Information structure for integration of facility projects at operational airports.

摘要

Airport Organizations are faced with the increasingly complex task of integrating facility projects within the operational airport. Computer network systems present promising opportunities for help in meeting this challenge. The objective of the dissertation is to research methods that can be used to improve the airport organization's ability to identify, arrange, store and access information. The research methodology involves investigation and documentation of the domain to be represented, review of information management techniques, translation of the domain information to an information structure, and a prototype implementation for the structure. The domain of interest is categorized in three subject areas: management theory; facilities and construction management; and the airport organization. Information management techniques reviewed include: relational databases; the development of online bibliographic search systems used by academic libraries in the 1980's; conceptual information modeling techniques; and related modeling research in the architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) industry. Graphical, object-oriented modeling techniques are used to develop the information structure.;The framework for the information structure represents the overall domain of the airport organization. Within this bound, the focus is on airport and project management. The developed structure consists of thirty-seven graphical models, with each model representing an object class. Within these models, over 340 additional object classes and over 500 relationships are identified. The modeling methodology is documented, and the information structure provides a basis for computer implementation of informational resources. The structure's limitations include its partial development, and lack of object instances and methods. The prototype implementation involves a sequence of three web sites: in the first a strict-hierarchical navigational structure is used; in the second, manually configured hyperlinks and web pages containing sample data are added; and the third involves a web site-database interface with the database containing the sample data. The web sites are assessed primarily in terms of the functional representation of object relationships provided by hierarchical and manually configured hyperlinks. In comparing the representation of the sample data using web pages versus a database interface, it is demonstrated that the database interface requires significantly fewer web pages. The web site is accessible at: http://jpneedham.trueserver.com