• Title/Summary/Keyword: Built Environment Design

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BUSINESS PROCESS ENGINEERING IN THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

  • Brenda L. P. Yip;Ping Yung
    • International conference on construction engineering and project management
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    • 2009.05a
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    • pp.622-627
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    • 2009
  • Business process engineering (BPE) is a top-down management approach for increasing efficiency and productivity through radical and fundamental changes to the business processes of the organization. BPE requires firms to initially develop a model of the existing business processes of the firm to distinguish functional tasks from processes used for coordinating inputs, activities and outputs. The model is used for understanding the business processes in the organization and to simulate the effect of changes to the processes. The model can also be used to justify business processes, which involves assessing whether the business process provides value to the customer in its current configuration. Justification requires a careful examination of the key business processes used by the firm to identify systemic shortcomings in the process and to create a new business process to produce greater efficiency. BPE also considers automating as many business processes as possible to increase operational efficiency and the integration of business process tasks. The construction industry has been slow to adopt BPE because of its project approach in which a major firm contracts with various functional service providers and regards each project as unique. The industry focuses on functional task efficiency rather than business process efficiency. There is no formal methodology or criteria for determining whether a business process is effective for a construction firm in its current configuration. The use of performance measures such as costs, task duration times or other metrics can be useful in evaluating the effectiveness of an existing business process and for modeling the possible outcome of a fundamental and radical change to the process.

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A Worker-Driven Approach for Opening Detection by Integrating Computer Vision and Built-in Inertia Sensors on Embedded Devices

  • Anjum, Sharjeel;Sibtain, Muhammad;Khalid, Rabia;Khan, Muhammad;Lee, Doyeop;Park, Chansik
    • International conference on construction engineering and project management
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    • 2022.06a
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    • pp.353-360
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    • 2022
  • Due to the dense and complicated working environment, the construction industry is susceptible to many accidents. Worker's fall is a severe problem at the construction site, including falling into holes or openings because of the inadequate coverings as per the safety rules. During the construction or demolition of a building, openings and holes are formed in the floors and roofs. Many workers neglect to cover openings for ease of work while being aware of the risks of holes, openings, and gaps at heights. However, there are safety rules for worker safety; the holes and openings must be covered to prevent falls. The safety inspector typically examines it by visiting the construction site, which is time-consuming and requires safety manager efforts. Therefore, this study presented a worker-driven approach (the worker is involved in the reporting process) to facilitate safety managers by developing integrated computer vision and inertia sensors-based mobile applications to identify openings. The TensorFlow framework is used to design Convolutional Neural Network (CNN); the designed CNN is trained on a custom dataset for binary class openings and covered and deployed on an android smartphone. When an application captures an image, the device also extracts the accelerometer values to determine the inclination in parallel with the classification task of the device to predict the final output as floor (openings/ covered), wall (openings/covered), and roof (openings / covered). The proposed worker-driven approach will be extended with other case scenarios at the construction site.

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Revisiting the Asian Financial Crisis: Is Building Political Ties with Emerging Political Elites Beneficial during a Crisis?

  • Kyung Hwan Yun;Chenguang Hu
    • Journal of Korea Trade
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    • v.26 no.4
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    • pp.63-82
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    • 2022
  • Purpose - Drawing on relational institutional theory, we explored how demographic similarity between board members of a firm and newly emerged political elites led to firms' increased financial resource acquisition such as leverage ratio and decreased export intensity amidst the Asian financial crisis. We also studied how a firm's leverage ratio and export intensity can further affect firm profitability and financial credit rating. Design/methodology - We revisited and explored a unique, unprecedented crisis that affected most Korean firms: the Asian financial crisis that coincided with a governmental shift from a conservative to a liberal party. We collected demographic information from 432 listed Korean firms' board members and 43 political elites of the Blue House from 1998-2000 to create a demographic similarity measurement. We collected firms' financial information, built panel data, and used ordinary least squares regression to test our theory. Findings - Our results showed that demographic similarity between a firm's directors and newly emerged politicians had a positive association with a firm's leverage ratio but a negative association with a firm's export intensity. A firm's leverage ratio had a negative relationship with firm performance measured by firm profitability and financial credit rating. A firm's export intensity showed a positive effect on firm performance. Originality/value - We highlighted that during an economic crisis that coincided with a governmental shift and change of leading political actors, firms exerted efforts to survey the environment and build new external stakeholder relationships to cope with the changing landscape. We proposed that in an emerging market like Korea where low levels of trust and favoritism are prevalent across society, one of the relational institutional strategies that firms can employ is the selection of directors with similar demographic characteristics to political elites based on factors including birthplace and school affiliations. We examined the efforts of firms to build political networks with newly empowered political elites during a financial crisis, and the consequences of establishing such networks. We highlighted that during a financial crisis, the demographic similarity between a firm's board members and newly emerged politicians can provide firms with access to financial resources but can also result in poor management and reduced effort to enhance its international competitiveness.

