A knowledge based system for valuing variations in civil engineering works: a user centred approach

There has been much evidence that valuing variations in construction projects can lead to conflicts and disputes leading to loss of time, efficiency, and productivity. One of the reasons for these conflicts and disputes concerns the subjectivity of the project stakeholders involved in the process. One way to minimise this is to capture and collate the knowledge and perceptions of the different parties involved in order to develop a robust mechanism for valuing variations. Focusing on the development of such a mechanism, the development of a Knowledge Based System (KBS) for valuing variations in civil engineering work is described. Evaluation of the KBS involved demonstration to practitioners in the construction industry to support the contents of the knowledge base and perceived usability and acceptance of the system. Results support the novelty, contents, usability, and acceptance of the system, and also identify further potential developments of the KBS

Usability evaluation of a virtual museum interface

The Augmented Representation of Cultural Objects (ARCO) system provides software and interface tools to museum curators to develop virtual museum exhibitions, as well as a virtual environment for museum visitors over the World Wide Web or in informative kiosks. The main purpose of the system is to offer an enhanced educative and entertaining experience to virtual museum visitors. In order to assess the usability of the system, two approaches have been employed: a questionnaire based survey and a Cognitive Walkthrough session. Both approaches employed expert evaluators, such as domain experts and usability experts. The result of this study shows a fair performance of the followed approach, as regards the consumed time, financial and other resources, as a great deal of usability problems has been uncovered and many aspects of the system have been investigated. The knowledge gathered aims at creating a conceptual framework for diagnose usability problems in systems in the area of Virtual Cultural Heritage

Actual and Imagined Movement in BCI Gaming

Most research on Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) focuses\ud on developing ways of expression for disabled people who are\ud not able to communicate through other means. Recently it has been\ud shown that BCI can also be used in games to give users a richer experience\ud and new ways to interact with a computer or game console.\ud This paper describes research conducted to find out what the differences\ud are between using actual and imagined movement as modalities\ud in a BCI game. Results show that there are significant differences\ud in user experience and that actual movement is a more robust way of\ud communicating through a BCI

Using software visualization technology to help genetic algorithm designers

This work is part of a three year PhD project to examine how Software Visualization(SV) can be applied to support the design and construction of Genetic Algorithms (GAs). A user survey carried out at the start of this project identified a set of key system features required by GA users. A visualization system embodying these features was then designed and a prototype built. This paper describes what genetic algorithms are and how they can be applied. It then reviews some of the survey results and their impact on the design of the visualization system. The paper concludes with an exploration of how the resulting prototype may be evaluated

A framework for introducing the private finance initiative in Brunei Darussalam construction industry.

The Private Finance Initiative (PFI) is a common, and sometimes preferred, approach to funding public projects without immediate recourse to the public purse, in the construction industry in developed countries throughout the world. It is, also, increasingly gaining popularity among developing countries. Brunei Darussalam is a developing country located on the northern coast of the island of Borneo in South East Asia with an interest in exploring how it can effectively employ the PFI approach to project finance in its construction industry. Against this background, a comprehensive desk study was undertaken together with an analysis of the relevant processes of government in Brunei Darussalam and a framework developed to facilitate the smooth introduction of PFI in the country’s construction industry. The framework was built around four main dimensions: organisation, training, participation and implementation. The framework was evaluated through a survey of managerial level civil servants in Brunei Darussalam’s Ministry of Development. The framework was found to be easy to understand, comprehensive, consistent with government processes and acceptable at all relevant Ministry levels. The framework provides a useful starting point on Brunei Darussalam’s journey towards effective implementation of PFI in its construction industry

Architectural Design Quality in Local Authority Private Finance Initiative Projects

Since the 1990s, when the Private Finance Initiative was developed as the primary method for delivering major public capital projects, there has been concern about the quality of many of the products. Initially, it was the architectural community that raised doubts, but it has subsequently been joined by user groups. As the contractual period is over 30 years, there are issues such as ongoing maintenance, facilities management and operational factors, that need to be balanced with design quality. This paper will report on a research project being carried out with a metropolitan local authority in England, which is replacing its entire sheltered housing stock in one Private Finance Initiative project. The principal aim of the local authority is that it should receive these buildings as assets, rather than liabilities at the end of the 30 year period. The research work to date has been based on two stages of a three stage selection of the preferred bidder from the original six consortia. The aims of this paper are to review the Private Finance Initiative management processes in relation to architectural design quality at each of the selection stages, including the generation and application of the design assessment criteria, and the role of user groups; and evaluate the outcomes against the objectives of maximising design quality within workable financial models. The methodology is that the researcher is based in the local authority project team, and has therefore been able to use participant observation techniques in the management processes, which include competitive dialogue and user consultation. The design assessment criteria were developed from the academic literature and refined at each selection stage. A comparative analysis of the design assessment criteria with intermediate and final designs, will assist in identifying the status of design quality in the selection of the preferred bidder

Enhancing knowledge management in online collaborative learning

This study aims to explore two crucial aspects of collaborative work and learning: on the one hand, the importance of enabling collaborative learning applications to capture and structure the information generated by group activity and, on the other hand, to extract the relevant knowledge in order to provide learners and tutors with efficient awareness, feedback and support as regards group performance and collaboration. To this end, in this paper we first propose a conceptual model for data analysis and management that identifies and classifies the many kinds of indicators that describe collaboration and learning into high-level aspects of collaboration. Then, we provide a computational platform that, at a first step, collects and classifies both the event information generated asynchronously from the users' actions and the labeled dialogues from the synchronous collaboration according to these indicators. This information is then analyzed in next steps to eventually extract and present to participants the relevant knowledge about the collaboration. The ultimate aim of this platform is to efficiently embed information and knowledge into collaborative learning applications. We eventually suggest a generalization of our approach to be used in diverse collaborative learning situations and domains