new term request - material used in building a house

[zhengj2007]

Following are controlled vocabulary used in annotation of floor, wall, and roof material in PRISM project (http://www.muucsf.org/projects/prism.html). Some terms are overlapped in these categories.

main material of the exterior walls: thatched/straw
mud and poles
un-burnt bricks un-burnt bricks with plaster/cement burnt bricks with mud
cement blocks
stone
timber
burnt bricks with plaster/cement
iron sheets

main material of roof: thatched (including papyrus) wood/planks iron sheets asbestos tiles

main material of floor: earth or sand earth and dung parquet or polished wood mosaic or tiles bricks cement/concrete stones

[pbuttigieg]

Below, I've summarised the actions taken in envo-edit.owl. You can post-compose most of the classes requested by using something like:

thatched exterior wall is_a exterior wall and composed_primarily_of some thatch

We can pre-compose some/all of the classes and add them to ENVO if you think this is better. I can see this being sensible for some of the more widely used construction methods. Opinion?

Please check the "Status" column: Q = question, C = class(es) created, W = will not add / out of scope Bold requests were added to the list to make it possible to post-compose easily.

Request	Comment	Status
	Exterior wall materials
exterior wall	Created as a new class	C
thatch	Created a new class for 'thatch', very general for now but can be expanded (see comment). Pre-composed "thatched exterior wall"	C
straw	Doesn't ENVO:00003869 do the job? Pre-composed "straw exterior wall"	C/Q
mud and poles	Pre-composed "pole-reinforced mud exterior wall" as a sublcass of "mud exterior wall", but the "pole" class is odd and likely ot be revised / obsoleted in future revisions	C
un-burnt brick	"brick" has been created, both as a masonry unit ("brick") and a material ("brick material"). Like some of the others, it looks like an aggregate class - could you take a look at the definition and propose revisions if any? (un)burnt) "brick exterior wall" classes created.	C/Q
un-burnt bricks with plaster/cement	((un)burnt)brick, plaster, and cement are present - please post-compose.	C/W
burnt bricks with mud	Again, this can be post-composed - is there a good reason to include it as a pre-composed class	Q/W
cement blocks	Created "concrete masonry unit", which is what I think you mean. I created classes for "concrete" and "cement" in the construction sense (although, the term, 'cement', refers more to a disposition than a specific material) in the material hierarchy too. "concrete exterior wall". Along the way, "asphaltic cement" used in road construction was created.
stone	There is "rock" and its subclasses - is this not enough? "stone exterior wall" created
timber	is this different relative to wood? I suppose it must be 'dead wood', but I'd like a definition proposed	Q
burnt bricks with plaster/cement	Please post-compose	W
iron sheets	"iron sheet", "sheet-iron exterior wall" created	C
	Roof materials
building roof	created new class which, together with exterior wall, defines most of the building envelope	C
thatched (including papyrus)	'thatched building roof' created. "thatch" is broad enough to accommodate papyrus	C
wood/planks	'wooden building roof' created
iron sheets	'sheet-iron building roof' created	C
asbestos	'asbestos building roof' created, note, the import of asbestos from CHEBI is pending	C
tiles	'tiled building roof' created	C
	Floor materials
building floor	Created this class as a means to aid post-composition with some pre-composed examples (see below)	C
earth or sand	sand exists, "earth" is too ambiguous - I suppose it's an aggregate class of some kind, could you define it?	W/Q
earth and dung	see above for "earth"; "feces" (ENVO:00002003) exists and should work for dung unless you mean something more specific. I've created "dung building floor" with def like: building floor and 'composed primarily of' some (feces and 'has quality' some dry), will that work?.	W/C/Q
parquet or polished wood	"parquet" or "parquetry" is a pattern more than a material. Do you mean wood? Is "wood" enough for your purposes? "polished wood" could be quite tricky, especially if you need to define (some of) the polish's (as a material) chemical composition. At any rate, "polished" sounds like a quality, but I'm not sure PATO would host such a class (@cmungall, thoughts?) . I have the feeling you're trying to differentiate simple wooden floors from those that are more 'processed' by various methods.	Q
mosaic or tiles	As with parquet, "mosaic" refers to a pattern or an artform rather than a material. I've added "glass" (and a bunch of major subclasses) to prepare for post-comp. "stone" already exists.	C/Q
bricks	"brick building floor" created	C
cement/concrete	"concrete building floor" created, with a related synonym, 'cement building floor' which is probably not accurate (cement probably is used to colloquially refer to some sort of concrete, right?)	C/Q
stones	"stone floor" created	C

[zhengj2007]

Thanks a lot for working on these terms.

For our use cases, we don't need to use term like 'pole-reinforced mud exterior wall' for annotation. The terms we needed are material entity that can be used in different way like roof material, floor material and wall material. In our application ontology, we have added following terms: building material (definition: A material entity used to build a dwelling or part of a dwelling.) and it has 3 subclasses: floor material: A building material used in the construction of a floor. roof material: A building material used in the construction of a roof. wall material: A building material used in the construction of a wall.

These classes are all defined classes since we also defined following roles: building material role, floor material role, wall material role, and roof material role.

In this case, we can associate the role with different ENVO material entity. For example, "stone" can have both 'wall material role' and 'floor material role'. So, we can infer the stone as both 'wall material' and 'floor material' after reasoning. It seems that you have created most of the material we needed. It is good enough. I can import the terms and add the role axioms in our application ontology. We don't need any pre-compose terms. If ENVO would like to keep them, it is fine. If ENVO would like to take the high level terms (e.g. building material, roof material, etc.) we created, we can pass them to ENVO.

Will ENVO make a new release soon? It will be make us easy to import the terms.

Thanks again!

[pbuttigieg]

Thanks for clarifying. If you need more classes for building materials, please re-open this issue.

In this case, we can associate the role with different ENVO material entity.

I think you mean environmental material rather than material entity

If ENVO would like to take the high level terms (e.g. building material, roof material, etc.) we created, we can pass them to ENVO.

These sound like useful constructs which many would benefit from. I think we should host them in ENVO until some sort of construction ontology comes along.