The Akapana Pyramid: Reconsidering Tiwanaku's Monumental CenterThe most visible remains of the Tiwanaku civilization are the monuments found at the site of Tiwanaku. Although the target of extensive excavation and analysis in the last 100 years, there is a serious lack of substantiated information about important aspects such as dating, form, and construction of these monuments. This in turn affects our understanding of the development of this impressive urban ceremonial center. In the following article I examine the principle monument at Tiwanaku, the Akapana pyramid, evaluating the most recently published interpretations of its dating, form and construction in light of information collected during my 1999 and 2000 field seasons. Finding inadequacies with the manner in which monuments have been excavated and interpreted in the past, I propose an alternative method and reinterpret the available evidence. I conclude with an alternative explanation for the Akapana pyramid and explore the ramifications of my new perspective on this monument for broader understandings of the pre-Columbian center's urban form. / Los restos más visibles de la civilización de Tiwanaku se encuentran en el casco urbano de su propia capital. Desde hace más de un siglo han sido la meta lógica de toda clase de excavaciones y análisis de datos; hasta la actualidad, sin embargo, persiste una notable penuria de información comprobable respecto al fechado, a su forma elusiva y construcción compleja, pobreza que, a su vez, afecta la comprensión de la forma y desarrollo de este impresionante centro urbano ceremonial.En el presente artículo se vuelve a analizar la pirámide de Akapana, monumento principal de Tiwanaku, con el propósito de realizar, a la luz de recientes datos suministrados por las investigaciones llevadas a cabo entre 1999 y 2000, una nueva evaluación de los últimos estudios publicados sobre las cuestiones de su fechado, forma y construcción. Al encontrar insuficiencias en la manera en que se excavaron y se analizaron los monumentos en el pasado, se propone un proceder alternativo a fin de brindar una nueva interpretación de los datos. Con ella se llega a un entendimiento más viable de la pirámide de Akapana y se examina su relevancia para la forma de este centro urbano preeuropeo desde una perspectiva nueva.

One vital task of a project's owner is to determine a reliable and reasonable construction time for the project. A U.S. highway agency typically uses the bar chart or critical path method for estimating project duration, which requires the determination of construction logic. The current practice of activity sequencing is challenging, time-consuming, and heavily dependent upon the agency schedulers' knowledge and experience. Several agencies have developed templates of repetitive projects based on expert inputs to save time and support schedulers in sequencing a new project. However, these templates are deterministic, dependent on expert judgments, and get outdated quickly. This study aims to enhance the current practice by proposing a data-driven approach that leverages the readily available daily work report data of past projects to develop a knowledge base of construction sequence patterns. With a novel application of sequential pattern mining, the proposed framework allows for the determination of common sequential patterns among work items and proposed domain measures such as the confidence level of applying a pattern for future projects under different project conditions. The framework also allows for the extraction of only relevant sequential patterns for future construction time estimation.

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