Toward Open Science in the AEC Community: An Ecosystem for Sustainable Digital Knowledge Sharing and Reuse
🤖 AI Summary
This work addresses the fragmentation of digital resources and inconsistencies in documentation within the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry, which severely hinder discoverability, interpretability, and reusability. To overcome these challenges, the authors present OpenConstruction—the first community-driven open science ecosystem tailored to the AEC domain. By integrating datasets, models, use cases, and educational materials through unified descriptors, standardized metadata, expert curation, and transparent governance, the platform enables sustainable knowledge management via a categorized directory structure and open technologies. As of December 2025, OpenConstruction has cataloged 94 datasets and 65 models, effectively supporting research and educational applications such as benchmarking and curriculum development.
Application Category
📝 Abstract
The Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry is undergoing rapid digital transformation, producing diverse digital assets such as datasets, computational models, use cases, and educational materials across the built environment lifecycle. However, these resources are often fragmented across repositories and inconsistently documented, limiting their discoverability, interpretability, and reuse in research, education, and practice. This study introduces OpenConstruction, a community-driven open-science ecosystem that aggregates, organizes, and contextualizes openly accessible AEC digital resources. The ecosystem is structured into four catalogs, including datasets, models, use cases, and educational resources, supported by consistent descriptors, curator-led validation, and transparent governance. As of December 2025, the platform hosts 94 datasets, 65 models, and a growing collection of use cases and educational materials. Two case studies demonstrate how the ecosystem supports benchmarking, curriculum development, and broader adoption of open-science practices in the AEC sector. The platform is publicly accessible at https://www.openconstruction.org/.
Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
AEC
digital assets
knowledge sharing
open science
resource reuse
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
open-science ecosystem
digital knowledge sharing
AEC community
curator-led validation
structured metadata
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