Infrastructure Engineering - Research Publications
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ItemImproved capital procurement through increased use of quantitatively-based decisions(Department of Civil Engineering, National Taiwan University, 2008)The procurement of major capital projects always involves significant risk and uncertainties and this is one of the primary causes for the variations from expected outcomes. This paper outlines the delimitation between strategies for making complex decisions using quantitative analyses as opposed to the techniques and applications currently being used by project and construction managers. Various approaches have been developed and adopted by researchers and practitioners to improve the quality of critical project decisions to maximise benefits. Strategic frameworks and organisational hierarchies are frequently deemed as an optimal solution from the perspective of industrial participants, while numerous researchers indicate decisions with quantitative evidences, underpinned by proper choice of technique, will add additional benefits over current industrial practices. It is asserted that improved decisions can be made through the additional use of quantitative approaches. This paper reports the finding of a study that has identified where the increased use of quantitative approaches may assist project and construction managers and proposes a mechanism to confirm the potential benefits.
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ItemInterpretation of qualitative and quantitative information for project reviews: A fuzzy-based approach for OGC ™ gateway review (GR) colour code system (CCS)(Department of Civil Engineering, National Taiwan University, 2008)Independent project reviews are gaining popularity as a technique to improve project outcomes through the timely identification of outstanding project risks. A common technique is that of a Gateway. The Gateway Review Process (GRP) appraises qualitative and quantitative risks and reports the findings via a Colour Code System (CCS) of Red/Amber/Green (R/A/G). Medium to high risk projects that exceed certain risk thresholds are eligible for GRP. Intuitive recognition of potential risks from the application of CCS is insufficient to determine the value gained from the process. This paper attempts to shed light on a tentative effort to interpret the CCS into numerical descriptions by using fuzzy-based method on a survey outcome. This quantitative interpretation of the CCS would then be adopted to provide a measure and understanding (decision evidence) of the benefits obtained through project review such as GRP.
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ItemQuantification of the contribution of non-structural components to the structural performance of high-rise buildings(Department of Civil Engineering, National Taiwan University, 2008-12-01)Non-structural components (NSCs) such as infill walls, façades, stairs, and windows are normally considered as non-load bearing components in the design of buildings. However, a number of researchers have identified that those so-called NSCs have a significant contribution to the lateral performance of the structure. This paper presents the findings of the investigation into the influence of a variety of NSCs on the performance of typical high-rise framed structures via the observation of the influence of these NSCs on the shear and flexural performance, as well as the lateral stiffness of the structures. Finite element (FE) models have been developed to analyse storey drifts, shear force distributions, bending moment distributions, and joint rotations under different structural configurations. The results of the study indicate a significant decrease of the storey drift can be achieved by including different NSCs to the structural frame. Dramatic changes to both the bending moment and the shear force distributions in the inner columns of the structural frame are resulted from the inclusion of NSCs. However, the influence of these NSCs on the flexural and shear performance of the outer columns of the building is significantly less than that of the inner columns. It is concluded that the enhanced performance of actual buildings by including NSCs provides opportunity for refining of the lateral deflection of the building for the serviceability limit states.
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ItemProceedings of the International Workshop on Computational Models of Place(University of Melbourne, 2008)
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ItemEffective and Efficient Transformed Image Identification(IEEE Signal Processing Society, 2008)
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ItemNo Preview AvailableSpatially Enabled society(Permanent Committee on GIS Infrastructure for Asia and the Pacific, 2008)
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ItemSDI Design to Facilitate Spatially Enabled Government and Society(National Cartographic Center, 2008)
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ItemDesign of SDI to facilitate urban planning at local level( 2008)Urban planning at local level is one of the important professions to affectively mange local issues like housing affordability, traffic congestion, crimes as well as global issues like pollution, global warming, environmental degradation etc. Being a multi disciplinary profession, urban planners and concerned decision makers relies heavily on appropriate and up to date information from different sources. However, in many cases, required information is difficult to collect and is in un-appropriate format leaving planners with two options: either to rely on available information or to collect it again by spending more resources both affecting quality of urban planning or better to say quality of our life. Decision makers in different sectors started limited applications of modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the form of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) for spatial information management. But this traditional GIS was limited in spatial information sharing and its application indecision making and therefore, a new concept of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) emerged for effective and efficient information sharing and its application in decision making. But so far, most of the work relating to SDI is theoretical and no standard technical model of SDI for different scenario is available yet. This paper is focused on exploring the design of information model for local SDI mainly from urban planning perspective. This design is based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) concept allowing replicable use of services between different users, professional and decision makers. It will lead to successful development of local SDI with principle of collect once and use many times.
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ItemRe-engineering SDI design to support Spatially Enabled Society and Government(Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, 2008)
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ItemBuilding seamless SDI to facilitate land and marine environments( 2008)Due to the high economic value of coastal and marine activities, and to the social value of coastal zones for quality of life, managing the coastal zone is a key component of the socio-economic framework in most nations with coastlines. In recent times several natural disasters hit some part of the coastal areas around the world in particular small islands and archipelagic countries causing hundreds thousands of peoples lost their lives, while those who survived had lost their properties. Learning from such kind of devastating disasters, it is important to have a functioning spatial data infrastructure (SDI) which facilitates discovery, access and sharing accurate, complete and up-to-dated spatial data for better planning and timely disaster management. Sustainable development requires the availability of integrated and comprehensive spatial information throughout the country both land and marine area, that can easily be found and accessed for public. Having said that, however current SDI design is focused mainly on access to and use of land related datasets or marine related datasets, with most SDI initiatives stopping at the land-ward or marine-ward boundary of the coastline, institutionally and/or spatially. Consequently, there is a lack of harmonised and universal access to seamless datasets from marine, coastal and land-based spatial data providers. This leads to the creation of inconsistencies in spatial information policies, data creation, data access, and data integration across the coastal zone. The extension of an SDI covering the land and marine environments on a seamless platform would facilitate greater access to more interoperable spatial data and information across the land-marine interface enabling amore integrated and holistic approach to management of the coastal zone. This paper aims to identify and discuss the main characteristics and criteria for utilisation of a Seamless SDI model and to examine the current barriers against implementation of this model. This would help to develop an extended framework to support a spatially enabled jurisdiction covering the land-sea interface. A Seamless SDI leads to the promotion of data sharing and communication between organisations thus facilitating better decision-making involving marine and coastal spatial information.