Digital Rules in Infrastructure Planning: Presentation of an OntologyBased Approach

The concept of an ontology-driven standard for road design is proposed, derived from the Research Society for Road and Traffic regulations. It establishes fundamental objects and classes to address the diverse needs of stakeholders in the design process to reconcile editorial and content differences. Through semantic modelling, complex interrelationships between design elements are captured, facilitating a structured representation of design information. In a comprehensive analysis, the conformity of existing recommendations with the ontology-based framework is evaluated by comparing the results of the regular with the proposed ontology-based planning approach. The result outlines the feasibility of a semi-automatic software-based approach to road design and draft evaluation using ontology-based representations of contextual relationships. Furthermore, the analysis highlights the need for harmonisation when updating and working with different interconnecting regulatory guidelines. Future research endeavours to support automation by merging rule-based knowledge with ontological representations to derive actionable insights and thereby improve planning efficiency.

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