AI Interventions in Construction

Engineering & Management (CEM)

Session 1 of Webinar – IT Interventions in Civil Engineering

Gurunath Kampli, MS (CEM), The University of Alabama, USA

Assistant Professor & Research Scholar
School of Civil Engineering
KLE Technological University
Hubballi - 580031
 Outline

• Introduction
• Importance of AI and its Trend
• What is AI and ML
• ML applications in CEM
• Augmented Reality
• Robotics
• Robotics Process Automation
• Knowledge Based System
• Digital Twins
• How to get Started
 Introduction
• Alan Turing suggested in 1950 that computers can be trained to think
and perform like humans.
• 1955 – The term AI is coined by John McCarthy – The science and
engineering of making intelligent machines.
• Up until 1990s, very little development – AI Winter.
• Rebirth of AI (1990s- Now)
• New formulations in Bayesian probability, Markov models, information theory,
stochastic modeling, and optimization brought a wealth of new tricks to the
trade.
• Advancements in microprocessors, computers, data storage, and data transfer
have addressed earlier concerns about speed, computational cost, and
information requirements.
AI demand - 2018
AI demand - 2019
 Machine Learning
What's AI?
Artificial Intelligence can be defined as any code, technique or
algorithm which enables a machine to mimic human cognitive
processes.

Then, What’s Machine Learning (ML)?

Arthur Samuel* coined the phrase Machine Learning in 1959, he

defined it as, “the field of study that gives computers the ability
to learn without being explicitly programmed”.

* Arthur Lee Samuel - American pioneer in the field of computer gaming and artificial intelligence.
The Samuel Checkers-playing Program was among the world's first successful self-learning programs, and as such a
very early demonstration of the fundamental concept of artificial intelligence.
 Machine Learning
How does it learn without being programmed?
DATA – Huge amounts of data. (Big Data Analytics)

The machines are fed huge amounts of data, that helps the
defined set of algorithms in training themselves to perform a task
automatically.

Based on the algorithms learn –

1. Supervised
2. Unsupervised
 Supervised Vs Unsupervised

Supervised –
In supervised learning the algorithm learns from a training data
set.
The data scientist functions as the “teacher”, who guides the
algorithm towards achieving the desired conclusions.

Unsupervised –
All data is unlabelled and the algorithms learn by themselves, the
output is not defined by the data scientist.
 Machine Learning
• Supervised Learning

Features of an apple
and a cupcake are
explained to the
algorithm

Examples -
Whether India will WIN or LOSE a Cricket match? Whether an email is SPAM or GENUINE?

WIN, LOSE, SPAM, GENUINE are the predefined classes. And output has to fall among these
depending on the input.
 Machine Learning
• Unsupervised Learning

I can see a
pattern
 To sum it up -

Data Analytics? Machine Learning? Artificial Intelligence?

Data that is fed by a data scientist is facilitating machine learning,

while machine learning is a method that is facilitating AI.
 Artificial Intelligence can be defined as any
code, technique or algorithm which enables a
machine to mimic human cognitive processes.

Machine Learning is subset of AI where the

computers learns new things without being
programmed explicitly to do so.

Deep Learning is subset of Machine Learning

where the algorithms mimic the human brain to
learn.
 Analogy – Math Class

Give many Test to check, if

Teach Concept
problems to solve learning has
beforehand
with final answers happened

Lets Assume, the concepts is not taught beforehand -

Many Problems Students Answers

(Data) (Algorithm) (Label)

After tons of practice problems,
Say one of the students finds some sort of pattern to utilize in order to
solve the problems.

Test the student –

Give him new set of exam questions
Compare generated answers to actual answers

Check for Accuracy

 Two things to note -

Individual students have different styles of learning.

1. Similarly, ML algorithms have different ways of

attempting to find patterns within input data.

2. These different ways makes certain ML algorithms

robust to certain type of data.
 Deep Learning
Deep Learning is a subfield of
machine learning concerned with
algorithms inspired by the
structure and function of the brain
called artificial neural networks.

