Performance of the different parties participating in a construction project, particularly engineering professionals, plays an important role in its successful or unsuccessful implementation. This paper presents a stu...
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ISBN:
(纸本)0784407940
Performance of the different parties participating in a construction project, particularly engineering professionals, plays an important role in its successful or unsuccessful implementation. This paper presents a study conducted to investigate how project characteristics impact engineering performance in measurable terms. A comprehensive approach that benefits from the capabilities of fuzzy neural networks (FNNs), utility functions and the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is specifically employed for such purpose. In this context, utility functions and AHP are integrated together to develop an instrument for measuring engineering performance, while FNNs are used to develop a connectionist structure relating engineering performance to its influential project characteristics. For practicality, the study is implemented in the industrial construction sector. The paper begins with a discussion of the topic of engineering performance and the conventional methods for its measurement in the construction industry. Following is an overview of the adopted approach and the analytical capabilities it has. Afterwards, the paper presents the details of the system used for quantifying the sought impacts in the industrial construction sector, including, the basic architecture of the system and the data sets used in its development. Applying the developed system in quantifying the impact of example project characteristics is also illustrated. Lastly, conclusions of the study are drawn.
civil-Comp Special Issue: This special issue includes extended, reviewed and revised papers presented at The Tenth internationalconference on civil, Structural and Environmental engineeringcomputing (civil-Comp 2005...
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civil-Comp Special Issue: This special issue includes extended, reviewed and revised papers presented at The Tenth internationalconference on civil, Structural and Environmental engineeringcomputing (civil-Comp 2005) and The Eighth international Confere
Informatization has been becoming an effective and efficient measure for urban infrastructure management to heighten its effect. This paper defines urban infrastructure management and describes the framework of its in...
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ISBN:
(纸本)0784407940
Informatization has been becoming an effective and efficient measure for urban infrastructure management to heighten its effect. This paper defines urban infrastructure management and describes the framework of its informatization in the viewpoint of life cycle. On the basis of above definition and description, this paper presents the model of the informatization for urban infrastructure planning, construction, and management based on Web GIS and DSS, which involves the informatization for the infrastructure management of energy sources system, water resources system, communications system, posts and telecommunications system, environment system, and disaster-preventing system. Then the functions of the model are analyzed. Finally, as an example, informatization for the management of urban wastewater treatment infrastructure is analyzed to discuss the functions of above model. The applications of the model would heighten the management level of urban infrastructure, which would reduce the cost of urban infrastructure construction and maintenance, as well as improve its service level.
This paper outlines research being undertaken to develop new tools for investigating the opportunities integrated water management offers. With the engineering profession moving towards integrated design and managemen...
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ISBN:
(纸本)0784407940
This paper outlines research being undertaken to develop new tools for investigating the opportunities integrated water management offers. With the engineering profession moving towards integrated design and management strategies for urban water cycle systems, the simulation models that are being utilized within the industry are becoming increasingly complex. Moreover, the number of decisions and objectives to be considered is growing and as a result traditional approaches, such as trial-and-error, for finding the most suitable approach become impractical. The presence of many conflicting objectives means that there is no longer one unique optimal solution but a myriad of solutions lying on the Pareto frontier. This work explores the potential for multiple objective optimization to identify the Pareto frontier and subsequent computer aided interactive decision analysis to explore the frontier. The paper presents a simple water supply case study in order to illustrate these concepts.
Finite element computational methods have totally penetrated industry for analysis and design of engineered systems. Current university academic content now includes both expository undergraduate as well as graduate l...
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ISBN:
(纸本)0784407940
Finite element computational methods have totally penetrated industry for analysis and design of engineered systems. Current university academic content now includes both expository undergraduate as well as graduate level academic courses. To reach the practicing professional, an Internet venue enables unfettered access to academic content in a totally time- and distance-insensitive modality via specifically developed websites. The established UT CFD Laboratory Internet website presents a fully functional environment for graduate course participation in the computational engineering sciences, widely spanning continuum mechanics, including comprehensive computer laboratory experiences. An overview of the organization and content of this Internet archive venue is presented.
This paper examines learning opportunities provided by the online engineering communities of practice. These communities are communities of professionals and others, who share knowledge and resources using the Interne...
