Berardo Naticchia

Design and first development of an automated real‐time safety management system for construction sites

Abstract This paper reports a feasibility study which addressed the development of a new, advanced system mainly devoted to automatic real‐time health and safety management on construction sites. The preliminary analyses and experiments described in this paper concern two of the most important functionalities which must be included in the systems final release. The first functionality consists in real‐time position‐tracking of workers involved on construction sites and the second ‐ in a software tool for the prevention of non‐authorized access to dangerous zones. This research step is part of a vaster, ongoing research project, addressing the development of a new generation of advanced construction management systems which allow real‐time monitoring and coordination of tasks, automatic health and safety management, on‐site delivery of technical information and the capture of “as‐built” documentation. This paper focuses mainly on the development of a reliable methodology for real‐time monitoring of the po...

A MANAGEMENT SYSTEM AGAINST MAJOR RISK ACCIDENTS IN LARGE CONSTRUCTION SITES

The rates of job injuries and fatalities in construction sites are still too high, with respect to other industrial working places. Statistics show that there are a few main types of risk accidents causing the higher number of fatalities. This paper suggests the development of a novel low intrusive real-time monitoring system in support of health and safety management in construction sites and addresses its basic application cases. It is mainly intended as a support system for those inspectors in charge of the correct application of the measures dictated by the Health and Safety Plan. Its application in construction sites is rendered convenient by its low intrusiveness and easy expandability with the real work progress. Finally, first successful field tests carried out in a large construction site, regarding several residential block of flats under construction in an Italian town, are presented.

A Spatio-Temporal Bayesian Network for Adaptive Risk Management in Territorial Emergency Response Operations

For this reason the availability of a Bayesian model is the only solution capable of allowing emergency squads to exploit the backward propagation of Bayesian networks and perform real-time diagnoses. In other words, once the user sets the desired state for the output variable(s), the network is able to work out the most likely state values for the corresponding input, thereby helping to discern how to act optimally in order to control the spread of fire. The same tool may also be used for scenario analyses.

Set up of an Automated Multi-Colour System for Interior Wall Painting:

It is shared that construction projects are getting bigger and more complex, hence also the productivity of the construction industry must be improved, while preserving its labour from hazardous job sites. Such requirements can be accomplished by the adoption of robotized products, which, however, need to be quickly developed and marketed. In this paper, first the issue of a new miniature laboratory for developing lightweight and well-coordinated robotized systems is pursued, then a novel robot device for high quality multi-colour interior wall painting carried by a robot arm is developed and successfully tested. Thanks to the new 1:6 scaled down laboratory and its six degree of freedom robot arm on an hexapod for horizontal moves, we tested the opportunity to introduce also in the building sector miniature robots that can change the ergonomics standardly adopted by construction workers. It is analyzed how and why switching from full size to miniature robots is convenient in construction. In addition, a new system adding further features to robotized painting has been conceived. Our new multi-colour spraying end-tool was developed and fixed on the robot arm, in order to be able to reproduce coloured artworks. Finally, a methodology to reproduce colours from digital format of artworks is presented, showing how accurate and efficient is this new robotized spraying device.

Can planning be a research paradigm in architectural design

Abstract In the present paper we discuss the possible use of ‘planning’ ° to support architectural design. Architectural design is conceived as a process incorporating non-trivial subprocesses consisting of evolutionary sequences of drawings. The ‘planner’ can be viewed as a tool capable of managing the automatic development of formal descriptions of architectural objects, according to goals and constraints which are interactively assigned or removed by the designer. The main features of a ‘planner’ dedicated to architectural design are then put forward. The system has been implemented at the University of Ancona, Italy.

A micropower supervisor for wireless nodes with a digital pulse frequency modulator battery monitor

In the last few years the increased development of wireless technologies led to the development of micropower devices with power management and real time power control, aimed to maximize the battery life time.1 The main and simplest method to estimate residual battery life time is by voltage measurement. This kind of measurement is simple but is useless in many cases, especially when long term Lithium-Thionyl chloride batteries are used, since its voltage is flat for more than 90% of the battery discharge. In this case, a current control should be used. However, these kinds of devices have various problems as a limited range of measurement and not negligible quiescent current that may distort the measurements. In this work we developed a micropower supervisor for wireless sensor nodes with a charge battery monitor, whose features are aimed at solving the problems just described. The current measured by a sense resistor, is filtered by a super-capacitor, amplified by a current sense amplifier and then fed to a voltage to pulse frequency modulator. In this way, the charge consumption can be estimated without the saturation of the current sense amplifier, even if the wireless node consumes time limited high current spikes, for example during transmission.

Interoperable Approach in Support of Semi-Automated Construction Management

Construction progress monitoring has always been a major concern for managers. Several are the advantages provided by a reliable approach in this field, among which we cite efficient project performance control and quality control, timely on-site inspections, better control of health and safety prescriptions against job injuries and fatalities, which are still too high. This paper addresses the development of a semi-automated approach for construction management, based on two main features: on one side a project management oriented re-organization of project’s information based on interoperable BIM (Building Information Modeling) and 4D modeling protocols, which aims to facilitate the control at the execution phase; on the other side a monitoring platform for real-time collection of data, relative to work progress and resources usage, by means of low intrusive technologies. Preliminary experiments on the capability by the low intrusive and real-time monitoring system to acquire and filter the data collected on resources usage are carried out. In addition, a general framework implementing several high-level logics is proposed. Its application would lead to seamless production of reports, to a semi-automated control of materials procurement, that is to say with limited or no human intervention. Preliminary application cases are shown, too. Among the expected benefits, not only economic savings for builders, but also better quality of recorded data and real-time availability of information have been pointed out.

A Real-Time and Non Intrusive Structural Health Monitoring System for Buildings

The constant innovation in the development of sensing devices for detecting health status of buildings, highlights the importance of this professional field. In fact, correct diagnosis would prevent many pathologies, driving maintenance interventions towards timely and well targeted operations. This paper describes the development of a monitoring system prototype, conceived to be very low intrusive, that can be applied also on existing buildings, without any need to predispose chases for power or communication cables. Its adoption is expected to be useful not only for standard health status monitoring of buildings during their lifecycle, but also for automated monitoring of old buildings during the conduction of works for their renovation. As a matter of fact in this case accidents due to unexpected collapses during work execution are very common, hence the static condition of buildings should be continuously checked automatically and alerts sent in case of high risk of failures. The sensors under development have been programmed in such a way to be able to monitor rotations and send alerts in case critical thresholds are overcome.

Modelling Environmental Complexity for Sustainable Design Practice

Buildings have diverse effects on the environment during their entire life cycle. Although the tangible impacts are visible only after construction begins, decisions made on the drawing board have long-term environmental consequences. To achieve environmental sustainability in the building sector, architects must be educated about environmental issues during their professional training. University faculties have to foster environmental awareness, introduce students to environmental ethics, and develop their skills and knowledge base in sustainable design. In spite of the urgent need, teaching materials specifically designed for sustainable architecture have been virtually non-existent.

On the Design of Intelligent Buildings for Ambient Assisted Living

This contribution concerns the integration of Ambient Assisted Living and, more in general, of automation technologies in the standard building performance frame. To date there is a mismatch between what users expect from an intelligent built environment and what the suppliers are able to deliver. This is mainly because the potential advances introduced by intelligent building organisms do not encompass the whole building life cycle. In order to achieve real effectiveness, the automation technologies must be harmonized with the building performance framework that drives the traditional building design science.