Report to CSC
IFD Library Opportunity
Date: September 25-26, 2006
Location: Lisbon, Portugal
Introduction
This short paper is intended to encapsulate the spirit of discussions held in Lisbon,
Portugal regarding an initiative being offered by STABU (Lexicon project) and the
Norwegian Barbi project – who are the two founding partners in the Industry Foundation
for Dictionaries (IFD) project. In short, the IFD partners are offering the result of
approximately $5 million of investment capital to other organizations at no cost, to
participate in the continued development of their project into a single unified terminology
library that they hope will become a defacto global standard.
History
At ISO meetings in Vancouver in 1999, a "Standing Committee" met with participants
from ICIS, IAI, and a variety of other organizations developing IT standards for the
building industry (leading to what we are today calling BIM). There was an agreement at
this meeting that some sort of standardized global terminology was necessary, and that
it's structure must be useful for computers to reliably exchange data irrespective of
language.
The result of that discussion, prompted by a push by ICIS, was that the ISO committee
TC59/SC13/WG6 was struck to develop the standard now known as ISO 12006-3 –
Framework for object-oriented information exchange. This standard defines the rules by
which terms can be stored, independent of language, and in a manner which can be
understood by dissimilar software applications which are each compliant with the
standard.
Once ISO 12006-3 was published, STABU (a non-profit foundation in Holland) Lexicon
and Barbi in Norway each began development of terminology databases compatible with
the standard. Concurrently, to prove that the concept worked with complementary
technologies, those libraries were each tested with IFC compatible databases of real
projects. The testing was found to be successful; the two technologies co-existed to
provide even more power and flexibility.
In January 2006, STABU and Barbi signed an agreement that they would combine their
efforts to produce a single terminology database that they would share between
themselves for mutual benefit.
The Technology
Very briefly, a terminology library is like a dictionary. But, whereas a dictionary uses a
"phrase" to define a term, computers do not understand phrases, so more information is
needed before it can distinguish a particular concept from other concepts. An objectoriented terminology library identifies terms using a serial number (Global Unique ID),
and its definition is described by associating the term with other terms. The rules about
what "kind" of term it is, and how it must relate to other terms is dictated by the ISO
standard (akin to the rules of English, but in computer terms). Computers can then use
the unique ID's to accurately exchange information about the concepts, regardless of the
names assigned to them.
In practice, this means that objects in a BIM model that are created (or associated) with
terms in this library, automatically inherit standard sets of properties as well as predefined relationships with other concepts. These are things that a computer cannot be
taught, but which are encapsulated in the structure upon which the library is created. By
doing so, information can be automatically associated with other relevant concepts
automatically, without a human having to make the connection. Likewise, when a human
does further refine an object by adding values and descriptions about real objects, those
values can all be instantly translated into the other languages available (because humans
have already created and validated that the terms are accurate).
The Present
Currently, all of the IT development time and a wide variety of verification testing (to
verify the concept) has been invested by the two existing stakeholders to make the
terminology library a reality. They have designed the physical database to store the
concepts, and developed software tools to allow non-IT industry professionals to populate
and verify the terms without having to understand the underlying technology.
Provision has already been made for an infinite variety of languages. An added benefit
has been the inclusion of the concept of "dialects", which presupposes that "most" terms
would apply except for a selected subset of terms. This concept would allow CSC and
CCDC (as an example) to refine their own terms with specific definitions, and they
would both be related to Canadian English language (or likewise for Canadian French, of
course).
The Offer
The IFD Partners are now requesting other parties that have expressed an interest in their
work, to join them in populating and using the library for real work in our countries.
They IFD partners are willing to share all work to date, in return for assistance by others
to add more concepts, and to translate the existing ones, into our various domains. The
result is a truly international terminology library that is not owned by any one individual.
It is anticipated that a non-profit entity would manage the physical content itself
(purchase and manage the servers, backups, update the tools, etc). The consortium
members would each be responsible for their own domains. The cost of this entity
would, for now, be continued with funding from the existing stakeholders, but that
eventually a business plan would be developed to enable this entity to be self-funding.
The end result would be a truly global set of terms and definitions, in which every
stakeholder may use the technology that has been developed for their own purposes.
They participate by populating (or verifying) terms in their own language and domain.
Those terms may be used by applications of interest to ourselves, and will also be
available to all other stakeholders. Likewise, terms and concepts defined elsewhere can
be reviewed and validated for use by us.
The existing infrastructure will be made available to anyone interested in participating,
and copyrights are protected through a General Public License (which in short means that
people are free to use it at will, but must not re-sell or profit for personal gain). This
means that the terms themselves must not be re-sold; but applications which depend
upon it is where the business opportunities lie.
Recommendation
I recommend that CSC and Digicon participate in the IFD Library consortium, to develop
the Canadian English version for use in Canada. A variety of reasons support this view:
 it is unlikely that any other potential competing standard is presently available
(there are similar terminology dictionaries under development, but their interested
focus is national in scope),
 the IFD Library is based upon a number of established ISO standards (not just
ISO 12006-3, which forms the underlying structure),
 there are already two founding members, and the meetings in Lisbon revealed
interest by everyone in the group (although no contracts were signed here).
As a side comment, Roger Grant from CSI staff attended the Lisbon meeting as well; his
impressions mirror mine. As some of you are aware, CSI have already engaged a
consultant to prepare a report containing recommendations on how to proceed to build a
terminology library for the USA. A copy of this report was shared with me for
information, and will eventually be shared with CSC through Mary Friesen. The report
will contain recommendations that support the concept of a CSI alliance with the IFD
Library consortium. Roger indicated that he would personally support an alliance with
CSC to work cooperatively to populate the Canadian and US English portions (99% of
which share common terms; the differences being primarily in spelling of names only).
Prepared by,
David Watson, CET