INTELLIGENT BROKER FOR COLLABORATIVE SEARCH AND RETRIEVAL OF CONSTRUCTION INFORMATION ON THE WWW

ABSTRACT: The construction industry is beginning to use the World Wide Web (WWW) as an information dissemination vehicle. The existing information retrieval tools, such as structured classification systems and Internet search engines are inadequate in supporting ordinary construction professionals to locate and retrieve the right information in the ever expand information cyber space. This paper presents a Construction Information Broker (CIB) which improves the discovery of construction related information on the WWW through user collaboration and incorporating construction domain knowledge in the information retrieval process