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Social sensing in the field: challenges in detecting social interactions in construction sites

Nawaz, Sarfraz, Efstratiou, Christos, Mascolo, Cecilia, Soga, Kenichi (2012) Social sensing in the field: challenges in detecting social interactions in construction sites. In: MCSS '12. Proceedings of the 1st ACM workshop on Mobile systems for computational social science. . pp. 28-32. ACM, New York, USA ISBN 978-1-4503-1324-7. (doi:10.1145/2307863.2307872) (KAR id:38847)

Abstract

Construction industry is a sector that is renowned for the slow uptake of new technologies. This is usually due to the conservative nature of this sector that relies heavily on tried and tested and successful old business practices. However, there is an eagerness in this industry to adopt Building Information Modelling (BIM) technologies to capture and record accurate information about a building project. But vast amounts of information and knowledge about the construction process is typically hidden within informal social interactions that take place in the work environment. In this paper we present a vision where smartphones and tablet devices carried by construction workers are used to capture the interaction and communication between workers in the field. Informal chats about decisions taken in the field, impromptu formation of teams, identification of key persons for certain tasks, and tracking the flow of information across the project community, are some pieces of information that could be captured by employing social sensing in the field. This information can not only be used during the construction to improve the site processes but it can also be exploited by the end user during maintenance of the building. We highlight the challenges that need to be overcome for this mobile and social sensing system to become a reality.

Item Type: Conference or workshop item (Paper)
DOI/Identification number: 10.1145/2307863.2307872
Subjects: T Technology
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences > School of Engineering and Digital Arts
Depositing User: Christos Efstratiou
Date Deposited: 20 Mar 2014 12:45 UTC
Last Modified: 15 Nov 2022 15:01 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/38847 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Efstratiou, Christos.

Creator's ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6288-9579
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