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Several studies were made on paired site and soil–structure interaction (SSI) effects, but most of them were site specific. This paper aims to investigate the impact of SSI effects in conjunction with local soil condition effects on the seismic response of typical multistory low- to mid-rise–reinforced concrete (RC) buildings resting on Algerian regulatory design sites through a global explicit transfer function (TF).

A preliminary quantification of SSI effects associated with site effects is carried out through a frequency-domain solution based on the concept of rock-to-soil surface displacement TF performed for each design site category. It results from the combination of the TFs of structure, foundation and soil and reflects how seismic waves are amplified due to changes in the geological contrast between the rock and overlying soil deposits. As well, response modification factors, denoting displacement ratios of the building responses within the flexible and site-structure conditions with respect to the fixed-base one, are carried out.

In the context of Algerian seismic regulation, the study provides a clear vision of how and when site or SSI effects are expected to be influential, as opposed to the fixed-base hypothesis still retained by the current regulation. This helps engineers to be aware of the extent of the expected seismic damage.

The research applies to low- to mid-rise RC buildings within the Algerian seismic regulation, but it may also be expanded to other examples that fall under other seismic regulations.

The response modification ratio is a quantitative approach to assessing response fluctuations. It draws attention to how the roof level drift varies depending on the condition. These results can be used as numerical parameters in structural seismic design when the structure is comparable because they provide useful information about how the two phenomena interact with the structure.

The study goes beyond particular situations dealing with site specific and offers effective indicators and quantitative evaluation of combined site and SSI effects according to the current national seismic provisions, where no indication about site or SSI effects exists.

This paper covers the development of a novel defect model for concrete highway bridges. The proposed defect model is intended to facilitate the identification of bridge’s condition information (i.e. defects), improve the efficiency and accuracy of bridge inspections by supporting practitioners and even machines with digitalised expert knowledge, and ultimately automate the process.

The research design consists of three major phases so as to (1) categorise common defect with regard to physical entities (i.e. bridge element), (2) establish internal relationships among those defects and (3) relate defects to their properties and potential causes. A mixed-method research approach, which includes a comprehensive literature review, focus groups and case studies, was employed to develop and validate the proposed defect model.

The data collected through the literature and focus groups were analysed and knowledge were extracted to form the novel defect model. The defect model was then validated and further calibrated through case study. Inspection reports of nearly 300 bridges in China were collected and analysed. The study uncovered the relationships between defects and a variety of inspection-related elements and represented in the form of an accessible, digitalised and user-friendly knowledge model.

The contribution of this paper is the development of a defect model that can assist inexperienced practitioners and even machines in the near future to conduct inspection tasks. For one, the proposed defect model can standardise the data collection process of bridge inspection, including the identification of defects and documentation of their vital properties, paving the path for the automation in subsequent stages (e.g. condition evaluation). For another, by retrieving rich experience and expert knowledge which have long been reserved and inherited in the industrial sector, the inspection efficiency and accuracy can be considerably improved.

Modular construction is an innovative method that enhances the performance of building construction projects. However, the performance of steel modular construction has not been systematically understood, and the existing measurement methods exhibit limitations in effectively addressing the features of steel modular building construction. Therefore, this study aims to develop a new performance measurement framework for systematically examining the performance of steel modular construction in building projects.

This study was conducted through a mixed-method research design that combines a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art practices of construction performance measurement and a case study with a 17-story steel modular apartment building project in Hong Kong. The case project was measured with data collected from the project teams and other reliable channels, and the measurement practices and findings were referenced to establish a systematic performance measurement framework for steel modular construction.

Considering steel modular construction as a complex socio-technical system, a systematic performance measurement framework was developed, which considers the features of steel modular construction, focuses on the construction stage, incorporates the views of various stakeholders, integrates generic and specific key performance indicators and provides a benchmarking process. Multifaceted benefits of adopting steel modular construction were demonstrated with case study, including improved economic efficiency (e.g. nearly 10% cost savings), improved environmental friendliness (e.g. approximately 90% waste reduction) and enhanced social welfare (e.g. over 60% delivery trips reduction).

