Information retrieval for the management of civil engineering design content

As more and more civil engineering work becomes digital, the amount of information that engineers need to handle is growing exponentially. While this presents opportunities for reusing designs and increasing productivity, there remains the challenging of navigating around huge repositories of digital content. This presentation outlines a research line spanning about one decade in Information Retrieval to manage civil engineering design content, such as drawings and building models. The field of Information Retrieval is concerned with systems that help users to fulfil their information needs. Common examples of Information Retrieval systems include web search engines and library catalogues. The basic aim of the research presented here can therefore be expressed informally as “to develop search engines for civil engineering design content”. However, in the case of civil engineering applications of Information Retrieval, understanding retrieved information is probably more informant than finding the information in the first place. The emergence of Building Information Models in recent years adds some urgency to this line of research

BIM search engine: Exploiting interrelations between objects when assessing relevance

An increasing amount of information is packed into Building Information Models (BIMs), with the 3D geometry intended to serve as a central index leading to other information. The Three-Dimensional Information Retrieval (3DIR) project investigated information retrieval from such environments, with the aim of developing a search engine for searching and retrieving information from a building model. Here, the 3D model of the building can be exploited to formulate queries, compute the relevance of information items to a given query, and visualize search results. The focus of this paper is the computing of relevance. Literature in BIM/CAD and information retrieval was reviewed as a precursor to developing the search engine. Based on earlier research which identified the needs and aspirations of the users of BIMs, a graph theoretic formulation is proposed here to inform the emerging retrieval mechanisms of a BIM search engine. This formulation distinguishes between 3D and textual information in the model (the vertices in the graph), and between different types of relationships linking model objects (the edges in the graph). The value is tested of exploiting a 3D object’s relations to other 3D objects when assessing that object’s relevance to a query. For example, if a user is searching for “glazing door internal wall”, such a holistic/contextual search would rate the relevance of a “glazing panel” object more highly if it was touching “internal wall” or “door” objects. This notion was tested using an Autodesk Revit model from an architectural industry partner, augmented with the 3DIR search toolset. The model contained just under 7k 3D elements. Relationships between the objects were either hosting, touching or intersecting relationships. A comparison of the retrieval performance for a handful of test queries with and without this holistic/contextual search function does not decisively highlight the benefit but demonstrates the promise of this approach particularly for more complex multiple search term queries, as well as the value of the underlying graph theoretic formulation for studying and developing such systems

The use of virtual learning environments and their impact on academic performance

Links have been reported in the literature between lecture attendance and academic performance. However, the effect of a student’s use of a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) on their academic performance is not an area which has been the subject of extensive research, but is likely of much interest both to students and to the lecturers who develop resources for a VLE. This paper presents an examination of two modules from the 2010-2011 final year BEng Civil Engineering course at Loughborough University. Data from the students’ academic performance is combined with usage logs of the VLE to search for relationships. Although correlations were generally weak, it was observed that the correlation was slightly stronger for the coursework only module than for the module with an exam assessment. It was also noted that the trend was more obvious for male students than for females, although female students were a small minority in the modules studied

Benefits and barriers of building information modelling

Building Information Modelling (BIM) as a powerful set of design management’s tool has been highlighted by the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. BIM has significant advantages over the entire building lifecycle, particularly design but also construction and facility management. The full impact of BIM on the evolution of design tools in the AEC industry has recently become a topical research area. This paper opens with a literature review which outlines the historical evolution of design tools. The literature review describes the benefits of BIM claimed by its proponents as well as barriers to its implementation. Next, the paper describes questionnaire data from a survey of about 70 individuals from the AEC industry on BIM adoption, perceived benefits, and perceived barriers. The questionnaire is intended to determine professional opinions about BIM and whether companies adopt BIM tools or plan to adopt this technology. It is found that BIM adoption is much higher in the US than in the rest of the world. Still, the majority of companies were neither currently using BIM technology, nor did they have any plans to use BIM in the future. The paper concludes that improvements are still needed in the development of BIM technology. Secondly, the paper concludes that complete adoption of the technology by the AEC industry will take a few more years