Analyzing Intention to Use Shared E-scooters Considering Individual Travel Attitudes : The Case of Seoul Metropolitan Areas (개인 통행성향을 고려한 공유 전동킥보드 이용의향 분석: 서울시를 중심으로)

  • Lee, Yoonhee;Koo, Jahun;Choo, Sangho
    • The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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    • v.21 no.1
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    • pp.1-16
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    • 2022
  • Recently, e-scooters have been attracting attention as eco-friendly modes of transportation in cities due to an increasing interest in the environment. Accordingly, various studies on usage behavior are being conducted, but studies that reflect individual travel attitudes are insufficient. Therefore, this study surveyed commuters in Seoul and analyzed respondents' traveling attitudes through factor analysis. It also built a binary logistic regression model for the intention to use shared e-scooters to determine how individual travel behaviors are affected. In particular, the model results showed that age, the main mode of transportation (car), walking time to the bus stop, and four travel attitude variables (disutility of travel, preference to self-drive, internet/smartphone friendliness, and willingness to pay extra money for services) significantly affected the intention to use shared e-scooters. This study is expected to be used as basic data, with aspect to travel behavior, for the efficient operation and use of shared e-scooters in the future.

Intelligent prediction of engineered cementitious composites with limestone calcined clay cement (LC3-ECC) compressive strength based on novel machine learning techniques

  • Enming Li;Ning Zhang;Bin Xi;Vivian WY Tam;Jiajia Wang;Jian Zhou
    • Computers and Concrete
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    • v.32 no.6
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    • pp.577-594
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    • 2023
  • Engineered cementitious composites with calcined clay limestone cement (LC3-ECC) as a kind of green, low-carbon and high toughness concrete, has recently received significant investigation. However, the complicated relationship between potential influential factors and LC3-ECC compressive strength makes the prediction of LC3-ECC compressive strength difficult. Regarding this, the machine learning-based prediction models for the compressive strength of LC3-ECC concrete is firstly proposed and developed. Models combine three novel meta-heuristic algorithms (golden jackal optimization algorithm, butterfly optimization algorithm and whale optimization algorithm) with support vector regression (SVR) to improve the accuracy of prediction. A new dataset about LC3-ECC compressive strength was integrated based on 156 data from previous studies and used to develop the SVR-based models. Thirteen potential factors affecting the compressive strength of LC3-ECC were comprehensively considered in the model. The results show all hybrid SVR prediction models can reach the Coefficient of determination (R2) above 0.95 for the testing set and 0.97 for the training set. Radar and Taylor plots also show better overall prediction performance of the hybrid SVR models than several traditional machine learning techniques, which confirms the superiority of the three proposed methods. The successful development of this predictive model can provide scientific guidance for LC3-ECC materials and further apply to such low-carbon, sustainable cement-based materials.

Evaluation of Water Supply Reliability in Agricultural Reservoirs Using Water Balance Analysis (물수지 기반 농업용 저수지 내한능력 및 이수안전도 평가)

  • Yang, Mi-Hye;Nam, Won-Ho;Shin, Ji-Hyeon;Yoon, Dong-Hyun;Yang, Hee-Chung
    • Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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    • v.66 no.5
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    • pp.29-40
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    • 2024
  • Most agricultural reservoirs were built between the 1940s and 1970s. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the current water supply safety, considering changes in water capacity, the water management, and environment in relation to the passage of time.. The design frequency of drought, the number of years areservoir needs to be able to withstand a drought phenomenon, foragricultural water resources in Korea is the 10-year drought. As the water supply system and water supply patterns change, it is necessary to establish a concept of water supply reliability, which refers to the stability of water supply. This study evaluated the water supply reliability of agricultural reservoirs based on the designed frequency. The previously designed frequency and water balance analysis were used to calculate and analyze reservoir storage capacity, water supply turnover, water supply amount, water supply potential, water utilization safety, and water supply reliability. As a result, Yongmyeon Reservoir was found to be stable in terms of water supply reliability, whereas Seongho and Yongpung Reservoirs were found to be unstable using all methods. In particular, when converting the water utilization safety and the water supply reliability to the frequency of drought, Seongho and Yongpung Reservoir were in the lowest class, with a frequency of drought less than four years. Thus, we recommend that the consideration of water supply reliability be included in the preparation of adaptive measures and water supply strategies as changes in environmental conditions continue to develop.

