Implementing citizen centric technology in developing smart cities: a model for predicting the acceptance of urban technologies

Local urban identity, culture and knowledge ecosystems continue to shape innovative capacity and technological acceptance despite global exchange in talent, trade and technology. This has important implications for the development and implementation of future smart cities. The last two decades of smart city research has presented smart cities as a generic, universal aspiration without taking into consideration such local cultural differences. Future smart cities have several tasks ahead of them. The first is selecting culturally appropriate technologies from the vast array of global technologies now on offer. The second task is adapting such technology and the third task is in managing the acceptance of such technology. The above process is not linear but must be iterative, with technology acceptance considered simultaneously alongside the selection and adoption of such technologies. This study integrates the substantial literature on Technology Acceptance Modelling into the smart city discourse to begin to address this need. It also further develops our understanding of technology acceptance using the Structural Equation Modelling Method. A new synthetic model is proposed consisting of twelve factors, which have been selected based on a targeted literature review. A survey-based method was used to develop and cross-validate the model sampling a diverse population from various Iranian cities. The result of the above process is a new model named the Urban Services Technology Acceptance Model (USTAM). The validated model includes key factors related to technology such as Self-Efficacy, Operation, Work Facilitation, Relative Advantage and Compatibility. The USTAM is a useful tool for the prediction of technology acceptance in the implementation of smart cities. The final model is significant for various reasons. Firstly, it is significant for ensuring that selected technology is appropriate to local cultural contexts. Secondly it is significant to ensure that integration of technologies at metropolitan scales is managed effectively. The final significant reason is that it is well-suited to helping developing economies participate in the smart city boom in a resource efficient manner. The proposed model can potentially help cities achieve this by guiding them in the selection of appropriate technologies. The proposed model is developed with specific reference to Iran and Bangladesh. The authors suggest that the model is useful for cities of different cultural identities and characteristics, who wish to initiate their own distinctive smart city strategies.Samad M.E. Sepasgozar, Scott Hawken, Sharifeh Sargolzaei, Mona Foroozanf

Application of differential transformation method (DTM) for heat and mass transfer in a porous channel

In the present paper a differential transformation method (DTM) is used to obtain the solution of momentum and heat transfer equations of non-Newtonian fluid flow in an axisymmetric channel with porous wall. The comparison between the results from the differential transformation method and numerical method are in well agreement which proofs the capability of this method for solving such problems. After this validity, results are investigated for the velocity and temperature for various values of Reynolds number, Prandtl number and power law index

Information asymmetries between vendors and customers in the advanced construction technology diffusion process

Purpose: Advanced construction technologies (ACTs) are transforming infrastructure projects, yet there has been little research into and theorization of the process by which these innovations are diffused. The purpose of this paper is to address this paucity of research by exploring the problems of information asymmetries between vendors and customers in the ACT diffusion process. Specifically, the paper explores whether information asymmetries exist between vendors and customers in the ACT diffusion process and what forms they take. Design/methodology/approach: A structured survey of 153 vendors and customers of advanced construction technologies was undertaken across three international ACT exhibitions in Australia. Findings: By comparing the perspectives of both customers and vendors across 15 technology diffusion process variables using importance-performance analysis and principal component analysis, significant differences are found between vendors’ and customers’ perceptions of how effectively information flows in the ACT diffusion process. The results show that vendors are significantly more optimistic than customers about information asymmetries on a wide range of diffusion variables. They also highlight significant potential for information asymmetries to occur which can undermine the advanced technology diffusion process. Originality/value: The results provide important new conceptual and practical insights into an under-researched area, which is of increasing importance to a major industry, which is being transformed by advanced technological developments

An investigation on Virtual Information Modeling acceptance based on project management knowledge areas

In the contemporary construction management, poor project performance, cost overrun, and low-quality construction have become a central point of attention for improving project performance including information, interaction and communication management. Virtual design and building information modeling play indispensable role in improving the project performance. The aim of this study is to investigate the benefits and challenges of Virtual Information Modeling as a novel information and communication technology method on project management knowledge areas in the construction industry. Using one-sample T test with Kolmogorov-Smirnov approach, we analyzed data collected from structured questionnaire survey involving project managers working at architecture, engineering and construction industries in Tehran, Iran. The results with 64% response rate suggest that the most important benefits and challenges of using Virtual Information Modeling are related to the area of integration, and implementation of Virtual Information Modeling has significant impact on project integration management knowledge in compare with other project management knowledge areas. Thus, integration should be considered a top priority for construction companies implementing Virtual Information Modeling in their projects. Policymakers should understand that careful management of virtual information is essential for improving the performance of projects and enhancing the process efficiency