DL is not one algorithm but a

framework of many different ML
algorithms working together to
process complex data inputs.
 Machine Learning Applications in CEM
Construction Safety
• ML and Computer Vision
• Cameras take 1000s of images from
a construction site
• Algorithms are trained to identify
various items in the image through
supervised learning
• Once trained, the algorithm
identifies items from images from
any construction site.
Journal of Construction Engineering & Management, ASCE, Publication – September 25, 2018

Cost estimation model for predicting construction costs taking into account economic variables
and indices

Data: 372 low to midrise building costs

Algorithms used: Unsupervised Deep Boltzmann Machine (DBM) learning model, with softmax
layer and SVM

Results obtained by this model were compared to BPNN only models and SVM models.
Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, ASCE, Publication – April 18, 2020
Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, ASCE, Publication – December 21, 2019
 Augmented Reality
• Augmented reality and artificial
intelligence are distinct
technologies, but they can be used
together to create unique
experiences.
• In augmented reality, a 3D
representation of the world must be
constructed to allow digital objects
to exist alongside physical ones.
• Deep neural networks can detect
vertical and horizontal planes,
estimate depth and segment images
for realistic occlusion, and even
infer 3D positions of objects in real-
time.
Augmented Reality in Use
 Physical Robotics
• Rover on top of the Dozer
tracks the NEZ coordinates in
real time with Satellite via GPS.

• The 3D model of the job site

(existing Vs Planned) instructs
the Dozer of the dimensions of
excavation.

• Proximity Sensors in the front

and at the back, helps the Dozer
to track objects around it.

• Productivity and accuracy

increase in the benefit and
reduces the Cost to Benefit
Ratio.
Physical Robotics
 Robotic Process Automation
• Robotic process automation (RPA) is the term used for software
tools that partially or fully automate human activities that are
manual, rule-based, and repetitive.

• They work by replicating the actions of an actual human

interacting with one or more software applications to perform
tasks such as data entry, process standard transactions, or
respond to simple customer service queries.
 Robotic Process Automation
• Invoicing – A case study
One construction company was having issues with generating accurate
invoices.
One Invoice - required, on average, more than 150 pages of back-up data
that had to be pulled from five to 10 different systems.
Compiling supporting documentation for a single invoice required four to
five hours of manual effort.
The company hired an IT RPA solution to set up a automated invoicing.
Working in collaboration with the billing department, the combined team
gained a detailed understanding of the processes and systems necessary to
create the invoice.
The resulting solution, which took approximately eight weeks to design and
implement, has reduced the average time to create an invoice from 4.5 hours
to 11 minutes.
The bots are doing the work of an equivalent of 20 FTEs who were
processing the thousands of invoices each month.
 Others Forms of AI in CEM
• Knowledge-Based System –
Digital Twins
 To get Started
Math you should know if you actually want to be a very good data scientist:
• Calculus
• Differential equations
• Mathematical statistics
• Optimization
• Regression and Time Series
• Probability Distributions
 ML Course

11 Week Course covering the basics of algorithms of ML

Course Instructor – Andrew NG – Considered as the Father of ML

 Peer Reviewed Journals

• ASCE – American Society of Civil Engineers

• The Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
• The Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering

• Elsevier
• Automation in Construction
 Data Sets
• Biggest Drawback in to solve Civil Engineering Problems
• Not many datasets are available on dataset websites
• You have to create your own datasets – Images, Videos, Estimation
project costs, schedules.
• Another Problem – Algorithms need labelled datasets in Millions to
learn.
 Computing Power
Recommended -
• Processor – Intel Xeon E2630 v4 – 10 core processor, 2.2 GHz with Turbo boost
up to 3.1 GHz. 25 MB Cache
• RAM – 128 GB DDR4 2133 MHz
• 2 TB Hard Disk (7200 RPM) + 512 GB SSD
• GPU – NVidia TitanX Pascal (12 GB VRAM) (Around Rs. 2 Lakhs)

University of Illinois, Blue Waters

• Blue Waters, uses hundreds of thousands of computational cores

to achieve peak performance of more than 13 quadrillion
calculations per second.
• If you could multiply two numbers together every second, it
would take you millions of years to do what Blue Waters does
each second.
 On a Personal Note -
• PhD Research Area – AI applications in CEM

• Seems daunting in the beginning as it is interdisciplinary.

• Push your limits to understand the MATH behind the Algorithms and
connect it to Civil Engineering.

• It’s a road less travelled by.

• If math, coding and solving Civil Engineering problems with

technology is your cup of tea, then you should pursue it, but develop
mental fortitude as it requires a lot of patience to learn skills from a
different discipline.
Thank you