<p>   </p> <p>The growing shortage of workers experienced in the labor-driven architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry in the last decades has negatively impacted the industry, especially in the productivity. In the search of alternatives to alleviate this concerning situation, the AEC industry has readopted the concept of prefabrication (offsite construction). Compared to stick-built construction, offsite construction provides many advantages, such as construction in a controlled environment, the ability to perform parallel activities, quality improvement, less construction waste, safety improvement, and overall cost reduction. </p> <p>Despite the numerous advantages, there are challenges that have hindered the efficacy of offsite construction in practice. One of such challenges is the lack of interoperability in the design, planning, and construction workflows. Another challenge is that fabrication and assembly operations still rely on manual efforts which are time-consuming, costly, and error prone. With the advancement in digital and automation technologies, such as building information modeling (BIM) and robotics, there is an increasing interest in integrating these technologies to improve productivity in offsite construction. However, this has not been realized yet due to 1) the lack of BIM capability to incorporate automation technology in the design workflow, and 2) the lack of considerations of robotic technology to support AEC processes. </p> <p>Therefore, to address these gaps, in this research, the author proposed methods to 1) analyze building design information to infer construction-ready information and 2) generate construction operations simulations/animations using off-the-shelf robotic systems. The proposed methods consist of algorithms that enable: 1) inference of geometric and physical properties of building elements from industry foundation classes (IFC) models, and 2) generation of simulations for analyzing robot-assisted construction operations.</p> <p>These methods were tested on different test cases. Compared with manual efforts, the developed systems were more time efficient in the automated extraction of geometric and physical properties from IFC models as well as in the generation of the sub-module packages for constructability analysis using robotic automation. Experimental results showed that: (1) the developed method can be utilized in inferring the geometric and physical properties of building elements from IFC data models in an automated fashion, achieving 60.61% to 100% precision and 90.30% to 99.59% recall; and (2) the developed algorithms successfully generated the robot-related information from IFC-based BIM and successfully generated the simulation components automatically. Such automation reduces the needs of manual efforts in the extraction and generation of robotic simulation components. This research opens a new door for practitioners to analyze a building design related to the use of robotics for construction.</p> <p>  </p>

<p dir="ltr">Accurate traffic information plays a crucial role in developing appropriate pavement designs. However, the existing traffic design input module often falls short in accurately describing the real traffic conditions on Indiana highways. Furthermore, a range of issues related to vehicle classification, transit bus traffic characterization, semi-truck platooning, pavement friction assessment, and highway model representation have been identified. This study aims to improve the design, safety, and visual presentation of highways in Indiana. In the realm of design, real-world traffic data will be collected and processed, while a traffic database of urban buses will be established. Both an axle-based digital classification method and a model-based image classification method will be introduced to categorize unclassified vehicles. The updated vehicle class distributions and axle load distributions will serve as pivotal traffic inputs for pavement design. Regarding safety considerations, a model for two-semi-truck platooning will be developed to determine safe and optimal headways. Characteristics pertinent to semi-truck platoons will be outlined and discussed. Additionally, a series of laboratory and field tests will be conducted to assess the frictional properties and performance of aggregates and colored pavements, thereby refining roadway safety measures. In the realm of visual presentation, the Building Information Modeling (BIM) framework will be applied to convert, enrich, and extend a highway model. A BIM-centered repository will be created, amalgamating a wealth of information encompassing traffic specifics and project particulars into an integrated visual platform. Moreover, Open BIM processes will be implemented, streamlining the exchange of highway data and ensuring seamless compatibility of models. The results of this study can offer valuable insights to drive improvements in highway design, safety, and visual presentation throughout Indiana.</p>

The focus of the diploma thesis is a new building of preschool in Velké Němčice. The structure is comprised of three classrooms, each for twenty children. The education of the children is secured by six teachers and a head teacher. There are three employees who attend to the food preparation and the maintenance and upkeeping. The meals are secured by a catering company. The structure is designed as double-storeyed without the cellars. The floor plan is in the shape of the reverse letter L. There is a flat one-deck roof. The building was designed as a brick panel structure with the external thermal insulation composite system. It is betted into a flat terrain.

My diploma thesis solves an extension of rehabilitation centre. The building technological project in this diploma thesis contains primarily technology procedure, model of the building site accessories, time schedule, check and test plan and budget for this extension. Specialization is drawn from the field of structural engineering - thermal and technical assessment of the building.

