Architectural Information Modelling for Virtual Heritage Application

In today’s AEC industry (Architecture, Engineering and Construction industry), there has been a vast evolution in the usage of information and communication technology (ICT) for describing and managing construction projects. During the past years this led to the elaboration of the technique Building Information Modelling or BIM for describing buildings and building information according to their different composing elements. One of the major advantages in this BIM approach is the possibility to use this building information for calculation, simulation and analysis in related, more dedicated ICT applications. Starting from the building information model, these applications are accessible through an interoperability language, namely the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), elaborated by the International Alliance for Interoperability or IAI. This paper proposes the development of an approach similar to BIM, namely Architectural Information Modelling (AIM), which describes more theoretical and historical building knowledge instead of the explicit and component-based descriptions inside BIM. It illustrates several possible advantages of this AIM approach for application in building documentation for virtual heritage, combined with possible historical analysis tools. It also makes a short comparison of this technique with procedural methods, a similar technique that is gaining much interest during the past few years in the domain of virtual heritage. Finally, this paper proposes future research ambitions and some conclusions of this first, conceptual research about an architectural information modelling approach

Modeling of the Time Structure of Construction Processes Using Neural Networks

The aim of this research is to develop a meth­odology for calculating the standard time using neural networks. The paper presents research questions and proposes a methodology. In addition, the methods used to calculate the standard time in the Czech Republic and in other parts of the world are presented, and the basics of the mathematics of neural networks are shortly explained. The paper also provides an example that represents a simple application of a neural network. This example is designed to confirm some assumptions and to arrive at the basic conclusions regarding the operation of models created using neural networks