Building a Knowledge Base of Bridge Maintenance Using Knowledge Graph

Abstract

To effectively manage the heterogeneous and discrete knowledge of the bridge maintenance domain, this study adopts knowledge graph technology to build a knowledge base of bridge maintenance, called the bridge maintenance knowledge graph (BMKG). The BMKG uses an ontology as the knowledge organization and representation framework and a graph database as the knowledge storage tool. To facilitate the construction of the BMKG, a hybrid method combining a top-down approach and a bottom-up approach is proposed. Firstly, a bridge maintenance domain ontology (BMDO) is coded with Protégé and represented in Web Ontology Language. Secondly, rule reasoning and ontology reasoning are implemented on the BMDO in Protégé in order to automatically complete missing relations or attribute values. Thirdly, ontology reasoning is adopted to perform consistency check on the BMDO. Lastly, the BMDO model is stored in the Neo4j graph database through data format conversion, thus completing the construction of the BMKG. The BMKG is applied in a typical scenario of bridge maintenance to demonstrate its application value. Results show that the proposed hybrid method can create a knowledge graph that can realize the transformation from discrete data into interconnected knowledge. Knowledge graph offers a novel idea to create a knowledge base in the bridge maintenance domain.