A Scalable Network of Concept Libraries Using Distributed Graph Databases

Currently, work on enabling the use of building and construction-related concept libraries is being carried out in a number of disparate initiatives. The Norwegian reference implementation of the building SMART Data Dictionary (bSDD), the Dutch initiative for a concept library for the infrastructural sector (CB-NL), the Concept Model Ontology (CMO) and the generation of meta-data for long-term archival of BIM data in the context of the EU-project "Durable Architectural Knowledge" (DURAARK) share a great number of common aims and goals. These cover the areas of the general conceptual architecture, governance strategies for the content, accessibility and interfaces, as well as technical aspects of implementations and others. In this paper, the ongoing collaborative work on a harmonized framework for networked, distributed concept libraries is introduced and discussed. It is shown how such systems may be used to expose the concepts for semantic mash-up scenarios in the context of the Linked Open Data (LOD) initiative. A number of use-cases that demonstrate the potential applications of such systems in various interoperability scenarios are illustrated and discussed.