Ontologies representing multidisciplinary decision-making rationales for sustainable infrastructure developments

A multidisciplinary decision-making (MDM) process is required for sustainable infrastructure developments in early design stage of integrated project delivery. Decision makers from multiple disciplines employ heteroge-neous decision criteria when evaluating decision alternatives for the project developments. This results in un-certainty in alternative prioritization as the scoring ranges of sustainable performance indexes for those alternatives are indistinguishable. This study has formalized the rationales of decision coordinators for con-verting scores of sustainability performance indexes assessed by decision makers to the normalized ones based on their preferred decision criteria in a consistent and collective manner. Two ontologies have been formalized, which include 45 classes, 119 properties, 50 sub-properties and their facets. The ontologies are validated using three cases of sustainable infrastructure developments. Validation results indicate that they are formal, comprehensive, and reusable in representing MDM rationales, i.e., the interrelationships among decision makers, decision criteria, decision alternatives, and sustainability performance index. Theoretically, these two ontologies contribute to the Triple Bottom Line theory and social choice theory by specifying heterogeneous decision preferences in evaluating sustainable infrastructure developments. For practical implications, the developed ontologies serve as a computer-readable decision support tool to systematically store and communicate MDM information between multidisciplinary professionals in infrastructure project management.

Automated summary

A multidisciplinary decision-making process is required for sustainable infrastructure developments in the early design stage of integrated project delivery. This study formalized decision coordinators' rationales for converting sustainability performance scores assessed by decision makers to normalized ones based on preferred decision criteria. Two validated ontologies contribute to representing MDM rationales in infrastructure project management.