This paper extends the existing performance measurement methods with a new framework proposed and offers experience for future steel modular construction. The measured performance of the case project also contributes in-depth understanding on steel modular construction with benefits demonstrated. The study is expected to accelerate an effective uptake of steel modular construction in building projects.

In recent decades, infrastructure has continued to develop as an important basis for social development and people's lives. Resource management of these large-scale projects has been immensely concerned because dozens of construction enterprises (CEs) often work together. In this situation, resource collaboration among enterprises has become a key measure to ensure project implementation. Thus, this study aims to propose a systematic multi-agent resource collaborative decision-making optimization model for large projects from a matching perspective.

The main contribution of this work was an advancement of the current research by: (1) generalizing the resource matching decision-making problem and quantifying the relationship between CEs. (2) Based on the matching domain, the resource input costs and benefits of each enterprise in the associated group were comprehensively analyzed to build the mathematical model, which also incorporated prospect theory to map more realistic decisions. (3) According to the influencing factors of resource decision-making, such as cost, benefit and attitude of decision-makers, determined the optimal resource input in different situations.

Numerical experiments were used to verify the effectiveness of the multi-agent resource matching decision (MARMD) method in this study. The results indicated that this model could provide guidance for optimal decision-making for each participating enterprise in the resource association group under different situations. And the results showed the psychological preference of decision-makers has an important influence on decision performance.

While the MARMD method has been proposed in this research, MARMD still has many limitations. A more detailed matching relationship between different resource types in CEs is still not fully analyzed, and relevant studies about more accurate parameters of decision-makers’ psychological preferences should be conducted in this area in the future.

Compared with traditional projects, large-scale engineering construction has the characteristics of huge resource consumption and more participants. While decision-makers can determine the matching relationship between related enterprises, this is ambiguous and the wider range will vary with more participants or complex environment. The MARMD method provided in this paper is an effective methodological tool with clearer decision-making positioning and stronger actual operability, which could provide references for large-scale project resource management.

Large-scale engineering is complex infrastructure projects that ensure national security, increase economic development, improve people's lives and promote social progress. During the implementation of large-scale projects, CEs realize value-added through resource exchange and integration. Studying the optimal collaborative decision of multi-agent resources from a matching perspective can realize the improvement of resource transformation efficiency and promote the development of large-scale engineering projects.

The current research on engineering resources decision-making lacks a matching relationship, which leads to unclear decision objectives, ambiguous decision processes and poor operability decision methods. To solve these issues, a novel approach was proposed to reveal the decision mechanism of multi-agent resource optimization in large-scale projects. This paper could bring inspiration to the research of large-scale project resource management.

The process of elaboration of the symbolic universe leads to important insights into the role of symbols in understanding human reasoning. Symbols become explanatory axes of universal global realities. Myths were constructed on these explanatory paths forming a superstructure of all belief systems with paraconsistent logic for the symbolism and a symbolic syntax. Myths and symbols are to be found in all cultures. Some of the most powerful and influential ones occur in popular culture since these often have the greatest immediate social impact.

Semiotic and logical development of the symbols is in mythical systems. The dissolution of the myth and the degradation of the myth's symbols constitute a long-drawn-out process in modern Western society and wherever s influence reaches. Myth is a story that may contain symbolic elements, but compared to the symbols or images of the exceptional, myth is characterized by a “story.”

Starting from a minimal definition to define myths and propose the following definition: Myth is a traditional tale that relates memorable and exemplary actions of extraordinary personages in prestigious and distant times, and myths have various forms and functions, perhaps some more clearly defined with a signifier than others, and different approaches can be combined for a better understanding of the myths. Dispensing with such simplistic assertions, and starting from a minimal definition to define myth, myth is a traditional tale that relates memorable and exemplary actions of extraordinary personages in prestigious and distant times.

