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Micro-regeneration can effectively enhance a neighborhood’s commercial vitality and serve as a viable approach to boost economic benefits. However, the small scale of micro-regeneration efforts and the fragmented nature of information currently limit the availability of strong empirical evidence demonstrating its impact on neighborhood commercial vitality. The aim of the study was to examine the link between micro-regeneration and neighborhood commercial vitality, focusing on the average, time-lag, spatial spillover, and spatial heterogeneity effects.

Using the panel data set of 1,755 neighborhoods in Chongqing from 2016 to 2021 as the research sample, the difference-in-differences (DID) method was employed in this study to explore the impact micro-regeneration has on neighborhood commercial vitality.

The results illustrate that: (1) micro-regeneration can promote neighborhood commercial vitality in terms of the number and types of local consumption amenities by 27.76 and 5.89%, respectively, with no time-lag effect; (2) the positive spillovers can exist within the range of 5,000 meters–5,500 meters of regenerated neighborhoods; and (3) the effect of micro-regeneration on neighborhood commercial vitality can be greater in peripheral areas than in core areas of the city.

The findings fill the knowledge gap on the relationship between micro-regeneration and neighborhood commercial vitality. Additionally, the results on the time-lag effect, spatial spillover effects, and spatial heterogeneity provide practical implications that can support the government and private sector in developing temporal and spatial arrangements for micro-regeneration projects.

As one of the pillar sectors, China’s construction industry (CE) is not efficient in productivity with large regional gaps over the past decades. It is crucial for stakeholders to have insightful information on regional input of resources and output of productive efficiency for making policies and investment decisions. The purpose of this paper is to develop an efficiency measurement for the CE and explore the regional differences of construction productive efficiency across the three regions of China.

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is an objective benchmarking methodology used for measuring the performance of construction productivity. Distance friction minimization (DFM) approach, based on DEA model, is applied to identify the causes of inefficiency, sources of growth and the optimal paths to efficient frontier for regional CE. Further studies are conducted to provide insightful information for efficiency improvement, according to DFM modeling results and empirical analysis.

The results indicate that eastern region leads construction development due to strong performance of coastal provinces. Faced with decreasing supply of skilled workers in developed region, investing more on construction plants and equipment for labor savings is more efficient to the long-term productivity growth of CE in the east. For developing midland region, heavy reliance on cheap manpower should be gradually relieved by allocating more budgets to vocational training and education program to boost quality labor supply, as well as making steady investment on construction equipment and advanced technology. In underdeveloped western region, raising construction labor wages is recommended to attract more workers to meet the market demand and achieve an optimal production efficiency in the CE.

The findings provide insights into the causes of inefficiency, the sources of growth and the best strategies for efficiency improvement in regional CE, recommendations are made for policy making and strategic planning to enhance the overall performance of China’s construction productive efficiency.

The purpose of this study is to discover the distribution and trends of existing Offsite construction (OSC) literature with an intention to highlight research niches and propose the future outline.

The paper adopted literature reviews methodology involving 1,057 relevant documents published in 2008-2017 from 15 journals. The selected documents were empirically analyzed through a topic-modeling technique. A latent Dirichlet allocation model was applied to each document to infer 50 key topics. A machine learning for language toolkit was used to get topic posterior word distribution and word composition.

This is an exploratory study, which identifies the distribution of topics and themes; the trend of topics and themes; journal distribution trends; and comparative topic, themes and journal distribution trend. The distribution and trends show an increase in researcher’s interest and the journal’s priority on OSC research. Nevertheless, OSC existing literature is faced with; under-researched topics such as building information modeling, smart construction and marketing. The under-researched themes include organizational management, supply chain and context. The authors also found an overload of similar information in prefabrication and concrete topics. Furthermore, the innovative methods and constraints themes were found to be overloaded with similar information.

The naming of the themes was based on our own interpretation; hence, the research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, a comparative study using different data processing is proposed. The study also provides future research outline as follows: studying OSC topics from dynamic evolution perspective and identifying the new emerging topics; searching for effective strategies to enhance OSC research; identifying the contribution of countries, affiliation and funding agency; and studying the impact of these themes to the adoption of OSC.

This study is of values to the scholars, as it could stimulate research to under-researched areas.

This paper justifies a need to have a broad understanding of the nature and structure of existing OSC literature.

Production and transportation of precast components, as two continuous service stages of a precast plant, play an important role in meeting customer needs and controlling costs. However, there is still a lack of production and transportation scheduling methods that comprehensively consider delivery timeliness and transportation economy. This article aims to study the integrated scheduling optimization problem of in-plant flowshop production and off-plant transportation under the consideration of practical constraints of customer order delivery time window, and seek an optimal scheduling method that balances delivery timeliness and transportation economy.

In this study, an integrated scheduling optimization model of flowshop production and transportation for precast components with delivery time windows is established, which describes the relationship between production and transportation and handles transportation constraints under the premise of balancing delivery timeliness and transportation economy. Then a genetic algorithm is designed to solve this model. It realizes the integrated scheduling of production and transportation through double-layer chromosome coding. A program is designed to realize the solution process. Finally, the validity of the model is proved by the calculation of actual enterprise data.

