Parisi, Fabio (2023) Automation and information approaches to support maintenance and production management in the construction industry. PhD thesis, Politecnico di Bari, Italy.
Abstract
The construction industry is a wide industrial sector ranging from the design and management of major infrastructures, such as bridges, to civil dwelling construction. It is worldwide acknowledged as a fundamental driving sector for the gross domestic product, but it is also among the less performing and delayed sectors in the adoption and exploitation of technological improvements. This digitalisation trend is spreading through the entire life cycle of the construction process, identifying a challenging approach because of the paradigm shift needed from physical to cyber-physical systems. The Industry 4.0 concept boosted this trend, specified within the sector as Construction 4.0, borrowing key enabling technologies such as Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and additive manufacturing. This thesis investigates this technological integration, focusing on the application of such enabling technologies in the construction field across different stages in the life cycle in varying infrastructure typologies. Starting from a literature investigation on holistic intelligent systems in intelligent buildings construction in a digital twin fashion, the influence and application of enabling technologies and related operative information and communications technology (ICT) tools such as Internet of Things and big data are studied from the perspective of the whole construction life cycle. The maintenance phase of major infrastructures is studied concerning structural safety and fault detection, by developing a method to detect damages in railway steel truss bridges via artificial intelligence. An innovative additive manufacturing technology for high-rise constructions is then presented, consisting of an improvement with a custom extruder of standard tower crane technology driven by an artificial intelligence agent. The thesis concludes that Construction 4.0 is still at its embryonic stage, with more advanced results obtainable for the operation and maintenance management of existing infrastructures because of the already mature approach related to sensorisation and data analysis, while innovation in the design and construction phase remains more challenging because of the need for a completely new paradigm and industrial innovations in many different fields.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor: | Fanti, Maria Pia and Mangini, Agostino Marcello |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | construction 4.0; artificial intelligence; large-scale additive manufacturing; smart construction |
| Index terms: | exploitation, intelligent system, life cycle, communications technology, tower crane, gross domestic product, industry 4.0, construction 4.0, operative, artificial intelligence, construction industry, internet, automation, design and construction, investigation, paradigm, damages, big data, intelligent building, production management, data analysis, digitalization, operation and maintenance, high-rise construction, agent, digital twin, additive manufacturing, construction process, integration |
| Subjects: | practitioner, digital engineering, economic analysis, contractual arrangements, innovation and technology management, digital technology, automation and robotics, maintenance engineering, manufacturing engineering, building construction, value management, dispute resolution, computing systems, data collection methods, project delivery, data analysis and analytics, technology adoption, artificial intelligence, management, education and knowledge transfer, design practice, information systems, industry analysis, organizational analysis |
| Topics: | Procurement, Engineering Principles, Project Management, Legal Issues, Roles and Professions, Research Practice, Business Strategy, Organizational Design, Site Management, Digital Applications, Design Practice |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here