Computer Vision for Construction Progress Monitoring: A Real-Time Object Detection Approach

Construction progress monitoring (CPM) is essential for effective project management, ensuring on-time and on-budget delivery. Traditional CPM methods often rely on manual inspection and reporting, which are time-consuming and prone to errors. This paper proposes a novel approach for automated CPM using state-of-the-art object detection algorithms. The proposed method leverages e.g. YOLOv8's real-time capabilities and high accuracy to identify and track construction elements within site images and videos. A dataset was created, consisting of various building elements and annotated with relevant objects for training and validation. The performance of the proposed approach was evaluated using standard metrics, such as precision, recall, and F1-score, demonstrating significant improvement over existing methods. The integration of Computer Vision into CPM provides stakeholders with reliable, efficient, and cost-effective means to monitor project progress, facilitating timely decision-making and ultimately contributing to the successful completion of construction projects.Comment: 15 Page

CREAMINKA: An Intelligent Ecosystem for Supporting Management and Information Discovery in Research and Innovation Fields in Universities

This chapter presents a new proposal for supporting the management of research processes in universities and higher education centers. To this aim, the authors have developed a comprehensive ecosystem that implements a knowledge model that addresses three innovative aspects of research: (i) acceleration of knowledge production, (ii) research valorization and (iii) discovery of improbable peers. The ecosystem relies on ontologies and intelligent modules and is able to automatically retrieve information of major scientific databases such as SCOPUS and Science Direct to infer new information. Currently, the system is able to provide guidelines to create improbable research peers as well as automatically generate resilience graphics and reports from more than 17,000 tuples of the ontological database. In this work, the authors describe in detail an important aspect of support systems for research management in higher education: the development and valorization of competences of students collaborating in research process and startUPS of universities. Furthermore, a knowledge model of entrepreneurship (startUPS) as well as an analyzer of general and specific competences based on data mining processes is presented

Leveraging knowledge for innovation in collaborative networks: 10th IFIP WG 5.5 Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises, PRO-VE 2009, Thessaloniki, Greece, October 7-9, 2009: Proceedings

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th IFIP WG 5.5 Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises, PRO-VE 2009, held in Thessaloniki, Greece, in October 2009. The 84 revised papers were selected from numerous submissions. They are organized in topical sections on co-innovation in collaborative networks; collaboration patterns; needs and practices; collaboration in supply chains; teams and collaboration; VO breeding environments modeling; modeling and managing competencies; knowledge management in collaboration; partners selection; e-procurement and collaborative procurement; trust and soft issues in collaboration; processes and decision; management aspects in collaborative networks; performance management; agile business models; service-based systems; formal methods; socio-technical issues in collaboration; collaborative work environments; collaborative networks for active ageing; and collaborative educational networks

Entterritorialer Terrorismus

In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird versucht, die Transnationalisierung von terroristischen Organisationen am Beispiel der Al Qaida zu analysieren. Weiters wird das global agierende Netzwerk, das sich mit Hilfe der Al Qaida gebildet hat, veranschaulicht. Die Arbeit befasst sich darüber hinaus mit den möglichen Ursachen, die dazu führen können, dass Individuen sich terroristischen Organisationen anschließen bzw. zeigen Faktoren auf, die dies begünstigen.These diploma thesis describes the transnationalization of terrorist organizations analyzing the example of Al Qaeda. Furthermore this thesis wants to illustrate that the global network of terrorism has been formed by Al Qaeda. The paper also focuses on the possible causes that may drive individuls to join terrorist organizations or to show the factors that are influencing their decision