Any symbol F originates in a unit that has two aspects and functions when the unit is restored. Thus, the symbol is rather “for something” than “of something” and the symbolic objects express the objects' correspondence in one unit or hendiadys. One semantic characteristic of symbols is “recognition”. The symbol F reveals a reality by means of the homogenous association of the signifier and significance in the symbol's constitution; although reality is separate, there is a homogeneous relation between the symbolizing and symbolized in symbolization.

Prefabricated columns connected by grouted sleeves are increasingly used in practical projects. However, seismic fragility analyses of such structures are rarely conducted. Seismic fragility analysis has an important role in seismic hazard evaluation. In this paper, the seismic fragility of sleeve connected prefabricated column is analyzed.

A model for predicting the seismic demand on sleeve connected prefabricated columns has been created by incorporating engineering demand parameters (EDP) and probabilities of seismic failure. The incremental dynamics analysis (IDA) curve clusters of this type of column were obtained using finite element analysis. The seismic fragility curve is obtained by regression of Exponential and Logical Function Model.

The IDA curve cluster gradually increased the dispersion after a peak ground acceleration (PGA) of 0.3 g was reached. For both columns, the relative displacement of the top of the column significantly changed after reaching 50 mm. The seismic fragility of the prefabricated column with the sleeve placed in the cap (SPCA) was inadequate.

The sleeve was placed in the column to overcome the seismic fragility of prefabricated columns effectively. In practical engineering, it is advisable to utilize these columns in regions susceptible to earthquakes and characterized by high seismic intensity levels in order to mitigate the risk of structural damage resulting from ground motion.

The long-span continuous rigid-frame bridges are commonly constructed by the section-by-section symmetrical balance suspension casting method. The deflection of these bridges is increasing over time. Wet joints are a typical construction feature of continuous rigid-frame bridges and will affect their integrity. To investigate the sensitivity of shear surface quality on the mechanical properties of long-span prestressed continuous rigid-frame bridges, a large serviced bridge is selected for analysis.

Its shear surface is examined and classified using the damage measuring method, and four levels are determined statistically based on the core sample integrity, cracking length and cracking depth. Based on the shear-friction theory of the shear surface, a 3D solid element-based finite element model of the selected bridge is established, taking into account factors such as damage location, damage number and damage of the shear surface. The simulated results on the stress distribution of the local segment, the shear surface opening and the beam deflection are extracted and analyzed.

The findings indicate that the main factors affecting the ultimate shear stress and shear strength of the shear surface are size, shear reinforcements, normal stress and friction performance of the shear surface. The connection strength of a single or a few shear surfaces decreases but with little effect on the local stress. Cracking and opening mainly occur at the 1/4 span. Compared with the rigid “Tie” connection, the mid-span deflection of the main span increases by 25.03% and the relative deflection of the section near the shear surface increases by 99.89%. However, when there are penetrating cracks and openings in the shear surface at the 1/2 span, compared with the 1/4 span position, the mid-span deflection of the main span and the relative deflection of the cross-section increase by 4.50%. The deflection of the main span increases with the failure of the shear surface.

These conclusions can guide the analysis of deflection development in long-span prestressed continuous rigid-frame bridges.

Intent detection (ID) and slot filling (SF) are two important tasks in natural language understanding. ID is to identify the main intent of a paragraph of text. The goal of SF is to extract the information that is important to the intent from the input sentence. However, most of the existing methods use sentence-level intention recognition, which has the risk of error propagation, and the relationship between intention recognition and SF is not explicitly modeled. Aiming at this problem, this paper proposes a collaborative model of ID and SF for intelligent spoken language understanding called ID-SF-Fusion.

ID-SF-Fusion uses Bidirectional Encoder Representation from Transformers (BERT) and Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM) to extract effective word embedding and context vectors containing the whole sentence information respectively. Fusion layer is used to provide intent–slot fusion information for SF task. In this way, the relationship between ID and SF task is fully explicitly modeled. This layer takes the result of ID and slot context vectors as input to obtain the fusion information which contains both ID result and slot information. Meanwhile, to further reduce error propagation, we use word-level ID for the ID-SF-Fusion model. Finally, two tasks of ID and SF are realized by joint optimization training.

