COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES (CAS)

SQIT3033
KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION IN DECISION MAKING
GROUP A

INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT 1: DATA MINING IN CONSTRUCTION PROJECT DATE: 5 MARCH 2014

PREPARED FOR: DR. IZWAN NIZAL BIN MOHD SHAHARANEE PREPARED BY: NUR HANANI BINTI SANAN (212489)

Data Mining Application in Construction Project. Generally, data mining is defined by a process of discovering useful information, hidden pattern or rules in large quantities of data. Data mining consists of two models which are predictive model and descriptive model. Data mining application definitely can be utilized in construction project as the data generated within the construction industry has become increasingly overwhelming. When we are talking about construction project or industry, it actually covers many aspects such as in terms of planning and organizing a project, maintenance and cost of the constructions. All these aspects unsurprisingly may become the construction issues. One of the example of construction issue that usually exists is involving building maintenance. The primary objective of building maintenance is that building systems and components should be always functioning to support building operations (Reffat, Gero. and Peng, 2004). The objective of this problem is to share information between building operating managers and the owner about the current status of building systems and components and the business situation. But as the data generated is increasing, there will be valuable informations that cant be identified. As project managers are always being asked by questions that related to time taken, how much the cost of construction, and many more, this will lead to many problems in the future as the information gained is not reliable and not accurately analyzed. Therefore, the data mining technology is desperately needed so that the useful information can be extracted from the large amount of data. The advancements of data collection, the introduction of bar codes for almost all commercial products, and computerization in the Architectural, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry have generated a flood of data. Substantial development of data storage technology, such as faster, higher capacity, and cheaper storage devices, better database management systems, and data warehousing technology, have allowed the transformation of this enormous amount of data into computerized database systems. As the AEC industry is adapting to new computer technologies in terms of hardware and software, computerized building data is becoming more and more available (Reffat, Gero. and Peng, 2004). Another example of construction issue is occupational injuries in construction site. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO, 2003), approximately two million people die while at work every year. In the construction industry alone, at least 60,000 people

die on construction sites and many hundreds of thousands sustain serious injuries or contract occupational diseases (Ching, Sou, Ying, Tsung & Chen, 2012). As there is too many cause and effect relationship that can exist in the data of construction accident, we need help from data mining system so that the factors contributing to occupational injuries in construction industry can be identified accurately and systematically. With the used of data mining system, all the data can be analysed and categorized such as relationship between accident type and project type. With OLAP tool within data mining system, we can know which factor that need to be prioritized first. Therefore, the preventions which is the decision made can be done effectively. What can be conclude is, data mining that involve a large amount of data need to go through few process which are extraction, loading and cleanup process before it can be a useful informations to others. With this conct, construction issues such as examples above can be prevented by using data mining application.

References Reffat, R., Gero, J. and Peng, W. (2004). Using data mining on building maintenance during the building life cycle, Proceedings of the 38th Australian & New Zealand ArchitecturalScience Association (ANZASCA) Conference, School of Architecture, University of Tasmania, Tasmania, Australia, pp. 91-97. Ching-Wu Chenga, Sou-Sen Leub, Ying-Mei Chengc, Tsung-Chih Wud, and Chen-Chung Line. (2012). Applying data mining techniques to explore factors contributing to occupational injuries in Taiwans construction industry, Accident Analysis and Prevention 48, 214 222.