Onsite quality check for installation of prefabricated wall panels using laser scanning

Prefabricated construction has gained increasing popularity to meet the needs of rapid city development in recent years. Installation quality check is a critical task in prefabricated construction, and currently mostly still carried out manually, which is slow and ineffective. To provide an efficient and practical quality check method to replace the current manual method, this paper elaborates on an approach for checking prefabricated wall panels using laser scanning. The approach is validated in an actual case study. A common laser scanner BLK 360 is adopted to collect onsite 3D scenes after panel installation. The point clouds collected are co-roistered, classified, and segmented. Geometric parameters such as angles and distances allow for determining whether the installation meets the quality requirement. The outcome is compared with the quality check results using the conventional manual method. The results show that the panels, which need rectification, are correctly identified by the proposed approach. The major contribution of this study is determining the set of segmentation parameters to be adopted in similar quality check-up procedures. A practical and efficient quality check process is also proposed and can be readily implemented for certain prefabricated elements in many construction cases

An investigation of modern building equipment technology adoption in the Australian construction industry

Purpose: Research into the construction industry’s adoption of modern equipment technologies, such as remote-controlled trucks, excavators and drones, has been neglected in comparison to the significant body of research into the adoption of information technology in construction. Construction research has also neglected to adequately consider the important role of vendors in the innovation diffusion process, focussing mostly on the role of the customer. Set within the context of Australia’s construction industry, the purpose of this paper is to address these gaps in knowledge by exploring the role of customers and vendors in the diffusion of modern equipment technologies into the construction industry. Design/methodology/approach: Using contemporary models of innovation diffusion which move beyond the simple dualistic problem of whether innovation is supply-pushed or demand-pulled, 19 semi-structured interviews were undertaken with customers and vendors involved in two major modern equipment technology trade exhibitions in Australia. This was followed by the collection of documentary data in the form of photos, directory books, marketing material, catalogues, websites and booth and exhibition layouts to validate the proposed model and provide insights into vendor marketing strategies. These data were analysed using both content analysis and principal component analysis (PCA). Findings: According to the PCA and content analysis, vendor’s engagement in the adoption of modern equipment technologies falls into three stages that correspond to three stages in the customer’s adoption process. In the first stage, customers identify possible solutions and recognise new technologies following a previous recognition of a need. Vendors provide facilities for attracting potential customers and letting customers know that their technology exists and can help solve the customer’s problem. The second stage involves customers gaining knowledge about the details of the new technology, and vendors focusing on detailed knowledge transfer through written materials and demonstrations of the functionality of the new technology. In the third stage, customers have specific questions that they want answered to assist them in comparing different vendors and solutions. By this stage, vendors have built a close relationship with the customer and in contrast to earlier stages engage in two-way communication to help the customer’s decision process by addressing specific technical and support-related questions. Originality/value: The originality and value of this research is in addressing the lack of research in modern equipment technology adoption for building construction and the lack of data on the role of vendors in the process by developing a new empirical framework which describes the stages in the process and the ways that customers and vendors interact at each stage. The results indicate that conceptually, as the construction industry becomes more industrialised, current models of innovation adoption will need to develop to reflect this growing technological complexity and recognise that vendors and customers engage differently in the adoption process, according to the type of technology they wish to adopt

Delay causes and emerging digital tools: A novel model of delay analysis, including integrated project delivery and PMBOK

