C-SanD presented three papers at the e-Sm@rt conference, held at the University of Salford on the 19-21 November 2002. The papers are shown below, along with links to the presentations made.

C-SanD papers to be presented to e-Sm@rt 2002, Salford, 19-21 November

Inter-Organisational Motility of Construction Knowledge Practices

Will Venters, Mike Cushman, Tony Cornford (LSE)

This paper presents a new model of intra-organisational knowledge management in terms of motility of knowledge practices. While existing conceptualisations of knowledge, such a tacit and explicit have proved a valuable lens for focusing on knowledge practices within organisations and in relatively well understood or stable contexts, this paper argues that their use may be less effective in considering knowledge practices shared and communicated between organisations and when knowledge needs are still being negotiated. Based on research into the construction industry's approach to the issue of sustainability and the knowledge challenges it poses, this paper introduces the concept of motile knowledge practices as an alternative lens through which to make sense of, and improve, the industry's ability to support innovation for sustainability. The notion of motile knowledge helps us to focus on the fundamental property of knowledge practices as they move, mutate and decay. Seeing knowledge as essentially motile it is possible to question the application of existing approaches to knowledge management within inter-organisational domains. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for practice made apparent by the lens of knowledge motility. (View the presentation associated with this paper)

A Framework for Managing Sustainability Knowledge: the C-SanD Approach

Malik M. A. Khalfan, Dino M. Bouchlaghem, Chimay J. Anumba and Pat M. Carrillo (University of Loughborough)

There has been growing awareness of the importance of sustainable development and sustainable construction around the globe for the last few decades. Sustainable development can be defined as the development, which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generation to meet their own needs. Sustainable construction is the application of sustainable development practices to the construction industry domain. In this field and despite governmental strategies and initiatives, much more has to be done to make construction more sustainable and achieve the targets set for sustainable developments. One of the major obstacles is to capture and manage the knowledge required to improve sustainability in construction. To support this there is a need for a framework to incorporate sustainability issues within the whole construction process including pre- and post- construction phases.

After a comprehensive literature review on sustainable development and sustainable construction, the paper presents current practice and perception of sustainability within the industry based on field work conducted as part of the C-SanD Project (Creating, Sustaining, And Disseminating Knowledge For Sustainable Construction: Tools, Methods And Architectures) interviews, with a focus on creating and sharing knowledge for sustainable development and sustainable construction. Finally we present a framework to support the implementation of sustainable construction practices based on a generic design and construction process (Process Protocol). (View the presentation associated with this paper)

Information Retrieval Algorithms for Knowledge Management - The Challenge Continues

Elaine Ferneley, Brendan Berney and Yacine Rezgui (University of Salford)

This paper considers Information Communication Technology (ICT) support for the knowledge creation process that takes place by the interaction of both tacit and explicit knowledge with the knowledge creating entities of the individual, group and organisation (or organisations). Attempts to provide ICT support for this process have tended to focus on two stages in the knowledge evolution cycle, firstly extraction and representation and secondly dissemination. In order to extract and represent knowledge a number of approaches have been used, these include: the use of knowledge bases and ontologies, the use of filtering and categorisation mechanisms to extract key terms and the development of various weighting mechanisms in an attempt to prioritise or cluster related entities. To support dissemination various approaches to user profiling have been used which usually incorporate some form of adaptive information filtering mechanism. This paper presents a critical evaluation of a number of the more well know extraction and representation techniques. It then presents a set of user profiling techniques appropriate for use in intra-organisation knowledge management portal applications .(View the presentation associated with this paper)