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This paper presents an agent-based software, Virtual Administrator System (VAS) for the smallscale maintenance of school buildings. VAS is capable of handling a heavy load of routine, lowtech maintenance jobs. It assigns a different priority to each job application according to its significance and urgency, and automatically adjusts schedules for maintenance engineers when on-site supervision is needed. The system can help ease off the burden of routine small-scale maintenance work, making it more cost-effective and efficient in the overall management of school building maintenance. VAS posts jobs on the Web in a multi-media format and classified all applications into four categories: the on-call maintenance contract, the term maintenance contract, the guaranty maintenance contract, and the regular maintenance contract. It then estimates their urgency level and passes the information to maintenance engineers who will decide whether on-site inspection is needed. Based on the engineers’ feedback, VAS automatically implements the scheduling for inspection as well as sends out real-time or batch notifications to contractors. All these activities are recorded in a database to allow continuous research and data mining and the analysis and diagnosis of specific jobs for followup maintenance plans.
The paper summarizes a part of research carried out in ICCI project and provides a current review of ICT infrastructures supporting collaboration. It covers taxonomies, protocols, standards, components, typical subsystems as well as future trends and recommendation for two most important technologies with applications in AEC: (1) EIP (Enterprise information portal) – a single gateway to a company's information, knowledge base, and applications for all actors; (2) RTC (Real-Time Communication and Collaboration technologies) that provide means for asynchronous communication between geographically dislocated people using ICT. Proposed future developments are: orientation towards web services - with building information models, business intelligence, personalization, AEC information retrieval, p2p workspaces and grids.
The design of mobile IT systems, especially the design of wearable computer systems, is a complex task that requires computer science knowledge, such as that related to hardware configuration and software development, in addition to knowledge of the domain in which the system is intended to be used. Particularly in the AEC sector, it is necessary that the support from mobile information technology fit the work situation at hand. Ideally, the domain expert alone can adjust the wearable computer system to achieve this fit without having to consult IT experts. In this paper, we describe a model that helps in transferring existing design knowledge from non-AEC domains to new projects in the construction area. The base for this is a model and a methodology that describes the usage scenarios of said computer systems in an application-neutral and domain-independent way. Thus, the actual design information and experience will be transferable between different applications and domains.
This paper describes a framework for computer-aided conceptual design of building structures that results from building architectural considerations. The central task that is carried out during conceptual design is the synthesis of the structural system. This paper proposes a methodology for the synthesis of structural solutions. Given the nature of architectural constraints, user-model interactivity is devised as the most suitable computer methodology for driving the structural synthesis process. Taking advantage of the hierarchical organization of the structural system, this research proposes a top-down approach for structural synthesis. Through hierarchical refinement, the approach lends itself to the synthesis of global and local structural solutions. The components required for implementing the proposed methodology are briefly described. The main components have been incorporated in a proof-of-concept prototype that is being tested and validated with actual buildings.
Current software solutions for real estate planning, construction and use, do not model the complete life cycle of a building. Well-integrated software tools exist for the planning and construction phases. Data integrity exists throughout the planning and construction phases, but problems occur at the transition to the use-phase. At this interface, the complete data set of planning and execution gets lost. Another software deficiency is that current software solutions don’t handle construction work and maintenance work equally. This is why a new software generation is demanded, which continuously covers the entire workflow process from the planning phase to the demolition of a building. New data concepts have to be developed, which allow bringing work items for construction together with work items for real estate use.
The presented work focuses on collaboration- experiences gathered with complex design and engineering projects, using the learning platform POLE- Europe. Within the POLE environment student-teams from different universities, disciplines and cultural backgrounds are assigned to real-world projects with clearly defined design - tasks, usually to be accomplished within one semester while working in a virtual environment for most of the time. The concept of POLE and the information and collaboration technology is described.
This paper describes an ongoing research on the representation and reasoning about construction specifications, which is part of a bigger research project that aims at developing a formalism for automating the identification of deviations and defects on construction sites. We specifically describe the requirements on product and process models and an approach for representing and reasoning about construction specifications to enable automated detection and assessment of construction deviations and defects. This research builds on the previous research on modeling design specifications and extends and elaborates concept of contexts developed in that domain. The paper provides an overview of how the construction specifications are being modele d in this research and points out future steps that need to be accomplished to develop the envisioned automated deviation and defect detection system.
The development of a life cycle structured cooperation platform is described, which is based on an integrated process and goal-oriented project model. Furthermore the structure of a life cycle oriented object structure model and its implementation in the platform are documented. The complete conceptual model is described, which represents the basis of a lifecycle -oriented structuring of the planning object and supports the thematic classification of the object and project management data.
Applications for civil engineering tasks usually contain graphical user interfaces for the engineering processes. Persistent objects of the applications are stored to data bases. The influence of the interaction between a graphical user interface and a data base for the development of an civil engineering application is investigated in this paper. A graphic application for the linear elastic analysis of plane frames, which was previously developed with standard tools of the Java platform, is compared to a redesigned implementation using a generalized data base for persistent objects. The investigation leads to the following results : - A strict distinction between persistent and transient objects influences the class structure of an application, in particular the class structure of a graphical user interface. - The structure of an application depends on the logic for updating of references to persistent and transient graphical objects after an application is read from a file. - The complexity of the reference management can usually be handled better by just in time referencing associated with String - identifiers rather than by automated referencing associated with Name - identifiers.