The advantages of information management through building information modelling

As building information modelling (BIM) is positioned by governments and construction professionals as a solution to the problems in the construction industry, research is needed into the benefits BIM actually confers. The focus here is on the effectiveness of BIM as a medium for communicating information within a construction team. A case study of an offsite precast concrete fabrication facility was conducted. At the time of the study, the facility was supplying precast units for four public sector projects, and using four information management systems: e-mail, a construction project extranet tool, an Enterprise Resource Planning system and a new BIM-based system. The flow of information through the four media was measured and visualized as the projects progressed. This quantitative measurement of information flow was combined with qualitative data from interviews with facility staff. It was found that the introduction of the BIM-based system diverted information flow through the building model and away from the extranet system. The use of e-mail was largely unaffected. BIM allowed considerably more accurate, on-time and appropriate exchange of information. It is concluded it is possible to quantify some of the benefits of BIM to information management. This research paves the way for future research into the management of more construction project information linked more closely to building models

Information retrieval from civil engineering repositories: the importance of context and granularity

Information about the design and construction of buildings can be structured in a particular way. This is especially correct given the increasing complexity of building product models and the emergence of building information models with project documents linked to them. In addition, engineers usually have distinct information needs. Research shows that engineers working with building information models place particular importance on the understanding of retrieved content before using it or applying it and that exploration of context is essential for this understanding. Both these factors (the nature of engineering content and the information needs of engineers) make general information retrieval techniques for computing relevance and visualizing search results less applicable in civil engineering information retrieval systems. This paper argues that granularity is a fundamental concept that needs to be considered when measuring relevance and visualizing search results in information retrieval systems for repositories of building design and construction content. It is hypothesized that the design of systems with careful regard for granularity would improve engineers’ relevance judgment behavior. To test this hypothesis, a prototype system, called CoMem-XML, was developed and evaluated in terms of the time needed for users to find relevant information, the accuracy of their relevance judgment, and their subjective satisfaction with the prototype. A user study was conducted in which test subjects were asked to complete tasks by using various forms of the prototype, to complete a satisfaction questionnaire, and to be interviewed. The findings show that users perform better and are more satisfied when the search result interface of the CoMem-XML system presents only relevant information in context. On the other hand, interfaces that present the retrieved information out of context (i.e., without highlighting its position in the parts hierarchy) are less effective for participants to judge relevance

Effective visualisation of design versions : visual storytelling for design reuse

Improving and supporting the process of design knowledge reuse can increase productivity, improve the quality of designs and lead to corporate competitive advantage. Whereas internal knowledge reuse (reusing knowledge from one’s personal memory or experiences) is very effective, external knowledge reuse (reusing knowledge from an external digital or paper archive) often fails. This paper studies the value of the storytelling paradigm in supporting reuse from an external repository. Based on a formalisation of the internal reuse process from ethnographic studies, a prototype system, CoMem (Corporate Memory) is presented, which supports the reuse process, specifically the steps of finding and understanding reusable items. This paper focuses on the ability of designers to understand designs that are found in corporate repositories. It is argued that in order to understand and reuse a found design, the designer needs to see the evolution of that design during the original design process. An Evolution History Explorer module of the CoMem system is presented that uses a storytelling metaphor and lays out versions visually side-by-side. A formal user evaluation of CoMem supports the hypotheses that (1) exploring the evolution of a design improves the reuse process, and (2) that visual storytelling is an effective paradigm for supporting that exploration

ReStore: In-Memory REplicated STORagE for Rapid Recovery in Fault-Tolerant Algorithms

Fault-tolerant distributed applications require mechanisms to recover data lost via a process failure. On modern cluster systems it is typically impractical to request replacement resources after such a failure. Therefore, applications have to continue working with the remaining resources. This requires redistributing the workload and that the non-failed processes reload data. We present an algorithmic framework and its C++ library implementation ReStore for MPI programs that enables recovery of data after process failures. By storing all required data in memory via an appropriate data distribution and replication, recovery is substantially faster than with standard checkpointing schemes that rely on a parallel file system. As the application developer can specify which data to load, we also support shrinking recovery instead of recovery using spare compute nodes. We evaluate ReStore in both controlled, isolated environments and real applications. Our experiments show loading times of lost input data in the range of milliseconds on up to 24576 processors and a substantial speedup of the recovery time for the fault-tolerant version of a widely used bioinformatics application