The optimized scheduling scheme can not only meet the on-time delivery, but also improve the truck loading rate and reduce the total cost, composed of early cost in plant, delivery penalty cost and transportation cost. In the model validation, the optimal scheduling scheme uses one less truck than the traditional EDD scheme (saving 20% of the transportation cost), and the total cost can be saved by 17.22%.

This study clarifies the relationship between the production and transportation of precast components and establishes the integrated scheduling optimization model and its solution algorithm. Different from previous studies, the proposed optimization model can balance the timeliness and economy of production and transportation for precast components.

The aims of this paper is to establish an appropriate physical-change-based renewal (PCBR) projects selection mechanism capable of selecting the combination of the PCBR projects that can make up an integrated urban renewal program in high-density cities.

The research design follows a sequential integrated methodology that combines the calculation algorithms of Fuzzy Analytic Network Process (Fuzzy-ANP) with Zero-One Goal Programming (ZOGP) to support decisions for the selection of PCBR projects. In the first phase, general criteria for assessing the sustainability performance of PCBR projects were collected from relevant literature. In the second phase, the Fuzzy-ANP was used to identify the priority weights of the candidate projects through clarifying the interdependent degree between the criteria and candidate projects. Finally, ZOGP method was selected as a predetermined number of PCBR projects among candidate projects.

The feasibility and effectiveness of this hybrid approach is then verified in a case study of Yuzhong District, Chongqing in China. The results of this study indicate that the integrated method is capable of directing the decision maker toward the best compromising solution of PCBR program that can achieve the maximization of sustainable benefits and allocate limited resources most efficiently.

The novelty of this paper consists in combining the algorithms of the Fuzzy-ANP method with those of the ZOGP model that serves as an effective analysis tool to address practical decision problems. This is the first hybrid algorithms to make PCBR projects selection decision that reach the maximization of the sustainable benefits, both in economic and socio-environmental terms.

To look into the current state of value management (VM) practice in China and reveal the challenges and opportunities to its future development.

Copies of a questionnaire (2,000) were mailed to chief engineers in manufacturing companies (1,000) and construction companies (1,000). Interviews with six practitioners and two experts were followed up in leading cities of VM applications in China.

Reveal awareness and applications of VM in manufacturing and construction industries, different VM method from overseas mainstream and rank the difficulties in applying VM in China. Limited scope of applications, misusing mathematical techniques in VM studies and the inappropriate measures adopted to promote VM applications were identified as three main factors blocking the development of VM in china. In order to overcome these problems, more cooperation with overseas VM practitioners is recommended.

The findings of this paper based on VM applications in China limits its usefulness elsewhere.

This paper reveals the main problems in current VM applications in China and point out the direction to overcome the difficulties for promoting VM practice in future. It is instructive for VM practitioners, especially in the construction industry.

This paper provides an overall understanding of the current state and future prospect of VM application in China for VM researchers and practitioners.

Value management (VM) was introduced in China during 1978, when the reform and open door policy started. After a surge of VM applications that emerged in the late 1980s, the development of VM has declined sharply in the recent years in China. Although some successful applications of VM in China's construction industry have been observed, many actions should be taken to exert its full potential to improve value for money for clients. Aims to draw a holistic picture of the current VM practices and provide recommendations for its future development in China's construction industry. Provides a comparison between China's VM approach and the international mainstream to highlight the major differences.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a new type of entry mode decision‐making model for construction enterprises involved in international business.

A hybrid method combining analytic hierarchy process (AHP) with preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluations (PROMETHEE) is used to aid entry mode decisions. The AHP is used to decompose the entry mode problem into several dimensions and determine the weight of each criterion. In addition, PROMETHEE method is used to rank candidate entry modes and carry out sensitivity analyses.

The proposed decision‐making method is demonstrated to be a suitable approach to resolve the entry mode selection decision problem.

The research provides practitioners with a more systematic decision framework and a more precise decision method.

The paper sheds light on the further development of entry strategies for international construction markets. It not only introduces a new decision‐making model for entry mode decision making, but also provides a conceptual framework with five determinants for a construction company entry mode selection based on the unique properties of the construction industry.

The matter of predicting disasters has always been one of the hottest and most challenging tasks in geology. Earthquakes are among the most destructive ones among all the natural hazards. Occurring often without any warning, they are the most feared and unpredictable natural phenomena. In recent years with the emergence of new remote sensing instruments and techniques, geologists interested themselves to define accurate and reliable procedures to foresee disasters using this new technology. This paper aims to examine some of the data that have been used so far in earthquake prediction as well as cheap, relevant remotely sensing and geographic information systems methods to acquire and manipulate data.

Earthquakes are not the same in terms of origins, places (depth) and effects. So after having a brief look at the earthquakes, this paper examines the data that can be used for predicting earthquakes and reviews some of the remote sensing methods used to predict tectonic earthquakes. According to the types of measurements, remote sensing methods can be categorized in three main types; crust displacement, thermal and electromagnetic detecting techniques. Regarding the area's geological characteristics, satellites with optical and/or synthetic aperture radar sensors applications in prediction of large‐scale natural disasters will be discussed.

Presentation of the definitions and characteristics of earthquakes, categorized representation of the types of data used in this field as well as the types and names of the ground, aerial‐ and space‐borne data providers are the most important products of this review paper.

This method, if fully and systematically conducted, can be the cornerstone of an earth‐predicting system.