Interrelationship Analysis between Causal Factors of Construction Defect Using Association Rule Mining

Construction defect which can causes economic damage such as schedule delay, cost overrun is a considerably important factor in construction industry. In general, a construction defect features a difficulty to find out causes precisely because it occurs when several interrelated causes combine. Yet, studies have tried to understand the interrelationships between factors are limited. In addition, despite of a tremendous amount of construction data, it's not still enough to analyze them, but tends to depend on experience or know-how of practitioners. Thus, it is necessary to identify underlying causes in influential factors by utilizing related data. This paper analyses Interrelationships between causal factors using Association Rule Mining to discover root causes of construction defects. Confidence and Lift that can be used for presenting the interrelationships of the causes were extracted from 1241 cases in 30 projects in Korea. It is expected that this paper allows the construction managers to discover key factors and make right decisions to reduce occurrence of construction defects. Furthermore, analysis of interrelationships can improve understanding of structural patterns of construction defects.