Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Civil engineers, firefighters, military personnel and a host of other professionals
stand to benefit from context-aware applications as it makes bi-directional flow of
information more efficient and relevant based on a mobile user's context. For
example, interpreting the context of civil engineers during post-disaster recon-
naissance, or while conducting a bridge inspection, can allow bi-directional flow of
streamlined information and, thereby, improve the efficiency of the decision
making process. Bridge inspections, for instance, are currently documented
manually - the bridge inspector assesses the condition of a bridge based on
standard rating guidelines and previous bridge inspection reports (Farrar,
2008). The inspector carries the rating guidelines and the previous reports in
their paper form along with the current report forms while conducting the
inspection. In many cases, the inspector has to come to the site with excessive
preparation and plenty of time and effort is wasted in searching, streamlining and
retrieving relevant information. Upon returning to the office after the inspector
completes the inspection, the relevant data gathered in the field is entered into a
database management system. However, context-aware computing can tremen-
dously reduce the time and effort involved in conducting such bridge inspections
by facilitating bi-directional flow of information between the database manage-
ment system and the on-site inspector. Based on the context of the inspector,
streamlined data (such as relevant parts of rating guidelines and previous inspec-
tion reports) can be supplemented to field inspectors to support their operations.
The process of updating the database management system with appropriate field
data can also be similarly automated.
There are thus clear motivating reasons to investigate a new context-aware
methodology that can allow rapid and accurate identification, and retrieval of
contextual project information to support decision makers in field construction,
inspection, and maintenance tasks. To achieve this objective, tracking both field
personnel's position and three degree of freedom head orientation is necessary. For
example, tracking only an engineer's position on a construction site might help
determine which floor of a building a mobile user is located on or even which room
the user is currently in (Aziz
et al.
, 2005). However, this information is not
sufficient to conclude which part or section of the room, or what particular
component or object in that room the engineer is currently interested in. Therefore,
the position as well as the orientation must be considered in the computation to
fully interpret a mobile user's spatial context and accurately identify objects and
artifacts visible in his/her field of view, thereby facilitating the information delivery
process.
This chapter reviews the latest advances in positioning technologies and exam-
ines their applicability in pervasive context-aware construction applications. For
outdoor applications, the Global Positioning System (GPS) is used to track users
accurately and continuously. For indoor applications, this chapter explores the
applicability of wireless technologies, namely Wireless Local Area Networks
(WLAN), Ultra-Wide Band (UWB), and Indoor GPS for dynamic user position
tracking in situations where GPS is unavailable. Also introduced are an infrastruc-
ture independent inertial tracking system, namely the Personal Dead Reckoning
Search WWH ::
Custom Search