Fact Model in DEMO - Urban Law Case and Proposal of Representation Improvements

This paper reports the findings and insights obtained from the application of a DEMO-based methodology in a collaboration project with the town council of Funchal, city of Madeira Island, on the subject of the Portuguese Building Code of law. As agreed with the council, one of the goals of this project was to model the universe of discourse of their Urban Appraisal Department. Its activity is subject to very complex legal restrictions encompassing several knowledge domains such as architecture, engineering, etc. The unique circumstances and requirements of the project motivated a novel version of DEMO’s Fact Model. Specifically, 510 surveyed facts, composed of 65 concepts and 445 composing attributes along with their rationale, were specified in two main artifacts presented in this paper: the Fact Diagram and the Fact Description Table. Moreover, 567 combinations between 119 types of application deliverables and 21 types of urban operations - all of which potentially subject to future changes - were considered as instances of concepts in type-square structures related to application deliverable management. Our main research contributions are the synthetization and expressive power of the improved Fact Model, which allowed us to overcome the complexity and intricacies of legislation and create representations that are easily understood and productively discussed by the full range of stakeholders regardless of their technical prowess, experience, or background.