| Summary: | The AEC/FM industries are characterized as having many sectors of different disciplines that are
involved in different domain phases throughout the lifecycle of construction projects. In these projects,
many participants from different firms use different types of computer applications to design and
manage the projects. These applications generate and utilize an enormous amount of project
information at different abstraction and detail levels. Computer Integrated Construction (CIC) is a
vision of computer tools interoperating freely with the capability to access, share and exchange project
information, to invoke or request domain services, and to send notifications across all stages of
AEC/FM projects. This research is of interest in the field of CIC and is intended to provide solutions of
information technologies (IT) for CIC.
To date, various information technologies have been developed for AEC/FM, while each is at a different
stage and they are not integrated. To push these IT tools to a point of "critical mass", this research
proposes the idea of "Total Project Systems (TOPS)". TOPS represent a class of computer systems that
are intended to streamline the IT approaches by interoperating various AEC/FM applications and
integrating project information towards the goal of CIC. TOPS-based systems are defined by the
following characteristics: comprehensive and interoperable applications, extensive data integration, and
extensive system flexibility. TOPS call for five fundamental elements, each dealing with a set of
technologies: Comprehensive Applications, Systems Architectures, Information Models, Information
Content, and Work Practices.
The goal of this thesis is to contribute to establishing two of the cornerstone TOPS technologies -
Systems Architectures and Information Models. The research deliverables include:
• TOPS Reference Architectural Framework: including a set of conceptual system
components for designing and implementing integrated and distributed systems.
• A set of conceptual implementation models: representing common data requirements and
support data exchanges for various AEC/FM applications.
• Prototype computer systems using TOPS technologies: involving various AEC/FM
applications that access, exchange and share common project information.
It is believed that this research makes considerable contributions to future research and development of
IT solutions for the AEC/FM industries.
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