© 2019 by the authors. Delay is one of the main challenges of construction projects, and there is still much to overcome in order to reach near zero delay in all construction projects. This project aims to conduct a systematic critical review including a bibliography analysis on delay literature in construction. The main questions consider what has been learnt from a decade investigating delay causes and effects in the construction literature and what factors have been missed in the literature. This paper also presents a new and challenging question regarding how digital tools and associated technologies may prevent any delay in construction projects, which can change the research direction from delay investigations to identifying prevention factors. The paper identifies the delay dataset, including 493 papers investigating delay in construction, and establishes a specific dataset of papers focusing on delay effects and causes (DEC), including 94 selected papers covering different factors examined in over 29 countries such as Iran, India, Turkey, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Cambodia, Oman, Malaysia, Taiwan, China, Vietnam, the US, the UK, and Egypt. In addition, the paper identifies 30 critical factors with the frequency of occurrences over three times in the DEC dataset and computes their medians of ranking. This paper also discusses digital tools and methods that can be used for delay analysis and preventions, including MS Project, Oracle Primavera P6, and Open Plan by Deltek. The paper discusses the project schedule delay analysis from project management methodology perspectives. It also discusses the current method's limitations and future directions, which are based on the identification of the deficiency areas. In total, four overlooked factors are identified and suggested, including faulty data analysis, unmatched structure of the research questionnaires with new knowledge and standards [e.g., Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK)], overlooked effects of digital technologies [e.g., Digital twin, Navisworks, Building Information Model (BIM), Geographic Information System (GIS), and Integrated Project Delivery (IPD)], and ignored job-site technologies. In addition, the paper presents the DEC model for future studies, including four main key factors. These factors are resources (e.g., project budgets, labour, material, equipment, and digital tool), project context, stakeholders performance (e.g., owner/client, consultant/designer, contractor, vendor/supplier), and external factors (e.g., ground condition, site location, regulation, natural disaster), which may significantly affect delay prevention and should be concurrently considered in the future delay investigations, since they may be required for designing an effective mitigation strategy when these proof points are identified. This would significantly help to utilise digital systems to prevent time overruns in different construction contexts

Lean Practices Using Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Digital Twinning for Sustainable Construction

There is a need to apply lean approaches in construction projects. Both BIM and IoT are increasingly being used in the construction industry. However, using BIM in conjunction with IoT for sustainability purposes has not received enough attention in construction. In particular, the capability created from the combination of both technologies has not been exploited. There is a growing consensus that the future of construction operation tends to be smart and intelligent, which would be possible by a combination of both information systems and sensors. This investigation aims to find out the recent efforts of utilizing BIM for lean purposes in the last decade by critically reviewing the published literature and identifying dominant clusters of research topics. More specifically, the investigation is further developed by identifying the gaps in the literature to utilize IoT in conjunction with BIM in construction projects to facilitate applying lean techniques in a more efficient way in construction projects. A systematic review method was designed to identify scholarly papers covering both concepts “lean” and “BIM” in construction and possibilities of using IoT. A total of 48 scholarly articles selected from 26 construction journals were carefully reviewed thorough perusal. The key findings were discussed with industry practitioners. The transcriptions were analyzed employing two coding and cluster analysis techniques. The results of the cluster analysis show two main directions, including the recent practice of lean and BIM interactions and issues of lean and BIM adoption. Findings revealed a large synergy between lean and BIM in control interactions and reduction in variations, and surprisingly there are many uncovered areas in this field. The results also show that the capability of IoT is also largely not considered in recent developments. The number of papers covering both lean and BIM is very limited, and there is a large clear gap in understanding synergetic interactions of lean concepts applying in BIM and IoT in specific fields of construction such as sustainable infrastructure projects

A Systematic Content Review of Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things Applications in Smart Home

This article reviewed the state-of-the-art applications of the Internet of things (IoT) technology applied in homes for making them smart, automated, and digitalized in many respects. The literature presented various applications, systems, or methods and reported the results of using IoT, artificial intelligence (AI), and geographic information system (GIS) at homes. Because the technology has been advancing and users are experiencing IoT boom for smart built environment applications, especially smart homes and smart energy systems, it is necessary to identify the gaps, relation between current methods, and provide a coherent instruction of the whole process of designing smart homes. This article reviewed relevant papers within databases, such as Scopus, including journal papers published in between 2010 and 2019. These papers were then analyzed in terms of bibliography and content to identify more related systems, practices, and contributors. A designed systematic review method was used to identify and select the relevant papers, which were then reviewed for their content by means of coding. The presented systematic critical review focuses on systems developed and technologies used for smart homes. The main question is ”What has been learned from a decade trailing smart system developments in different fields?”. We found that there is a considerable gap in the integration of AI and IoT and the use of geospatial data in smart home development. It was also found that there is a large gap in the literature in terms of limited integrated systems for energy efficiency and aged care system development. This article would enable researchers and professionals to fully understand those gaps in IoT-based environments and suggest ways to fill the gaps while designing smart homes where users have a higher level of thermal comfort while saving energy and greenhouse gas emissions. This article also raised new challenging questions on how IoT and existing developed systems could be improved and be further developed to address other issues of energy saving, which can steer the research direction to full smart systems. This would significantly help to design fully automated assistive systems to improve quality of life and decrease energy consumption