C-EMO: A Modeling Framework for Collaborative Network Emotions

Recent research in the area of collaborative networks is focusing on the social and organizational complexity of collaboration environments as a way to prevent technological failures and consequently contribute for the collaborative network’s sustainability. One direction is moving towards the need to provide “human-tech” friendly systems with cognitive models of human factors such as stress, emotion, trust, leadership, expertise or decision-making ability. In this context, an emotion-based system is being proposed with this thesis in order to bring another approach to avoid collaboration network’s failures and help in the management of conflicts. This approach, which is expected to improve the performance of existing CNs, adopts some of the models developed in the human psychology, sociology and affective computing areas. The underlying idea is to “borrow” the concept of human-emotion and apply it into the context of CNs, giving the CN players the ability to “feel emotions”. Therefore, this thesis contributes with a modeling framework that conceptualizes the notion of “emotion” in CNs and a methodology approach based on system dynamics and agent-based techniques that estimates the CN player’s “emotional states” giving support to decision-making processes. Aiming at demonstrating the appropriateness of the proposed framework a simulation prototype was implemented and a validation approach was proposed consisting of simulation of scenarios, qualitative assessment and validation by research community peers.Recentemente a área de investigação das redes colaborativas tem vindo a debruçar-se na complexidade social e organizacional em ambientes colaborativos e como pode ser usada para prevenir falhas tecnológicas e consequentemente contribuir para redes colaborativas sustentáveis. Uma das direcções de estudo assenta na necessidade de fornecer sistemas amigáveis “humano-tecnológicos” com modelos cognitivos de factores humanos como o stress, emoção, confiança, liderança ou capacidade de tomada de decisão. É neste contexto que esta tese propõe um sistema baseado em emoções com o objectivo de oferecer outra aproximação para a gestão de conflitos e falhas da rede de colaboração. Esta abordagem, que pressupõe melhorar o desempenho das redes existentes, adopta alguns dos modelos desenvolvidos nas áreas da psicologia humana, sociologia e affective computing. A ideia que está subjacente é a de “pedir emprestado” o conceito de emoção humana e aplicá-lo no contexto das redes colaborativas, dando aos seus intervenientes a capacidade de “sentir emoções”. Assim, esta tese contribui com uma framework de modelação que conceptualiza a noção de “emoção” em redes colaborativas e com uma aproximação de metodologia sustentada em sistemas dinâmicos e baseada em agentes que estimam os “estados emocionais” dos participantes e da própria rede colaborativa. De forma a demonstrar o nível de adequabilidade da framework de modelação proposta, foi implementado um protótipo de simulação e foi proposta uma abordagem de validação consistindo em simulação de cenários, avaliação qualitativa e validação pelos pares da comunidade científica

Competenze per il cambiamento organizzativo: Teorie, Metodi, Opportunità

In globalized markets, characterized by increasing uncertainty and highly dynamic competition, people have become, a crucial asset in order to support organizational change and competitiveness of companies. The increasing need of flexibility lead firms to the abandonment of “old” HRM systems, seen as too “bureaucratic” and inadequate to manage complex, rapidly evolving markets. Traditional job analysis practices, based on rigid tasks definitions and procedures, were progressively replaced by HR practices based on elements such as workers’ professionalism, creativity, reliability, knowledge, skills; in one word: on people’s competencies. The management of competencies has become a key challenge. Despite the many ambiguities and misunderstandings surrounding the debate on competencies, the development of Competency Based Human Resource System (CBHRS) seem to offer an opportunity to respond quickly and effectively to the current challenges that all kinds of organizations are facing. In this work we analyze and discuss the relationship between the “competency framework” and the issue of organizational change. Our hypothesis is that HR systems, based on the most diffused competency modeling practices, offer limited possibilities, for enacting significant – and not merely rhetorical – organizational changes. Through a literature review of available contributions on the subject, we will explore the key critiques to the mainstream positivist approach. In order to find empirical support to our hypothesis, examples from three case studies will be provided in order to both illustrate the weaknesses of the mainstream approach, and to introduce an alternative approach. Finally, the role of reflective activities in the development of workers’ competence and the relevance of employee participation in workplaces analysis for supporting organizational changing are discussed

EG-ICE 2021 Workshop on Intelligent Computing in Engineering

The 28th EG-ICE International Workshop 2021 brings together international experts working at the interface between advanced computing and modern engineering challenges. Many engineering tasks require open-world resolutions to support multi-actor collaboration, coping with approximate models, providing effective engineer-computer interaction, search in multi-dimensional solution spaces, accommodating uncertainty, including specialist domain knowledge, performing sensor-data interpretation and dealing with incomplete knowledge. While results from computer science provide much initial support for resolution, adaptation is unavoidable and most importantly, feedback from addressing engineering challenges drives fundamental computer-science research. Competence and knowledge transfer goes both ways