Formalization and Automation of Time-Space Conflict Analysis

With increasing pressure for shorter delivery schedules, space is a critical resource at construction sites. Current industry practice lacks a formalized approach or a tool to help project managers analyze spatial conflicts between activities prior to construction. Consequently, time-space conflicts occur frequently and significantly impact construction processes. Time-space conflicts have three characteristics which impede the detection and analysis of time-space conflicts prior to construction: (1) They have a temporal aspect, (2) They have different forms creating different problems, (3) Multiple types of spatial conflicts can exist between a pair of conflicting activities. This research formalizes time-space conflict analysis as a classification task and addresses these challenges by automatically (1) detecting conflicts in four dimensions, (2) categorizing the conflicts according to a taxonomy of time-space conflicts developed, and (3) prioritizing the multiple types of conflicts between the same pair of conflicting activities. This research extends previous research on construction space management by developing a taxonomy of time-space conflicts and by defining an approach for the analysis of time-space conflicts prior to construction. 1 Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 152133890, [email protected] 2 Associate Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and (by courtesy) Computer Science, Director, Center for Integrated Facility Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, [email protected] 3 Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, [email protected] 4 Professor, Department of Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, [email protected]