<p>  </p> <p>Traditional manual code compliance checking process is a time-consuming, costly, and error-prone process that has many shortcomings (Zhang & El-Gohary, 2015). Therefore, automated code compliance checking systems have emerged as an alternative to traditional code compliance checking. However, computer software cannot directly process regulatory information in unstructured building code texts. To support automated code compliance checking, building codes need to be transformed to a computer-processable, structured format. In particular, the problem that most automated code compliance checking systems can only check a limited number of building code requirements stands out.</p> <p>The transformation of building code requirements into a computer-processable, structured format is a natural language processing (NLP) task that requires highly accurate part-of-speech (POS) tagging results on building codes beyond the state of the art. To address this need, this dissertation research was conducted to provide a method to improve the performance of POS taggers by error-driven transformational rules that revise machine-tagged POS results. The proposed error-driven transformational rules fix errors in POS tagging results in two steps. First, error-driven transformational rules locate errors in POS tagging by their context. Second, error-driven transformational rules replace the erroneous POS tag with the correct POS tag that is stored in the rule. A dataset of POS tagged building codes, namely the Part-of-Speech Tagged Building Codes (PTBC) dataset (Xue & Zhang, 2019), was published in the Purdue University Research Repository (PURR). Testing on the dataset illustrated that the method corrected 71.00% of errors in POS tagging results for building codes. As a result, the POS tagging accuracy on building codes was increased from 89.13% to 96.85%.</p> <p>This dissertation research was conducted to provide a new POS tagger that is tailored to building codes. The proposed POS tagger utilized neural network models and error-driven transformational rules. The neural network model contained a pre-trained model and one or more trainable neural layers. The neural network model was trained and fine-tuned on the PTBC (Xue & Zhang, 2019) dataset, which was published in the Purdue University Research Repository (PURR). In this dissertation research, a high-performance POS tagger for building codes using one bidirectional Long-short Term Memory (LSTM) Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) trainable layer, a BERT-Cased-Base pre-trained model, and 50 epochs of training was discovered. This model achieved 91.89% precision without error-driven transformational rules and 95.11% precision with error-driven transformational rules, outperforming the otherwise most advanced POS tagger’s 89.82% precision on building codes in the state of the art.</p> <p>Other automated information extraction methods were also developed in this dissertation. Some automated code compliance checking systems represented building codes in logic clauses and used pattern matching-based rules to convert building codes from natural language text to logic clauses (Zhang & El-Gohary 2017). A ruleset expansion method that can expand the range of checkable building codes of such automated code compliance checking systems by expanding their pattern matching-based ruleset was developed in this dissertation research. The ruleset expansion method can guarantee: (1) the ruleset’s backward compatibility with the building codes that the ruleset was already able to process, and (2) forward compatibility with building codes that the ruleset may need to process in the future. The ruleset expansion method was validated on Chapters 5 and 10 of the International Building Code 2015 (IBC 2015). The Chapter 10 of IBC 2015 was used as the training dataset and the Chapter 5 of the IBC 2015 was used as the testing dataset. A gold standard of logic clauses was published in the Logic Clause Representation of Building Codes (LCRBC) dataset (Xue & Zhang, 2021). Expanded pattern matching-based rules were published in the dissertation (Appendix A). The expanded ruleset increased the precision, recall, and f1-score of the logic clause generation at the predicate-level by 10.44%, 25.72%, and 18.02%, to 95.17%, 96.60%, and 95.88%, comparing to the baseline ruleset, respectively. </p> <p>Most of the existing automated code compliance checking research focused on checking regulatory information that was stored in textual format in building code in text. However, a comprehensive automated code compliance checking process should be able to check regulatory information stored in other parts, such as, tables. Therefore, this dissertation research was conducted to provide a semi-automated information extraction and transformation method for tabular information processing in building codes. The proposed method can semi-automatically detect the layouts of tables and store the extracted information of a table in a database. Automated code compliance checking systems can then query the database for regulatory information in the corresponding table. The algorithm’s initial implementation accurately processed 91.67 % of the tables in the testing dataset composed of tables in Chapter 10 of IBC  2015. After iterative upgrades, the updated method correctly processed all tables in the testing dataset. </p>

