BIM-based Generative Modular Housing Design and Implications for Post-Disaster Housing Recovery

The adverse social and financial impacts of catastrophic disasters are increasing as population centers grow. After disastrous events, the government agencies must respond to post-disaster housing issues quickly and efficiently and provide sufficient resources for the reconstruction of destroyed and damaged houses for full rehabilitation. However, post-disaster housing reconstruction is a highly complex process because of the large number of projects, shortage of resources, and heavy pressure for delivery of the projects after a disastrous event. This complexity and lack of an inconsistent, systematic approach for planning lead to an ad-hoc decision-making process and inefficient recovery. This research explored modular construction as a highly time-efficient approach to tackle the abovementioned challenges and facilitate the housing reconstruction process. Firstly, this research investigated the feasibility of using the modular construction method for rapid post-disaster housing reconstruction through a targeted literature review and survey of subject matter experts to broaden the understanding of modular construction-based post-disaster housing reconstruction, benefits, and barriers. Second, this research focused on improving the design and pre-planning phase of modular construction that can facilitate the successful implementation of modular construction in a post-disaster situation. To this end, a BIM-based generative modular housing design system was developed by using Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) to automate the entire design process by incorporating manufacturing and construction constraints to fit the needs of the modular construction method. The framework was further extended by developing an optimization model to optimize the modularization strategy in the early design phase which was capable of reflecting the entire multi-stage process of modular construction (production, transportation, and assembly), and considering both individual project’s requirements and post-disaster housing reconstruction portfolio’s requirements. The outcomes of this study fit the MC industry that may be used by designers and modular housing companies looking to automate their design process. It is also expected to provide critical benchmarks for planners, decision-makers, and community developers to facilitate their decision-making process on considering modular construction as an efficient way for mass post-disaster housing reconstruction and addressing communities’ housing needs following a disastrous event

An ERP Application In A Non-Profit Organization: Turkish Red Crescent Society

Although we are more familiar to use of ERP systems in manufacturing sector, in recent years, they have wide application areas in service sector. This is because of that ERP systems facilitate communication, management, and monitoring of enterprises. In non-profit organizations, which have a special situation in service sector, there are some special needs besides the standard structure. In this study, the implementations of ERP systems in service sector, especially in non-profit organizations are examined. The proposed organization is Turkish Red Crescent Society. Firstly, the Red Crescent Society’s activities and processes have been analyzed. The ERP project stages are described. In addition to the standard ERP modules, especially the modules concerning with the Red Crescent such as Disaster Preparedness and Response, Blood Services, Youth and Volunteer services, Cash and in-kind relief Services and their structures, operations and integrations with other modules are described. At the end of the study, some suggestions are offered to reach the ideal solution

"Last-Mile" preparation for a potential disaster

Extreme natural events, like e.g. tsunamis or earthquakes, regularly lead to catastrophes with dramatic consequences. In recent years natural disasters caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, destruction of infrastructure, disruption of economic activity and loss of billions of dollars worth of property and thus revealed considerable deficits hindering their effective management: Needs for stakeholders, decision-makers as well as for persons concerned include systematic risk identification and evaluation, a way to assess countermeasures, awareness raising and decision support systems to be employed before, during and after crisis situations. The overall goal of this study focuses on interdisciplinary integration of various scientific disciplines to contribute to a tsunami early warning information system. In comparison to most studies our focus is on high-end geometric and thematic analysis to meet the requirements of small-scale, heterogeneous and complex coastal urban systems. Data, methods and results from engineering, remote sensing and social sciences are interlinked and provide comprehensive information for disaster risk assessment, management and reduction. In detail, we combine inundation modeling, urban morphology analysis, population assessment, socio-economic analysis of the population and evacuation modeling. The interdisciplinary results eventually lead to recommendations for mitigation strategies in the fields of spatial planning or coping capacity

Development and validation of a disaster management metamodel (DMM)

Disaster Management (DM) is a diffused area of knowledge. It has many complex features interconnecting the physical and the social views of the world. Many international and national bodies create knowledge models to allow knowledge sharing and effective DM activities. But these are often narrow in focus and deal with specified disaster types. We analyze thirty such models to uncover that many DM activities are actually common even when the events vary. We then create a unified view of DM in the form of a metamodel. We apply a metamodelling process to ensure that this metamodel is complete and consistent. We validate it and present a representational layer to unify and share knowledge as well as combine and match different DM activities according to different disaster situations

Integration of decision support systems to improve decision support performance

Decision support system (DSS) is a well-established research and development area. Traditional isolated, stand-alone DSS has been recently facing new challenges. In order to improve the performance of DSS to meet the challenges, research has been actively carried out to develop integrated decision support systems (IDSS). This paper reviews the current research efforts with regard to the development of IDSS. The focus of the paper is on the integration aspect for IDSS through multiple perspectives, and the technologies that support this integration. More than 100 papers and software systems are discussed. Current research efforts and the development status of IDSS are explained, compared and classified. In addition, future trends and challenges in integration are outlined. The paper concludes that by addressing integration, better support will be provided to decision makers, with the expectation of both better decisions and improved decision making processes

