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The purpose of this paper is to report on the results of an exploratory study on the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) as a visual data collection tool in the architecture, engineering, construction and facility management industry for the inspection of pathological manifestations in building facades.

The methodology used a field research experimental approach, where three case studies were carried out involving buildings of medium and high elevation. The protocol of activities included image collection and processing stages, as well as detailed analysis of the collected visual data for the identification of pathological manifestations in building facades.

The findings emphasize the technical feasibility and efficacy of inspections with UAV, showing that among the visual assets produced, digital photographs collected with the aircraft were more effective for the detection of pathologies when compared to the three-dimensional models and orthomosaics generated by digital photogrammetry software.

The research has formulated the protocol for the inspection of facades using UAV and the comparative analysis of visual assets that can be generated for inspection purposes.

This study aims to modify the human factors analysis and classification system (HFACS) to make it suitable for collapse accident analysis in construction. Based upon the modified HFACS, distribution patterns of causal factors across multiple levels were discerned among causal factors of various stakeholders at construction sites. It explored the correlations between two causal factors from different levels and further determined causation paths from two perspectives of level and stakeholder.

The main research framework consisted of data collection, coding and analysis. Collapse accident reports were collected with adequate causation information. The modified HFACS was utilized for coding causal factors across all five levels in each case. A hybrid approach with two perspectives of level and stakeholder was proposed for frequency analysis, correlation analysis and path identification between causal factors.

Eight causal factors from external organizations at the fifth level were added to the original HFACS. Level-based correlation analyses and path identification provided safety managers with a holistic view of inter-connected causal factors across five levels. Stakeholder-based correlation analyses between causal factors from the fifth level and its non-adjacent levels were implemented based on client, government and third parties. These identified paths were useful for different stakeholders to develop specific safety plans for avoiding construction collapse accidents.

This paper fulfils an identified need to modify and utilize the HFACS model for correlation analysis and path identification of causal factors resulting in collapse accidents, which can provide opportunities for tailoring preventive and protective measures at construction sites.

With the facility management industry increasingly adopting building information modeling (BIM) technologies, there is a need to investigate where this industry stands in its application. Moreover, studies on efficient and cost-effective solutions to integrate BIM and mobile augmented reality (MAR) present an environment where facility managers can experience an intuitive natural interaction with their mobile interfaces to efficiently access needed information. The industry’s view on this new approach of accessing information from BIM models should also be investigated, and its feedback should be considered for future phases of this avenue of research.

This paper explores not only how BIM can be beneficial to facility management practitioners, but also how its integration with MAR and making the data accessible through handheld mobile devices can enhance current facility management practices. An online survey was conducted to assess professional facility managers’ characteristics, technology use and working environment as well as the current status of BIM application in their practices. An online video scenario has also been used to illustrate to facility managers how an ideal BIM-MAR-integrated environment could provide them with mobile access to their required information. Facility managers’ feedback on usability, applicability and challenges of such environment has also been investigated through a follow-up survey.

With this paper, industry practitioners as well as academic researchers will be able to understand the current status of BIM and mobile computing application in facility management along with the benefits and challenges of implementing these technologies in an augmented reality (AR) environment.

Understanding facility managers’ requirements, characteristics and the way they do their tasks would be of great value for development of tools or systems that would facilitate their practices.

Healthcare facility managers work in complex and dynamic environments where critical decisions are constantly made. Providing them with enhanced decision support systems would result in a positive impact on the productivity and success of the projects they undertake, as well as the sustainability of critical healthcare infrastructure. The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual ambient intelligent environment for enhancing the decision-making process of the facility managers. This low-cost data-rich environment would use building information modeling (BIM) and mobile augmented reality (MAR) as technological bases for the natural human-computer interfaces and aerial drones as technological tools.

This paper presents a scenario for the integration of augmented reality (AR) and building information modeling (BIM) to build an ambient intelligent (AmI) environment for facility managers where mobile, natural, user interfaces would provide the users with required data to facilitate their critical decision-making process. The technological requirements for having such an intelligent environment are also discussed.

The proposed BIM-MAR-based approach is capable of enhancing maintenance related practices for facility managers who are mobile to integrate with their facilities' intelligent environment. This approach is also capable of providing a collaborative environment in which different stakeholders, across geographically distributed areas, could work together to solve facility management tasks.

