UMD Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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    Development of a Cyber Physical System for Fire Safety
    (2015) Wills, Rosalie Faith; Marshall, Andre; Fire Protection Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    In this study a cyber physical system (a system of collaborating computational elements that monitor and control physical entities) test bed was developed to demonstrate the viability of real-time decision support for smart firefighting and to provide validation data for continued cyber physical system (CPS) development. This CPS utilizes current technologies in the modern built environment and emerging virtualization tools. The smart networked fire test bed consisted of a multi-story instrumented building, a variety of fire and non-fire networked sensors, and a computational framework anchored by a Building Information Modeling (BIM) representation of the building. Well-controlled full-scale fire experiments were conducted (physical domain) and represented in the three-dimensional BIM (computational domain) allowing for visualization of critical static and dynamic building and fire information needed to support firefighter decisions. The CPS test bed produced remarkable evidence about the opportunities for fire safety created by the communication between sensors, BIM, and fire.
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    The Effects of Building Information Modeling on Construction Site Productivity
    (2010) Chelson, Douglas E.; Skibniewski, Miroslaw J; Civil Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Construction experiences low productivity compared to other industries, largely attributed to poor planning and communication. Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a process that is used to resolve these problems by simulating physical space and expressing design intent graphically, providing a clearer image of design conflicts or constructability issues so that they are resolved before construction begins. Productivity rates increase as BIM practices are implemented because rework and idle time are reduced for laborers. Case studies of projects utilizing BIM indicate field productivity gains from 5 to 40%, depending on how the process is managed. Although the amount of savings is guarded closely by those who measure and track the changes in their productivity rates and unknown to many contractors, there are indicators that reveal increased productivity. Key indicators of increased productivity are RFI reduction, amount of rework, schedule compliance, and change orders due to plan conflicts. Each of these affect the various stakeholders of a project to different degrees but the overall effect is a net savings for the owner ranging from a few percent for competitive bid projects to over 10% for integrated projects. BIM-enabled projects have 10% of the RFI that a typical project would have so that contractors realize an average savings of 9% in management time. Reduction of rework and idle time due to site conflicts savings for trade contractors are on the order of 9% of project costs. The abilities to prefabricate and automate site processes are also significant advantages of BIM usage experienced by trade contractors. The most significant savings are attributed to the clash detection process which eliminates conflicts in the field. These findings show that the strongest determinants of success on BIM projects in terms of site productivity are human factors rather than technical.