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ISBN:
(纸本)0784407940
This paper examines learning opportunities provided by the online engineering communities of practice. These communities are communities of professionals and others, who share knowledge and resources using the Internet as a communication and collaboration channel and a shared virtual community space. The discussion in the paper is based on a recent study of design features and functionality of existing online professional communities of practice, and on the authors' experience in teaching and development of the computer-based learning resources. One of the models for a virtual community of practice that provides great means for knowledge sharing and collaboration is the "Knowledge Portal" model. This model fulfills the basic online community of practice portal requirements including online learning resources that support learning opportunities for the members of the community. The authors discuss several learning scenarios enabled by the online Knowledge Portal and demonstrate how online resources could be used in the civilengineering materials curriculum. Within the conclusion, the authors recommend some design features and useful functionality of the online communities of practice that facilitate lifelong learning by the members of the community and enable wide-ranging learning opportunities for students that are entering the professional engineering field.
The planning process of a building is very complex. Many participants with different technical disciplines are involved and work on certain tasks. To manage the planning process the project leader has to organize part...
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ISBN:
(纸本)0784407940
The planning process of a building is very complex. Many participants with different technical disciplines are involved and work on certain tasks. To manage the planning process the project leader has to organize participants, tasks and building data. For this purpose modern information and communication technologies can be used very efficiently. But these technologies require a formal description of the planning process. Within the research project "Relation Based Process Modelling of Co-operative Building Planning" we have defined a consistent mathematical process model for planning processes and have developed a prototype implementation of an application for modelling these processes. Our project is embedded in the priority program 1103 "Network-based Co-operative Planning Processes in Structural engineering" promoted by the German Research Foundation (DFG). In this paper we present the mathematical concept of our relational process model and the tool for building up the model and checking the structural consistency and correctness.
Case-based reasoning (CBR), one of the artificial intelligence (AI) learning approaches, is drawing the attention of many researchers in civilengineering. However, due to vagueness and uncertainties in knowledge repr...
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ISBN:
(纸本)0784407940
Case-based reasoning (CBR), one of the artificial intelligence (AI) learning approaches, is drawing the attention of many researchers in civilengineering. However, due to vagueness and uncertainties in knowledge representation, retrieval, and inference of cases in CBR, - especially when dealing with similarity assessment-, it is difficult to find the cases in a case base which are exactly the same as the query case. Therefore, fuzzy theory has been incorporated into CBR, which promises more robust, flexible, and accurate models. In this research, fuzzy case-based reasoning (FCBR) has been used to develop a model for bridge management. This model can deal with multiple objectives, namely, predicting the future health condition of a bridge deck, and recommending the appropriate maintenance, rehabilitation and replacement (MR&R) actions. The FCBR model's learning capabilities have been validated using the cross-validation method. The code is implemented using the programming language C++, and all the cases used for both training and testing are extracted from the electronic bridge database of the Kansas Department of Transportation. In this paper, recommending MR&R actions, the second function of the developed bridge management model, is focused on.
This paper outlines an integrated framework for a building design system capable of automatically building code compliance checking. Most previous studies have focused on the processing of design codes for conformance...
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ISBN:
(纸本)0784407940
This paper outlines an integrated framework for a building design system capable of automatically building code compliance checking. Most previous studies have focused on the processing of design codes for conformance checking. In this work, the author investigates 3D CAD (three dimensional Computer-Aided-Design) techniques to support automated code compliance checking during the design process. In particular, the paper addresses the following issues (1) Extraction of the knowledge from a building code document (e.g. international Building Code), and representation of the knowledge in a computer-interpretable format;(2) Data representation of building designs in a 3D CAD system. (3) Mapping building code information with building design information that enables the computer to assist designers with the automatic code compliance checking;and (4) Integration of the knowledge in building codes and the design knowledge into a computer framework. The proposed framework will be able to identify code requirements relevant to a particular building design and notify designers whether the design violates the building code.
Product cost is a significant expenditure in a construction project where project participants have had to search for and dealt with a large amount of product information. With more product information, industry pract...
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ISBN:
(纸本)0784407940
Product cost is a significant expenditure in a construction project where project participants have had to search for and dealt with a large amount of product information. With more product information, industry practitioners can make more informed project decisions. However, current approaches that support A/E/C information acquisition do not provide a comprehensive market scan. While the Internet provides an ever-growing resource for product information, none of the existing approaches is able to make use of this virtual market. Therefore, this research has developed a knowledge-assisted approach to tackle issues related to online searching to help retrieve A/E/C product information from the Internet. The developed approach utilizes (i) domain knowledge represented in the form of a thesaurus, and (ii) a knowledge-supported information retrieval approach adapted from the extended Boolean model. A prototype was implemented with five data sets for research validation. It was concluded from the testing results that domain knowledge can be helpful and the developed approach can effectively increase the number of distinct product manufacturers identified.
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