Aquesta tesi doctoral com diu el seu títol es centra en analitzar la construcció de l'església de Sant Feliu de Girona al segle XIV a través de l'anàlisi dels llibres d'obra conservats a l'Arxiu Diòcesa de Girona.Aquesta tesi doctoral esta dividida en quatre parts. En la primera part s'analitza la historiografia de l'església de Sant Feliu de Girona des del segle XVII fins a l'actualitat. Dins d'aquest apartat s'analitzen les notícies que aporten els diferents autors i es situa el context historiogràfic de cadascun dels segles. S'ha realitzat un estudi molt exhaustiu en les darreres publicacions del segle XX i inicis del segle XXI. Un cop analitzades aquestes fonts - secundàries -, dins d'aquesta primera part del treball s'ha passat a analitzar els llibres d'obra del segle XIV. S'analitzaràn els aspectes formals i els diferents escrivans encarregats de realitzar aquests llibres d'obra. Aquesta serà la documentació bàsica per realitzar aquesta tesi doctoral.En la segona part del treball es procedirà a analitzar la gestió i el finançament de l'Obra. Es tracta d'una anàlisi, bàsicament dels ingressos, per veure quines són les estratègies que es duen a terme per aconseguir el màxim de recursos per la construcció i per les necessitats "litúrgiques" de l'església de Sant Feliu de Girona. En aquest apartat s'ha analitzat l'Obra com a entitat amb les persones que formen part d'ella i el paper que correspon a cadascuna d'elles (l'obrer, l'escrivà, el mestre d'obres, el questor). També s'han analitzat els promotors i aquells ingressos que, pel seu volum, subministren el nombre més gran de diners a l'Obra ("annates", bacins, etc.).La tercera part ha consistit en l'elaboració de la cronologia constructiva de l'església de Sant Feliu de Girona partint de la informació obtinguda en els llibres d'obra corresponent a les despeses. S'han analitzat totes aquelles obres, tant pel que fa a la construcció de l'edifici com pel que fa a reparacions i manteniment, que tenen lloc entre l'any 1349 (data del primer llibre d'obra de despeses) i l'any 1391. En aquesta part no s'ha entrat a analitzar de forma exhaustiva les figures que fan possible la construcció de l'església al segle XIV ja que això pertany al contingut de la darrera part del nostre treball.La darrera part del treball correspon a l'execució de les obres. En aquesta part trobem quatre grans capítols: els mestres d'obra, la mà d'obra, els materials i els mitjans auxiliars. En cadascun d'aquests capítols s'ha incidit sobre el rol dels diferents treballadors durant la construcció del temple, els materials utilitzats i les seves característiques (pedra, fusta, aglomerants, etc.) i els mitjans auxiliars utilitzats per col.locar aquests materials en obra. S'han separat els mestres d'obres de la resta de treballadors ja que els primers juguen un rol diferenciat dels segons. S'ha intentat analitzar en ambdós casos els seus sous i les tasques de cadascun d'ells. Pel que fa als materials també s'ha procedit a analitzar d'on s'extreuen, com han arribat a peu d'obra i on s'emmagatzemen i manipulen o transformen abans d'ésser col.locats en obra. Dels mitjans auxiliars s'ha intentat analitzar les funcions per la qual es fan servir les eines (apareixen totes les de l'ofici de pedrer), els enginys (elevar pesos), les bastides (poder treballar en alçada) i el encofrats (garantir la resistència inicial dels elements constructius).Evidentment s'han establert unes conclusions de cadascuna de les parts i unes conclusions finals. La tesi també inclou els agraïments corresponents, el prefaci i la bibliografia. / This doctoral thesis how it says their title focuses on analyzing the construction of the church of Saint Feliu of Girona in the 14th century through the analysis of the books of work preserved on the Archive Diòcesa of Girona.This doctoral thesis esta divided into four deliveries. In the first part the historiography of the church of Saint Feliu de Girona since the 17th century until the present is analyzed. In this section the news that the different authors bring is analyzed and the historiogràfic context of each of the centuries is placed. A very exhaustive study has been carried out in the last publications of the 20th century and beginnings of the 21st century. Once analyzed these fountains|sources? secondary?, in this first part of the work has been gone|passed to analyzing the books of work of the 14th century. The formal aspects and the different court clerks been of carrying out these books of work in charge will be analyzed. This will be the basic documentation to carry out this doctoral thesis.In the second part of the work people will proceed to analyzing the formality and the funding of the Work. It is about an analysis, in a basic way of the admissions, to see which they are the strategies that they are carried out to achieve the maximum of resources for the construction and from the "liturgical" needs of the church of Saint Feliu de Girona. In this section the Work as an entity with the persons who are part of her and the paper|role that corresponds to each of them (the worker, the court clerk, the master builder, the questor) have been analyzed. The promoters and those admissions|incomes that, for its volume, supply the Work ("annates", bowls, etc) with the greatest number of money have also been analyzed.The third part has consisted of the elaboration of the constructive chronology of the church of Saint Feliu de Girona following the obtained information in the books of work corresponding to the expenses. All those works, regarding