A Construction Process Simulation Web Service

This paper explores the potential of construction process simulation as a web service. This web service, or web based application, exploits the high accessibility characteristic of the web, to support easier information exchange and peer collaboration. Two concepts are discussed and presented. One web based prototype called “Interactive Simulation System (ISS)” allows a user unfamiliar with simulation concepts to evaluate construction process productivity (Kim 2000). A second prototypical web service called Web CYCLONE is built upon CYCLONE (Halpin 1973; Halpin and Riggs 1992) methodology and provides the power of simulation to all user levels, novice or professional. The framework of Web CYCLONE is a threeleveled structure, namely novice, intermediate and advanced level, in that each level caters to user needs depending upon the level of sophistication of the user. An asphalt paving operation simulation model is used to demonstrate each prototypical system.