Digital Interoperability for the Facilities Management Domain: a Review of Semantic Web-based Approaches

The use of Semantic Web-based Technologies (SWT) to support digital Facilities Management (FM) activities has been shown to address interoperability challenges between disciplinary stakeholders. By establishing shared understanding through ontologies, eliminating precarious file exchanges and democratising participation through non-proprietary technologies, SWTs are receiving growing interest from the research community. Despite this, no comprehensive review exists which analyses works with a specifc focus on the FM domain. This paper reviews 35 academic works and provides a broad discussion around academic and industry initiatives in SWTs for the FM domain, identifying research gaps and future directions of interest. We find that SWTs are already being used by FM practitioners and that implementation is highly case-specific and thus, developments need to be flexible and user-oriented in their design. This work towards a comprehensive domain review provides a useful reference for others in the field as well as informing our own future research activities.