Global Interdisciplinary Centre - Themes
The centre members have been involved in a variety of research activities across a number of themes and sectors. Current research themes include:
Digital Technologies
including BIM, collaboration, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, requirements capture and management...
Lean and Sustainable Project Management
including Lean Construction, Target Value Design, Visual Management, resilience in site safety, sustainable construction and mass customisation
Built Environment Evaluation
including user satisfaction, product-service systems, and the effects of the built environment in health
Urban Sustainability
including urban design and evaluation, resilient cities and healthy urban living
Digital Technologies
Initial members involved
- Monica Santos Salgado (BR - UFRG)
- Dayana Bastos Costa (BR - UFBA)
- Regina Ruschel (BR - UNICAMP)
- Sheyla Mara Serra (BR - UFSCar)
- Marcio Fernandes (BR - Computer Science Department - UFSCar)
- Patricia Tzortzopoulos Fazenda (UK - Huddersfield)
- Song Wu (UK - Huddersfield)
- Sergio Scheer (BR - UFPR)
Summary
Digital technologies are bringing new possibilities to the design and construction sector. Digital technologies can be used to acquire, test and validate information, supporting decision-making around the best design alternatives and supporting construction process and its management, as well as use-operation and maintenance of a building.
Techniques such as laser scanning and photogrammetry can be used with BIM (Building Information Modelling), generating increasingly intelligent and interactive models, which allow manipulation through trials in Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). However, the pace of development and advancement of the possibilities offered by digital technologies means that it is difficult for companies to incorporate such technologies in practice. There is currently a mismatch between what can be accomplished and what has been effectively used by companies.
This goes beyond the technical issues of new tools. There is a need to investigate process changes needed to support the achievement of benefits from new technologies, identifying the possible arrangements in the organisation of the design and construction teams, and the new procedures for the development of projects incorporating the functionalities offered by the digital technologies. These are, therefore, the main objectives of the research to be developed in the scope of this theme.
Main areas of work
- Collaboration in BIM based projects
- Virtual reality augmented reality
- Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
- Synergies between Lean and BIM
- IPD - Integrated Project Delivery
- Digital preservation
- Applications of UAS for safety inspection
- BIM for safety in construction
- BIM for quality (tolerance management)
Lean and Sustainable Project Management in Construction
Initial members involved
- Prof Carlos Formoso (BR - UFRGS)
- Prof Denis Grajna (BR - UNICAMP)
- Prof Jose de Paula Barros Neto (BR - UFC)
- Prof Ercilia Hirota (BR - UEL)
- Prof Lauri Koskela (UK - Huddersfield)
- Prof Mike Kagioglou (UK - Huddersfield)
- Prof Sheyla Serra (BR - UFSCar)
- Prof Aguinaldo dos Santos (BR - UFPR)
Summary
The construction industry requires significant changes to increase the productivity of its processes, create new knowledge, increase its competitiveness, as well as align it to new market trends.
Lean Construction rests on a conceptual foundation and understanding of waste that explains why projects managed on a traditional basis are so often adversarial and difficult to control. As the fundamental principle of Lean is to reduce or eliminate waste, sustainability and BIM address many aspects of waste that occur first in the design phases, and later in the construction phase. Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Lean Construction have a high potential to modify the way of producing new and retrofit buildings.
The applications of Lean and BIM in production management might involve studies related to the integration of different dimensions such as 4DBIM, 5DBIM, 6DBIM for supporting simulations related to production and cost planning control, lay out and logistic of construction site and the supply chain, cost estimation in early design stage.
Main areas of work
- Integrated project delivery systems: target value design, target costing, relational contracting, management of commitments, project supply chain management, collaborative decision making
- Safety management and resilience engineering: proactive safety performance measurement, complex systems' behaviour, emerging risks, social networking, teamwork, workforce empowerment
- Mass customisation: modularity, industrialised building systems, flexibility in use and maintenance, client interface, co-design
- Advanced lean construction: standardised work, pull production, continuous flow, visual controls and guarantees, automation, kaizen
- Sustainable construction projects: waste reduction, environmental impact of construction sites, development of sustainable suppliers, target green costing
Built Environment Evaluation
Initial members involved
- Dr Betina Tschiedel Martau (BR - UFRGS)
- Dr Elvira Lanteme (BR - IMED)
- Dr Adriana Santos (BR - UAL)
- Dr Odair Barbosa (BR - UFAL)
- Prof Patricia Tzortzopoulos Fazenda (UK - Huddersfield)
- Prof Silvio Melhado (BR - USP)
Summary
Evaluating the built environment in terms of the value generated to customers is challenging. Partly, such evaluations are done on the basis of the process of identifying requirements and benefits to users. Client requirements management is an essential activity and consists of defining, controlling and refining requirements throughout the product life cycle (Bruce and Cooper, 2000). A key task is to model requirements, i.e. to represent this information in a systematic way, so that it can be manipulated and managed (Nuseibeh and Easterbrook, 2000). The main purpose of modelling is to facilitate the visualisation, availability, verification and traceability of requirements in order to support the professionals involved in design (Soares et al., 2011).
Capturing, modelling and communicating clients' requirements play a key role in the generation of value in building projects (Parsanezhad et al., 2016). However, this is a difficult task due to e.g. (a) clients' needs in most building projects are not sufficiently investigated, processed, communicated (Li et al., 2011), and updated (Kiviniemi and Fischer, 2004); (b) little use is made of repositories of information on clients' requirements in an integrated way (Jallow et al., 2014); (c) data on user requirements are not widely available and accessed by different stakeholders (Li et al., 2011); (d) tracking requirements is usually a time consuming task in different types of projects (Jallow et al., 2014); and (e) clients' requirements often emerge throughout the various stages of a project (Shen et al., 2012).
Therefore, there is a need to deal with the complexities associated with construction projects and to propose appropriate strategies to evaluate such projects, based on the value that is produced to users and society at large.
Main areas of work
- Effects of the built environment on health outcomes
- User satisfaction
- Building performance
- Perceived value
- Design management and sustainability
Urban Sustainability
Initial members involved
- Milena Kanashiro (BR - UEL)
- Luciana Miron (BR - UFRGS)
- Alex Abiko (BR - USP)
- Odair Barbosa (BR - UFAL)
- Marcio Fabricio (BR - USP/Sao Carlos)
- Ioanni Delsante (UK - Huddersfield)
Summary and main topics
The research focuses on better urban living as a key driver for urban transformations. This vision is aligned with current research being developed within the Centre for Urban Design, Architecture and Sustainability (CUDAS - Huddersfield - UK). Considering the background of the partners for this topic, who have expertise on statistics, new technologies and software, not only for evaluating built environment but also for associating social analysis, some of the following research topics are investigated:
- Urban Sustainability Evaluation: Use of interdisciplinary methodologies for evaluating urban sustainability, wellbeing and health urban living, including: urban quality indicators, urban sustainability indicators, perceived value in urban space, urban mobility, urban resilience, evaluation of public lighting systems
- Social Housing and Urban Built Environment: Development of strategies to analyse statistically social issues and built environment, focusing on Social Housing Projects. Main topics: numerical matrices, fuzzy logic, post-occupancy evaluation
- Production and Management of Urban Space: the production of urban space as well as the use management of this space has become increasingly complex, which requires innovative approaches to solve problems. Main topics: Smart cities, internet of things, management of urban space