the construction of the building as well as regarding repairs and maintenance, that have place among year 1349, (it dates from the first book of expenses work) and in year 1391 have been analyzed. In this part people have not entered to analyze in an exhaustive way the people that make the construction of the church in the 14th century possible since this belongs to the contents of the last part of our work.The last part of the work corresponds to the execution of the works. In this part we find four big chapters: the teachers of work, the labor, the materials and the auxiliary means. In each of these chapters the role of the different workers during the construction of the temple, the used materials and its characteristics (stone, wood, binders, etc) has been fallen upon and the auxiliary means used for placing these materials in work. The master builders of the rest of workers have been sorted out since the first play a role differentiated from the seconds. It has been attempted to analyze their salaries and the tasks of each of them in both cases. Regarding the materials has also been proceeded to analyzing from where they are extracted, how they have arrived on foot of work and where they are stored and where they manipulate or where they transform before being placed in work. Of the auxiliary means has been attempted to analyze the functions for which the tools (they turn up all the ones of the profession of gizzard) are used, the wits (to elevate weights), the scaffolds (to be able to work in height) and the framework (to guarantee the initial resistance of the constructive elements).Obviously some conclusions of each of the parts and some final conclusions have been established. The thesis also includes the corresponding gratitude, the preface and the bibliography.

Sustainable performance of buildings has become a major concern among construction industry professionals. However, sustainability considerations are often treated as an add-on to building design, following ad hoc processes for their implementation. As a result, the most common problem to achieve a sustainable building outcome is the absence of the right information at the right time to make critical decisions. For design team members to appreciate the requirements of multidisciplinary collaboration, there is a need for transparency and a shared understanding of the process. The aim of this study is to investigate, model, and facilitate the early stages of Building Information Modelling (BIM) enabled Sustainable Building Design (SBD) by formalising the ad hoc working relationships of the best practices in order to standardise the optimal collaboration workflows. Thus, this research strives to improve BIM maturity level for SBD, assisting in the transition from ad hoc to defined , and then, to managed . For this purpose, this study has adopted an abductive research approach (iterative process of induction and deduction) for theory building and testing. Four (4) stages of data collection have been conducted, which have resulted in a total of 32 semi-structured interviews with industry experts from 17 organisations. Fourteen (14) best practice case studies have been identified, and 20 incidents narratives have been collected applying the Critical Decision Method (CMD) to examine roles and responsibilities, resources, information exchanges, interdependencies, timing and sequence of events, and critical decisions. As a result, the research has classified the critical components of SBD into a framework utilising content and thematic analyses. These have included the definition of roles and competencies that are essential for SBD along with the existing opportunities, challenges, and limitations. Then, Schedules of Services for SBD have been developed for the following stages of the RIBA Plan of Work 2013: stage 0 (Strategic Definition), stage 1 (Preparation and Brief), and stage 2 (Concept Design). The abovementioned SBD components have been coordinated explicitly into a systematic process, which follows Concurrent Engineering (CE) principles utilising Integrated DEFinition (IDEF) structured diagramming techniques (IDEF0 and IDEF3). The results have identified the key players roles and responsibilities, tasks (BIM Uses), BIM-based deliverables, and critical decision points for SBD. Furthermore, Green BIM Box (GBB) workflow management prototype tool has been developed to analyse communication and delivery of BIM-enabled SBD in a centralised system (Common Data Environment, CDE). GBB s system architecture for SBD process automation is demonstrated through Use Case Scenarios utilising the OMG UML (Object Management Group s Unified Modelling Language) notation. The proposed solution facilitates the implementation of BIM, Information Communication Technology (ICT), and Building Performance Analysis (BPA) software to realise the benefits of combining distributed teams expertise holistically into a common process. Finally, the research outcomes have been validated through academic and industrial reviews that have led to the refinement of the IDEF process model and framework. It has been found that collaborative patterns are repeatable for a variety of different non-domestic building types such as education, healthcare, and offices. Therefore, the research findings support the idea that a detailed process, which follows specified communication patterns, can assist in achieving sustainability targets efficiently in terms of time, cost, and effort.