Synergy between biology and systems resilience

Resilient systems have the ability to endure and successfully recover from disturbances by identifying problems and mobilizing the available resources to cope with the disturbance. Resiliency lets a system recover from disruptions, variations, and a degradation of expected working conditions. Biological systems are resilient. Immune systems are highly adaptive and scalable, with the ability to cope with multiple data sources, fuse information together, makes decisions, have multiple interacting agents, operate in a distributed manner over a multiple scales, and have a memory structure to facilitate learning. Ecosystems are resilient since they have the capacity to absorb disturbance and are able to tolerate the disturbances. Ants build colonies that are dispersed, modular, fine grained, and standardized in design, yet they manage to forage intelligently for food and also organize collective defenses by the property of resilience. Are there any rules that we can identify to explain the resilience in these systems? The answer is yes. In insect colonies, rules determine the division of labor and how individual insects act towards each other and respond to different environmental possibilities. It is possible to group these rules based on attributes. These attributes are distributability, redundancy, adaptability, flexibility, interoperability, and diversity. It is also possible to incorporate these rules into engineering systems in their design to make them resilient. It is also possible to develop a qualitative model to generate resilience heuristics for engineering system based on a given attribute. The rules seen in nature and those of an engineering system are integrated to incorporate the desired characteristics for system resilience. The qualitative model for systems resilience will be able to generate system resilience heuristics. This model is simple and it can be applied to any system by using attribute based heuristics that are domain dependent. It also provides basic foundation for building computational models for designing resilient system architectures. This model was tested on recent catastrophes like the Mumbai terror attack and hurricane Katrina. With the disturbances surrounding the current world this resilience model based on heuristics will help a system to deal with crisis and still function in the best way possible by depending mainly on internal variables within the system --Abstract, page iii

The Evolution of ICT in the Public Safety domain: Challenges and Opportunities

The services provided by public safety organizations bring value to society by creating a stable and secure environment. These services include protection to people environment and properties and they address a large number of threats both natural and man-made, acts of terrorism, technological, radiological or environmental accidents. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have always played an important role in the public safety domain. The capability of exchanging information (e.g., voice or data) is essential to improve the coordination of public safety officers during an emergency crisis. Wireless communications are particularly important in field operations to support the mobility of first responders. Operational and business requirements in the public safety domain are significantly different from the commercial domain. Innovative ICT concepts and technologies may not be directly applicable to the public safety domain or they need to be customized to fit specific requirements (e.g., security). This paper will identify the most significant challenges in the Public Safey domain, the main technical enablers and the opportunities provided by new ICT technologies. In particular, this paper focuses on the lack of interoperability and broadband connectivity for public safety organizations. The potential evolution paths for ICT in the public safety domain will also be described.JRC.G.6-Security technology assessmen

Public-Private Health Law: Multiple Directions in Public Health

No public law is more public than public health law. Its defining subject is the use of state power to control and prevent death and disease. Its primary institutions are a cluster of state actors, the governmental agencies that comprise the American public health system.,, The system grew out of the eighteenth century boards of health that produced the beginnings of administrative law. Public health law is grounded on statutory provisions that authorize various forms of state action and on judicial decisions that resolve constitutional challenges to those actions

I-Rescue: A Coalition Based System to Support Disaster Relief Operations

The University of Edinburgh and research sponsors are authorised to reproduce and distribute reprints and on-line copies for their purposes notwithstanding any copyright annotation hereon. The views and conclusions contained herein are the author’s and shouldn’t be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of other parties.I-Rescue is a research programme that aims to develop knowledge-based tools for disaster relief domains. One important aspect of the I-Rescue development is to highlight the requirements regarding the collaborative activities of planning and execution, considering a hierarchical structure of decision-making and a mixed initiative style of interaction between users and systems. This paper discusses the design and implementation of I-Rescue and its use in a search and rescue domain where joint users, assisted by customised agents, are able to perform complementary tasks

Paths to Innovation in Supply Chains: The Landscape of Future Research

This chapter presents a Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda for supply chain and it is the result of an intensive work jointly performed involving a wide network of stakeholders from discrete manufacturing, process industry and logistics sector to put forward a vision to strengthen European Supply Chains for the next decade. The work is based on matching visions from literature and from experts with several iterations between desk research and workshops, focus groups and interviews. The result is a detailed analysis of the supply chain strategies identified as most relevant for the next years and definition of the related research and innovation topics as future developments and steps for the full implementation of the strategies, thus proposing innovative and cutting-edge actions to be implemented based on technological development and organisational change