link between safety management and information models is still missing. The objective of this study is to investigate a new approach to organize, store and re-use construction safety knowledge. A construction safety ontology is proposed to formalize the safety management knowledge. It consists of three main domain ontology models, including Construction Product Model, Construction Process Model, and Construction Safety Model. One-on-one expert interviews were conducted for ontology evaluation. The interaction between safety ontology and Building Information Modeling (BIM) is also explored. A prototype application of ontology-based job hazard analysis (JHA) and visualization is implemented to further illustrate the applicability and effectiveness of the developed ontology. The developed construction safety ontology enables more effective inquiry of safety knowledge, which is the first step towards automated safety planning for JHA using BIM.