A FUNDAMENTAL STUDY TO DEVELOP STANDARD TECHNOLOGY CRITERIA FOR IT-CONSTRUCTION FUSION TECHNOLOGIES, TO BE APPLIED TO A U-CITY

  • Kyoon-Tai Kim;Jae-Goo Han;Chang-Han Kim
    • International conference on construction engineering and project management
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    • 2009.05a
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    • pp.1352-1358
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    • 2009
  • As the demand for a convergence between construction technologies and IT is on the rise, as seen in the visualization of U-City construction, studies on the ways in which IT in should be utilized in the building and construction field have been continuously and actively performed. However, there has been almost no development of standardized technology criteria relating to the life cycle of a building (planning, design, construction, and maintenance). That is, there are almost no examples of efforts made to combine construction technology and IT in a fundamental way, considering the environment, the facility, its spatial characteristics, engineering, materials, and structure, aspects that are commonly required not only for interior spaces but also for exterior construction of U-City. Despite the fact that a state-of-the-art infrastructure has been built, and the competency of users with the cutting-edge technology, composite studies on technologies, facilities, services and spaces are still lacking, and basic research on the composite operation method including compatibility and linkage between facilities and services within a U-City has been insufficient as well. It is generally known that by fusing IT with construction technologies, the total period of construction taken can be reduced and construction expenses can be curtailed, while construction quality can be improved. For this reason, it is vital to prepare a standardized base to connect cutting-edge IT with the construction technologies. In preparing such a base, the most urgent issue is to develop standardized technology criteria. The ultimate objective of this research is to establish the technological criteria system required to apply construction-IT fused technologies to U-Cities, and to develop the technological criteria for the design, construction and maintenance of the U-Cities. This paper, whose objective is to establish development strategies for construction-IT fused technologies by way of analyzing the criteria for conventional construction projects, the necessity of criteria for construction-IT fused technologies, and the current status of U-Cities' development, is the underlying research for this purpose. The strategies established are expected to be utilized in establishing the system of criteria for construction-IT fused technologies, and to contribute to a knowledge base in the construction-IT field. In addition, based on the strategies established, criteria for construction-IT fused technologies, such as design criteria and construction standards, will be developed, and by applying these criteria and standards, the ultimate objectives of U-Cities, which are the enhancement of urban competitiveness and the satisfaction of residents, will be attained

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Design Strategies for Ecological Restoration Using System Dynamics - Focused on 2015 Miryang-si Jayeon Madang Development Project - (시스템 다이내믹스를 활용한 생태복원 설계 전략 - 2015 밀양시 자연마당 조성사업을 사례로 -)

  • Ham, Eun-Kyung;Song, Ki-Hwan;Chon, Jinhyung;Cho, Dong-Gil
    • Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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    • v.43 no.6
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    • pp.86-97
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    • 2015
  • "The Jayeon Madang Development Project("JMDP")" is a project being promoted by the Ministry of Environment to create a cultural space and a natural rest area within the city. Abuksan, located at Abuksan in Gyeongsangnam-do Miryang-si Naeil-dong, has suffered a substantial amount of environmental degradation over time, so the need for ecological restoration made it a natural choice for the location of the JMDP's site. The purpose of this study is to examine ecological restoration design strategies used in Abuksan as part of the JMDP using system dynamics. The national archery center, hole, and arable land sites are key restoration areas in Abuksan that have faced with ecological problems. In this study, we identified the status of each site, determined key strategies being implemented, and designed based on the strategies implemented up to this point for solving problems associated with each sites through the use of causal loop diagrams. The results of the causal loop diagram analysis are as follows. The national archery center site was designed around strategies including planting green manure crops and introducing hugelkultur to reduce soil acidification and green network degradation. The hole site was designed as a constructed wetland based on the emergence of hygropreference vegetation, hydrated by rainwater collected at the bottom of hole, ecological and cultural benefits of such an environment. The arable land site restoration design was built around planting native vegetation on one part of the arable land site after soil quality improved and around restoration of grassland and a dry wetland on the other part of the site to reduce soil acidification, erosion, and green network degradation. This study is a significant attempt to apply principles of system dynamics to ecological restoration by providing the design strategies using comprehension of some problems in the ecosystem feedback loops, which has not been used before in general design processes for ecological restoration.

