| In order to provide useful and practical computing support for inspectors in the field performing inspection activities, a computer system for supporting these inspectors has to be designed and customized to recognize the specific task and the context of the inspection. Unfortunately, the development of field inspection support systems is difficult and still suffers from a lack of generality, such that effort is wasted when implementing different applications sharing some common aspects. The research presented in this dissertation aims to provide a partial solution to the difficult problem of developing field inspection supports systems by creating a modular and customizable software environment to facilitate the construction of such applications.; This dissertation contributes in three main areas: a model of inspection processes, a reusable application framework for developing field inspection support systems, and an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) format and implementation for the modeling of inspection information.; The foundation of the application framework is a model of the engineering inspection process derived from Fowler's general observation model and Bosch's measurement systems framework [Fowler 97, Bosch 99b]. This model supports most engineering inspection processes, specifically those that are operated and controlled by human inspectors.; The second major contribution of this research is an application framework consisting of reusable components and a modular system architecture. Inspection support system developers can assemble the components in the framework into a new application, accepting default options when appropriate and providing application-specific customizations when needed.; The third major contribution of this research is the XML format and implementation for the modeling of inspection information. The user of the framework uses the XML format to describe inspection information, which includes information about inspection domain objects, information about inspection tasks, and information about the application. Since XML is a text-based document markup language that is easy to understand and modify, the inspection support systems developed by the framework can be easily modified by changing the information in the XML documents that are used to develop these applications.; The application framework and its XML implementation have been successfully applied to the construction of several inspection support systems in different domains, such as bridge and automobile inspection. |
