PhD overview
I succesfully defended my thesis on 15 January 2007, so I'm a PhD now :-)
PhD thesis
Let's start with the thesis itself. You can read it online in two versions:
Summary
For dynamic processes to become possible in Building-Construction, ICT support is needed. Data access and data exchange needs to be ubiquitous. Existing research often only targets elaborate international standards (that don't really get off the ground because of international differences) or it targets big, elaborate, expensive systems (that are only available to the top 1% of the companies).
This thesis proposes an open source Building-Construction Ontology Web (bcoWeb) coupled with the so-called REST style of web services. Open source to maximise the possibility of participation and to limit the dependency on organisations or individual companies. Simple REST web interaction to keep the complexity low without sacrificing functionality. An ontology web consisting of multiple independent (national) ontologies to facilitate meaningful information exchange without first needing to build The One Big Ontology (that will never be completed).
Defense date
I defended my thesis on 15 January 2007, see the weblog entry and the photos .
Bits and pieces
- Graduation project Noor Hellemans (Dutch)
- Short doc describing my choice of programming language (I didn't want to clutter up the thesis with that, there's a footnote in the thesis that points at this document).
- Highly critical comments by Kees Woestenenk about my thesis. See also my weblog entry about that. 2008-01-17: a full reaction is now available.
