Built Environment - Ontology Lookup Service (BE-OLS)

This is the repository of the Built Environment - Ontology Lookup Service (BE-OLS) that can be accessed at: [(https://cyberbuildlab.github.io/BE-OLS/)]

The BE-OLS is developed and maintained by a team of volunteers who are members of the EC3 Modelling & Standards Committee.

Key Features

📚 100+ Ontologies – A vast database covering various built environment topics.

🔍 Advanced Filters – Extensive search capabilities to refine ontology selection.

📊 Multi-Criteria Ontology Rating – Evaluation based on alignment, accessibility, robustness, quality, and quantity.

🏗️ Domain-Driven Categorisation – Classification into 20 built environment-specific domains.

✅ FAIR Assessment – Ensuring ontologies are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR principles).

🌐 Linked Built Environment Data Cloud – Mapping relationships between domain ontologies for better interoperability.

Issues (including Missing Ontologies)

If you notice some error in the information provided by the BE-OLS or a missing ontology, please submit an issue

To suggest the addition of a missing ontology, please submit the following information or use the automated Ontology Submission Issue.

• Name: {name of the ontology}
• Acronym: {the namespeace acronym, e.g. bot}
• URI/Namespace: {https://w3id.org/...}
• Reference: {weblink to a webpage or DOI of the paper}
• Link to AEC ontologies: {they should normally be already in BE-OLS. If not, please submit an Issue to add those too :)}
• Link to Upper ontologies: {ontologies like: schema, terms, prov, skos, vann, cc, foaf, qudt, unit, og, fno}
• Link to other professional domain ontologies: {ontologies that link to (sub)-domains that may not really be within AEC, e.g. eli}

Read more about our evaluation framework in our Wiki

References

To acknowledge this work, please cite the following peer-reviewed paper:

Akbarieh, A., Osadcha, I., Farghaly, K., Bosché, F. , Puust, R., (2025). Development of a built environment ontology lookup service (BE-OLS) with a new ontology evaluation, 2025 European Conference on Computing in Construction (EC3), Porto, Portugal. http://www.doi.org/10.35490/EC3.2025.353

Please find our recent EC3 conference publication
or in our publications folder.

Contact Us

For any queries, questions, sugestions and comments, or if you would like to contribute to this effort, don't hesitate to contact one of the committee members listed on the EC3 Modelling & Standards Committee page provided above. Alternatively, open an issue on our GitHub repo.

Disclaimer

This project is work-in-progress and we will constantly update and maintain the BE-OLS.