Semantic Web :: Technology, The Green Guide

To establish the extent to which semantic web has been applied in the sustainable building technology domain, an extensive literature search was undertaken. One of the key findings of the review was that there was no real significant application of the semantic web to sustainable building technologies. The few studies with at least some sustainability issues in the built environment are in Macris and Georgakellos (2006) and Edum-Fotwe and Price (2009). Macris and Georgakellos (2006) explored the use of ontologies to help students to understand the contemporary global environmental issues, how they are linked and interrelated and to consider the different views of these issues, before reaching a decision or judgment. Edum-Fotwe and Price (2009), on the other hand, explored the use of ontologies in appraising sustainability of construction projects and development from the social component of sustainable development. The ontologies developed by Macris and Georgakellos (2006) and Edum-F otwe and Price (2009) are nothing more than academic papers and have never gone beyond prototypical system levels. However, it emerged that there is abundance of green/sustainability specifications/standards/ratings/metrics in the literature dealing with various aspects of sustainable constructions. Some examples of these specifications are the Market Transformation Programme database that contains the different building household appliances in the UK houses arranged in a well-defined taxonomy (Market Transformation Programme 2010; Firth et al. 2008; Wood and Newborough 2007), the Green Guide to Specifications (Anderson et al. 2009), the Uniclass (Smith et al. 1997) and the Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED 2010). The Green Guide aims to provide a simple green guide to the environmental impacts of building materials which is easy-to-use and soundly based on numerical data. Uniclass is a new recent classification scheme for the construction industryindustry (Smith et al. 1997). It is intended for organising library materials and for structuring product literature and project information. It incorporates both CAWS (Common Arrangement of Work Sections for building works) and EPIC (Electronic Product Information Co-operation), a new system for structuring product data and product literature. The Green Guide is part of BREEAM (BRE Environmental Assessment Method) an accredited environmental rating scheme for buildings. LEED is an internationally recognized green building certification system developed by the US Green Building Council, providing third-party verification that a building or community was designed and built using strategies intended to improve performance in metrics such as energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts. Semantic Web :: Technology, The Green Guide To establish the extent to which semantic web has been applied in the sustainable building technology domain, an extensive literature search was undertaken. One of the key findings of the review was that there was no real significant application of the semantic web to sustainable building technologies. The few studies with at least some sustainability issues in the built environment are in Macris and Georgakellos (2006) and Edum-Fotwe and Price (2009). Macris and Georgakellos (2006) explored the use of ontologies to help students to understand the contemporary global environmental issues, how they are linked and interrelated and to consider the different views of these issues, before reaching a decision or judgment. Edum-Fotwe and Price (2009), on the other hand, explored the use of ontologies in appraising sustainability of construction projects and development from the social component of sustainable development. The ontologies developed by Macris and Georgakellos (2006) and Edum-F otwe and Price (2009) are nothing more than academic papers and have never gone beyond prototypical system levels. However, it emerged that there is abundance of green/sustainability specifications/standards/ratings/metrics in the literature dealing with various aspects of sustainable constructions. Some examples of these specifications are the Market Transformation Programme database that contains the different building household appliances in the UK houses arranged in a well-defined taxonomy (Market Transformation Programme 2010; Firth et al. 2008; Wood and Newborough 2007), the Green Guide to Specifications (Anderson et al. 2009), the Uniclass (Smith et al. 1997) and the Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED 2010). The Green Guide aims to provide a simple green guide to the environmental impacts of building materials which is easy-to-use and soundly based on numerical data. Uniclass is a new recent classification scheme for the construction industryindustry (Smith et al. 1997). It is intended for organising library materials and for structuring product literature and project information. It incorporates both CAWS (Common Arrangement of Work Sections for building works) and EPIC (Electronic Product Information Co-operation), a new system for structuring product data and product literature. The Green Guide is part of BREEAM (BRE Environmental Assessment Method) an accredited environmental rating scheme for buildings. LEED is an internationally recognized green building certification system developed by the US Green Building Council, providing third-party verification that a building or community was designed and built using strategies intended to improve performance in metrics such as energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts.