ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.
In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.
Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at gradformat@asu.edu.
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Civil Engineering
- Creators: Tang, Pingbo
Unfortunately, limited studies consider human factors in automation techniques for construction field information acquisition. Fully utilization of the automation techniques requires a systematical synthesis of the interactions between human, tasks, and construction workspace to reduce the complexity of information acquisition tasks so that human can finish these tasks with reliability. Overall, such a synthesis of human factors in field data collection and analysis is paving the path towards “Human-Centered Automation” (HCA) in construction management. HCA could form a computational framework that supports resilient field data collection considering human factors and unexpected events on dynamic job sites.
This dissertation presented an HCA framework for resilient construction field information acquisition and results of examining three HCA approaches that support three use cases of construction field data collection and analysis. The first HCA approach is an automated data collection planning method that can assist 3D laser scan planning of construction inspectors to achieve comprehensive and efficient data collection. The second HCA approach is a Bayesian model-based approach that automatically aggregates the common sense of people from the internet to identify job site risks from a large number of job site pictures. The third HCA approach is an automatic communication protocol optimization approach that maximizes the team situation awareness of construction workers and leads to the early detection of workflow delays and critical path changes. Data collection and simulation experiments extensively validate these three HCA approaches.
Previous studies started collecting detailed geometric data generated by 3D laser scanners for defect detection and geometric change analysis of structures. However, previous studies have not yet systematically examined methods for exploring the correlation between the detected geometric changes and their relation to the behaviors of the structural system. Manually checking every possible loading combination leading to the observed geometric change is tedious and sometimes error-prone. The work presented in this dissertation develops a spatial change analysis framework that utilizes spatiotemporal data collected using 3D laser scanning technology and the as-designed models of the structures to automatically detect, classify, and correlate the spatial changes of a structure. The change detection part of the developed framework is computationally efficient and can automatically detect spatial changes between as-designed model and as-built data or between two sets of as-built data collected using 3D laser scanning technology. Then a spatial change classification algorithm automatically classifies the detected spatial changes as global (rigid body motion) and local deformations (tension, compression). Finally, a change correlation technique utilizes a qualitative shape-based reasoning approach for identifying correlated deformations of structure elements connected at joints that contradicts the joint equilibrium. Those contradicting deformations can help to eliminate improbable loading combinations therefore guiding the loading path analysis of the structure.
maintenance because imagery data can capture detailed visual information with high
frequencies. Computer vision can be useful for acquiring spatiotemporal details to
support the timely maintenance of critical civil infrastructures that serve society. Some
examples include: irrigation canals need to maintain the leaking sections to avoid water
loss; project engineers need to identify the deviating parts of the workflow to have the
project finished on time and within budget; detecting abnormal behaviors of air traffic
controllers is necessary to reduce operational errors and avoid air traffic accidents.
Identifying the outliers of the civil infrastructure can help engineers focus on targeted
areas. However, large amounts of imagery data bring the difficulty of information
overloading. Anomaly detection combined with contextual knowledge could help address
such information overloading to support the operation and maintenance of civil
infrastructures.
Some challenges make such identification of anomalies difficult. The first challenge is
that diverse large civil infrastructures span among various geospatial environments so
that previous algorithms cannot handle anomaly detection of civil infrastructures in
different environments. The second challenge is that the crowded and rapidly changing
workspaces can cause difficulties for the reliable detection of deviating parts of the
workflow. The third challenge is that limited studies examined how to detect abnormal
behaviors for diverse people in a real-time and non-intrusive manner. Using video andii
relevant data sources (e.g., biometric and communication data) could be promising but
still need a baseline of normal behaviors for outlier detection.
This dissertation presents an anomaly detection framework that uses contextual
knowledge, contextual information, and contextual data for filtering visual information
extracted by computer vision techniques (ADCV) to address the challenges described
above. The framework categorizes the anomaly detection of civil infrastructures into two
categories: with and without a baseline of normal events. The author uses three case
studies to illustrate how the developed approaches can address ADCV challenges in
different categories of anomaly detection. Detailed data collection and experiments
validate the developed ADCV approaches.
This dissertation presents a method that integrates Bayesian Network (BN) modeling and simulation for communication-related risk prediction and mitigation. The proposed method aims at tackling the three challenges mentioned above for ensuring CIS O&M safety and efficiency. The proposed method contains three parts: 1) Communication Data Collection and Error Detection – designing lab experiments for collecting communication data in CIS O&M workflows and using the collected data for identifying risky communication contexts and features; 2) Communication Error Classification and Prediction – encoding expert knowledge as constraints through BN model updating to improve the accuracy of communication error prediction based on given communication contexts and features, and 3) Communication Risk Mitigation – carrying out simulations to adjust communication protocols for reducing communication-related CIS O&M risks.
This dissertation uses two CIS O&M case studies (air traffic control and NPP outages) to validate the proposed method. The results indicate that the proposed method can 1) identify risky communication contexts and features, 2) predict communication errors and CIS O&M risks, and 3) reduce CIS O&M risks triggered by communication errors. The author envisions that the proposed method will shed light on achieving predictive control of interpersonal communications in dynamic and complex CIS O&M.