A Study of the Planning Process, Design Idea and Implementation of the Gwanghwamun Plaza (광화문광장 조성과정 및 설계 연구)

  • Shin, Hyun-Don;Zoh, Kyung-Jin
    • Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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    • v.41 no.4
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    • pp.24-41
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    • 2013
  • This study aims to investigate the complex planning processes and design ideas of the Gwanghwamun Plaza which was opened in 2009. The opening of the plaza was significant as it was built in order to restore the symbolic meaning of axis in the historical Joseon Dynasty that was distorted during the Japanese Imperialism. The plaza itself attracts many citizens and tourists by providing the empty ground carrying historical ambiences around. In this paper, the story of the Gwanghwamun plaza will be summarized. Particularly, the background of promoting the project will be discussed and the whole planning process will be dealt with. The plaza was realized through several stages. First, the planning stage will be reviewed. The planning stage had been a quite long process since the initial idea was discussed. Since the early 90s, the political decision of making the plaza was made through the change of people's understanding toward public space. At this stage, the city government worked together with diverse citizens and professionals to share the vision and to realize the right decision in making the plaza. Second, the design stage will be elaborated in detail. This is the second design stage. The former was the idea competition and the latter was the turn-key base. The final design scheme emphasized the restoration of symbolic axis and the forgotten Yukjo Street. The scheme consists of four zones such as history restoration zone, prospect and history representation zone, culture zone, and the urban zone. Through the whole design process, the original idea remained as it was. The design concept was "a place of memory and prospect." It emphasizes the history representation, view corridor, cultural activities platform as well as the emptiness and flexibility of the basic premise of the plaza. Finally, the construction stage will be discussed. There were some additions and omissions in the construction process. The design chances in the construction stage will be reviewed in detail. After the opening of the plaza, there were some changes in the detail design. We will discuss how and why these modifications were made. In the end, the social and cultural implication of the plaza will be discussed. The storytelling of the Gwanghwamun Plaza will contribute to the clear understanding of planning and design process of pubic places. Based on this reflection, we are able to think about some suggestions of public projects for the future.

Effect of Shading Levels on the Soil Properties, Growth Characteristics, and Chlorophyll Contents of Ligularia stenocephala (차광정도가 곤달비의 토양변화, 생육상황 및 엽록소 함량에 미치는 영향)

  • Park, Byoung-Mo;Kim, Chang-Hwan;Bae, Jong-Hyang;Shin, Jung-Ryeul
    • Journal of Bio-Environment Control
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    • v.20 no.4
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    • pp.352-356
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    • 2011
  • It is true that the industrial development has usually been accompanied with urbanization or centralization of population that has inevitably led to high-rise buildings and densely built-up living area in the cities. While it is badly needed to acquire as much green land within the city limits as possible to compensate for reduced space for recreational purpose in parallel with increasingly urbanized area, the living conditions of plants have become seriously devastated due to shortage of sun light walled-off by high-rise buildings and contaminated environment and air. The shade that is generated by high-rise and compact buildings hinders growth of plants, which makes it urgent to develop native ground cover plant that is strongly viable in the shade. For this purpose, Ligularia stenocephala, best known as greens for Ssam (rice and condiments wrapped in leaves) was cultivated under the 30%, 50%, and 80% shadings and observed to see if there would be any changes in soil conditions, growth of plants and chlorophyll contents depending on the shading rate. The leaf number was 10.8 pieces under the 50% shading and 8.4 under the 30%-shading, 7.7 pieces more than that cultivated under lighting. The leaf width turned out to be excellent from cultivation under the 50%- shading, an evidence indicating its possibility of being cultivated as native ground cover plant in the shade. The live weight of the plants cultivated under the shading increased to 31.63 g, 43.39 g and 19.40 g, respectively, compared to 90.43 g of those in the untreated control plot. The increase in growth of roots was particularly significant with 48.48 g in comparison to 12.33 g under 30% shading cultivation. The chlorophyll synthesis amounted to 46.2 under the 50% shading, showing an increase compared to 41.9 under lighting. The chlorophyll synthesis rather shrank under other shading conditions. The cultivation of Ligularia stenocephala under the 50% shading showed the best condition in growth as native ground cover plant.