We conducted experiments on two public datasets, Airline Travel Information Systems (ATIS) and Snips. The results show that the Intent ACC score and Slot F1 score of ID-SF-Fusion on ATIS and Snips are 98.0 per cent and 95.8 per cent, respectively, and the two indicators on Snips dataset are 98.6 per cent and 96.7 per cent, respectively. These models are superior to slot-gated, SF-ID NetWork, stack-Prop and other models. In addition, ablation experiments were performed to further analyze and discuss the proposed model.

This paper uses word-level intent recognition and introduces intent information into the SF process, which is a significant improvement on both data sets.

This paper aims to provide an integrated BIM-based approach for quantity take-off for progress payments in the context of high-rise buildings in Vietnam. It tries to find answers for the following questions: (1) When to start the QTO processes to facilitate the contract progress payments? (2) What information is required to measure the quantity of works to estimate contract progress payment (3) What are the challenges to manage (i.e. create, store, update and exploit)? What are the required information for this BIM use? and (4) How to process the information to deliver BIM-based QTO to facilitate contract progress payment?

The paper applied a deductive approach and expert consensus through a Delphi procedure to adapt to current innovation around BIM-based QTO. Starting with a literature review, it then discusses current practices in BIM-based QTO in general and high-rise building projects in particular. Challenges were compiled from the previous studies for references for BIM-based QTO to facilitate contract progress payment for high-rise building projects in Vietnam. A framework was developed considering a standard information management process throughout the construction lifecycle, when the BIM use of this study is delivered. The framework was validated with Delphi technique.

Four major challenges for BIM-based QTO discovered: new types of information required for the BIM model, changes and updates as projects progress, low interoperability between BIM model and estimation software, potentiality of low productivity and accuracy in data entry. Required information for QTO to facilitate progress payments in high-rise building projects include Object Geometric/Appearance Information, Structural Components' Definition and Contextual Information. Trade-offs between “Speed – Level of Detail–Applicable Breadth” and “Quality – Productivity” are proposed to consider the information amount to input at a time when creating/updating BIM objects. Interoperability check needed for creating, authoring/updating processing the BIM model's objects.

This paper is not flawless. The first limitation lies in that the theoretical framework was established only based on desk research and small number of expert judgment. Further primary data collection would be needed to determine exactly how the framework underlies widespread practices. Secondly, this study only discussed the quantity take-off specifically for contract progress payment, but not for other purposes or broader BIM uses. Further research in this field would be of great help in developing a standard protocol for automatic quantity surveying system in Vietnam.

A new theoretical framework for BIM-based QTO validated with Delphi technique to facilitate progress payments for high-rise building projects, considering all information management stages and the phases of information development in the project lifecycle. The framework identified four types of information required for this QTO, detailed considerations for strategies (Library Objects Development, BIM Objects Information Declaration, BIM-based QTO) for better managing the information for this BIM use. Two trade-offs of “Speed – LOD–Applicable Breadth” and “Quality – Productivity” have been proposed for facilitating the strategies and also for enhancing the total efficiency and effectiveness of the QTO process.

The purpose of this paper is, through an exploratory analysis, to identify good practices implemented by international museums in the phygital context and their classification in terms of customer experiences, in order to identify innovative cultural value creation and co-creation practices.

The authors adopt a qualitative approach of multiple case studies. The analysis conducted formed the information base through which to proceed with the classification of phygital customer experiences through the extended reality technologies framework

The analysis conducted on the selected international museums shows that the phygital formula can take on different characteristics depending on the technologies used and the purpose to be achieved and can be a useful tool for the co-creation of cultural value.

The originality of this contribution lies in the comparative analysis proposed among the case studies to intercept best practices in the phygital field, in the classification of phygital experiences through a novel frame of reference and in the identification of prospects for improvement of an emerging phenomenon in the literature on cultural sector management.