In this paper ambient intelligence will be considered for the first time in the area of healthcare facility management practices to provide facility managers with an intelligent BIM-based environment to access facility information and consequently enhance their decision-making process.

This paper aims to develop a framework to represent semantic web query results as Industry Foundation Class (IFC) building models. The subject of interoperability has received considerable attention in the construction literature in recent years. Given the distributed, semantically heterogeneous data sources, the problem is to retrieve information accurately and with minimal human intervention by considering their semantic descriptions.

This paper provides a framework to translate semantic web query results into the XML representations of IFC schema and data. Using the concepts and relationships in an IFC schema, the authors first develop an ontology to specify an equivalent IFC entity in the query results. Then, a mapping structure is defined and used to translate and fill all query results into an ifcXML document. For query processing, the proposed framework implements a set of predefined query mappings between the source schema and a corresponding IFC output schema. The resulting ifcXML document is validated with an XML schema validating parser and then loaded into a building information modeling (BIM) authoring tool.

The research findings indicate that semantic web technology can be used, accurately and with minimal human intervention, to maintain semantic-level information when transforming information between web-based and BIM formats. The developed framework for representing IFC-compatible outputs allows BIM users to query and access building data at any time over the web from data providers.

Currently, the results of semantic web queries are not supported by BIM authoring tools. Thus, the proposed framework utilizes the capabilities of semantic web and query technologies to transform the query results to an XML representation of IFC data.

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a study aimed at investigating the information requirements for broad use mobile applications for construction projects. It also presents the results of usability testing of a mobile application prototype for improving information management in construction projects.

To achieve the research objectives, the information required to properly design the mobile application was collected by distributing an online questionnaire among construction professionals. Then a server‐based application prototype was developed based on enterprise content management concepts. The mobile application was tested in a laboratory by setting a group of construction management postgraduate students who had experience of working in the construction industry.

This study determines and ranks the critical on‐site information artifacts, considered highly important from the perspective of clients, consultants, and contractors. The study also illustrates the development of a mobile application prototype and results of a usability test. The test results demonstrate that the application is well designed, user friendly, and meets user requirements.

The results of this study are useful for developing a functional mobile application to manage on‐site information in construction projects.

The paper makes an original contribution by investigating information requirements of a mobile application for on‐site information management.

As more owners seek to develop sustainable buildings, the construction industry is adapting to new requirements in order to meet owners' concerns. Recently, a significant change in the construction industry has been the increased interest in sustainable materials. Sustainable materials are the potential resource to mitigate the impact on the environment and bring significant economic, social, and environmental benefits. For an efficient materials selection process, the content of information should match decision makers' needs and requirements. Although the availability of various information sources on sustainable materials is increasing, researchers have not agreed upon a clear designation, often leading to imprecise definition of the term and its usage. This paper seeks to address these issues.

This study attempts to understand sustainability by concentrating on how this term is reflected in construction materials' images and perceived by design and construction students and practitioners. A measurement instrument is developed based on a literature review and further tested with web‐based evaluation of brick to measure user‐based assessment of product sustainability.

Results of exploratory factor analysis are used to refine the instrument and indicate the main sustainability factors which may be used as guidelines for information developers to present suitable information in materials' databases.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study how perceptions may affect decision making to increase the understanding of issues affecting knowledge in product sustainability and awareness of sustainable materials.

Written communication differences across cultures can set the tone for effective or disastrous business relationships. Although English has been the go-to language in business, managers from different countries can significantly differ in how they convey the firms' information. This study explored these differences by examining the documentation presented by foreign corporations as part of their initial public offering (IPO) in the USA, particularly Chinese firms.

This work examined cultural-related differences in written communications by looking at foreign corporations' descriptions of their strengths, strategies and challenges included in F-1 documents submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of the IPO process. The sample consisted of 97 American depositary receipts (ADRs) identified in the Bank of New York Mellon's ADR directory from 2003 to 2015.

This study found that Chinese firms significantly differ from other countries' firms in depicting their strengths, strategies and challenges.

Limitations have to do with the sample size. Future research may address this by considering other depositary markets, not just the USA.

The results will be significant for potential ADRs investors; they must be conscious of these differences in the written documentation submitted by Chinese firms compared to other foreign firms. The market should also be aware of these differences, as the Chinese seem less open to sharing information about the under spinning of their operations and financial prospects.