For the management or reorganisation of existing buildings, data concerning dimensions and construction are necessary. Often these data are given exclusively by paper-based drawings and no digital data such as a computer based product model or even a CAD-model are available. In order to perform mass calculation, damage mapping or a recalculation of the structure these drawings of the building under consideration have to be analysed manually by the engineer. This is a very time-consuming job. In order to close this gap between drawings of an existing building and a digital product model an approach is presented in this paper to digitise a drawing, to build up geometric and topologic models and to recognise construction parts of the building. Finally all recognised parts are transformed into a three-dimensional geometric model which provides all necessary geometric information for the product model. During this import process the semantics of a ground floor plan has to be converted into a 3D-model.
The synchronous distributed processing of common source code in the software development process is supported by well proven methods. The planning process has similarities with the software development process. However, there are no consistent and similarly successful methods for applications in construction projects. A new approach is proposed in this contribution.
The optimization of continuous structures requires careful attention to discretization errors. Compared to ordinary low order formulation (h-elements) in conjunction with an adaptive mesh refinement in each optimization step, the use of high order finite elements (so called p-elements) has several advantages. However, compared to the h-method a higher order finite element analysis program poses higher demands from a software engineering point of view. In this article the basics of an object oriented higher order finite element system especially tailored to the use in structural optimization is presented. Besides the design of the system, aspects related to the employed implementation language Java are discussed.
Current disaster management procedures rely primarily on heuristics which result in their strategies being very cautious and sub-optimum in terms of saving life, minimising damage and returning the building to its normal function. Also effective disaster management demands decentralized, dynamic, flexible, short term and across domain resource sharing, which is not well supported by existing distributing computing infrastructres. The paper proposes a conceptual framework for emergency management in the built environment, using Semantic Grid as an integrating platform for different technologies. The framework supports a distributed network of specialists in built environment, including structural engineers, building technologists, decision analysts etc. It brings together the necessary technology threads, including the Semantic Web (to provide a framework for shared definitions of terms, resources and relationships), Web Services (to provide dynamic discovery and integration) and Grid Computing (for enhanced computational power, high speed access, collaboration and security control) to support rapid formation of virtual teams for disaster management. The proposed framework also make an extensive use of modelling and simulation (both numerical and using visualisations), data mining (to find resources in legacy data sets) and visualisation. It also include a variety of hardware instruments with access to real time data. Furthermore the whole framework is centred on collaborative working by the virtual team. Although focus of this paper is on disaster management, many aspects of the discussed Grid and Visualisation technologies will be useful for any other forms of collaboration. Conclusions are drawn about the possible future impact on the built environment.
This paper describes a couple of new truss structures based on fractal geometry. One is the famous Sierpinski Gasket and another is a fractal triangle derived by means of applying a process forming leaves of a cedar tree using M. F. Barnsley’s contraction mapping theory. Therefore a pair of x-y coordinates of an arbitrary nodal point on the structures are generated easily if IFS(Iterated Function System) codes and a scale of them are specified. Structural members are defined similarly. Thus data for frame analysis can be generated automatically, which is significant if the objective structure has complex configuration. Next analytical results under vertical and wind loadings in Japanese Building Code are shown. Here members are assumed to be timber and to have cross section of 15cm×15cm. Finally authors conclude that geometrically new truss structures were developed and automatic data generation for frame analysis was attained using IFS. Analytical results show they contribute to saving material when compared it with King-post truss.
Structural engineering projects are increasingly organized in networked cooperations due to a permanently enlarged competition pressure and a high degree of complexity while performing the concurrent design activities. Software that intends to support such collaborative structural design processes implicates enormous requirements. In the course of our common research work, we analyzed the pros and cons of the application of both the peer-to-peer (University of Bonn) and multiagent architecture style (University of Bochum) within the field of collaborative structural design. In this paper, we join the benefits of both architecture styles in an integrated conceptual approach. We demonstrate the surplus value of the integrated multiagent–peer-to-peer approach by means of an example scenario in which several structural engineers are co-operatively designing the basic structural elements of an arched bridge, applying heterogeneous CAD systems.
Expert systems integrating fuzzy reasoning techniques represent a powerful tool to support practicing engineers during the early stages of structural design. In this context fuzzy models have proved themselves to be very suitable for the representation of complex design knowledge. However their definition is a laborious task. This paper introduces an approach for the design and the optimization of fuzzy systems based upon Genetic Programming. To keep the emerging fuzzy systems transparent a new framework for the definition of linguistic variables is also introduced.
Integrated structural engineering system usually consists of large number of design objects that may be distributed across different platforms. These design objects need to communicate data and information among each other. For efficient communication among design objects a common communication protocol need to be defined. This paper presents the elements of a communication protocol that uses a mediator agent to facilitate communication among design objects. This protocol is termed the Mediative Communication Protocol (MCP). The protocol uses certain design communication performatives and the semantics of an Agent Communication language (ACL) mainly the Knowledge and Query Manipulation Language (KQML) to implement its steps. Details of a Mediator Agent, that will facilitate the communication among design objects, is presented. The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is used to present the Meditative protocol and show how the mediator agent can be use to execute the steps of the meditative communication protocol. An example from structural engineering application is presented to demonstrate and validate the protocol. It is concluded that the meditative protocol is a viable protocol to facilitate object-to-object communication and also has potential to facilitate communication among the different project participants at the higher level of integrated structural engineering systems.