Multi-level Ontology Mapping for a Cross-culture Collaborative Design.

Design process is a very complex activity nowadays due to its cross-disciplinary nature, its delocalization, its new professional figures and its new performing requirements. Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) together with intelligent content and semantics are up-to-date methodologies to cope with these needs The research work aims at defining new methods, techniques and advanced ICT programs suitable for industries, professionals and technicians who, in various ways and with many specializations, operate in the field of the design and construction of complex building. In the AEC sector designers (actors) often have difficulties in integrating their own work with others, as a deep collaboration implies working together on the same objects (components), and this can lead to misunderstandings, conflicts, incoherencies. The purpose of this research has been to enhance, through suitable tools and methodologies together with the exercise of design collaboration, the overall quality of buildings. Such tools and methodologies are founded on correct mapping across ontologies of different cross-culture domains, so it is easier for actors to understand each other, for application programs to interface significant data and for design process to point out contradictory constraints. The results of this research will be first be applied to provide university students in the schools of architecture and engineering with innovative tools for delocalized design learning enhanced by a cross-disciplinary collaboration.