Monitoring information modeling for semantic mapping of structural health monitoring systems

Intelligent structural health monitoring systems are composed of sensor nodes capable of on-board processing and analysis of the sensor data. The information necessary to mathematically represent such structural health monitoring (SHM) systems is defined as “monitoring related-information”. Monitoring-related information includes, for example, information about the inherent, dynamic logics of intelligent sensor nodes, about the overall SHM system, and about the monitoring strategies being implemented. While numerous sensor modeling languages, ontologies, schemas and models have been proposed to describe conventional sensor information (such as type and location of sensors), semantic models for representing monitoring-related information specifically for intelligent SHM systems are not available. This conceptual paper describes a semantic model for a consistent, digital representation of monitoring-related information. This paper also illustrates how to implement and to validate the semantic model based on the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC). The IFC are a widely-used, open standard for digital modeling of building information (“building information modeling”, BIM), but it is not possible to represent monitoring-related information with the IFC schema. Therefore, a conceptual approach is showcased for extending the current IFC schema in order to include monitoring-related information, in a process defined as “monitoring information modeling” (MIM). As a result, it can be expected that, through the novel methodology proposed herein, monitoring-related information can coherently be integrated into standardized building information models being widely used in civil engineering, facilitating the integrated design and maintenance of intelligent SHM systems.