Automatic Compliance Checking (ACC) within the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) sector necessitates automating the interpretation of building regulations to achieve its full potential. Converting textual rules into machine-readable formats is challenging due to the complexities of natural language and the scarcity of resources for advanced Machine Learning (ML). Addressing these challenges, we introduce CODE-ACCORD, a dataset of 862 sentences from the building regulations of England and Finland. Only the self-contained sentences, which express complete rules without needing additional context, were considered as they are essential for ACC. Each sentence was manually annotated with entities and relations by a team of 12 annotators to facilitate machine-readable rule generation, followed by careful curation to ensure accuracy. The final dataset comprises 4,297 entities and 4,329 relations across various categories, serving as a robust ground truth. CODE-ACCORD supports a range of ML and Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks, including text classification, entity recognition, and relation extraction. It enables applying recent trends, such as deep neural networks and large language models, to ACC.

The significant impact of the built environment on resource consumption and waste production has led to calls for a shift towards a circular economy model that maximizes the efficient use of resources. This study explores the use of digital product passports (DPPs) to improve how we manage products throughout their lifecycle. However, dealing with the complexity and large volume of data in DPPs can be challenging in terms of effective information management and utilization. We address this issue by adopting a modular ontological approach to systematically capture product lifecycle information from its origin to its end-of-life phase. To ensure interoperability and reusability of the ontology, we annotate key concepts and relationships using International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards that promote circular economy. Our research led to the development of several ontology modules derived from literature reviews and interviews conducted with industry and academia experts who specialize in sustainability. These modules were then integrated to create a digital product passport ontology. The study demonstrates the feasibility of using a modular ontology approach to manage the complex information inherent in DPPs paving the way for more sustainable management practices in the built environment sector. 

In this paper, we focus on the crucial task of understanding and modeling pedestrian behavior, which is essential for numerous applications. We introduce a semantic representation of pedestrian crossing behavior. The representation is to capture the sub-events within a behavior and the spatial-temporal evolution of interactions between pedestrians and other objects involved in crossing events. We demonstrate its practical application by utilizing it to analyze pedestrian crossing behavior from road user movement data (i.e. trajectories). By constructing a knowledge graph from detailed road user dynamics data using this representation, we enable queries that address safety concerns related to pedestrian crossing behavior, aiding traffic engineers in their work on urban traffic infrastructure design.

The Scheil–Gulliver equation is essential for assessing solid fractions during alloy solidification in materials science. Despite the prevalent use of the Calculation of Phase Diagrams (CALPHAD) method, its computational intensity and time are limiting the simulation efficiency. Recently, Artificial Intelligence has emerged as a potent tool in materials science, offering robust and reliable predictive modeling capabilities. This study introduces an ensemble-based method that has the potential to enhance the prediction of the partitioning coefficient (k) in the Scheil equation by inputting various alloy compositions. The findings demonstrate that this approach can predict the temperature and solid fraction at the eutectic temperature with an accuracy exceeding 90%, while the accuracy for k prediction surpasses 70%. Additionally, a case study on a commercial alloy revealed that the model's predictions are within a 5°C deviation from experimental results, and the predicted solid fraction at the eutectic temperature is within a 15% difference of the values obtained from the CALPHAD model.

Both standards and ontologies are among the important components to realize the vision of BIM (Building Information Modeling). They provide a community consensus for interpretation, communication and interoperability of building data. This consensus is pivotal in enabling diverse stakeholders and systems to seamlessly collaborate and share data across the entire building life cycle. In this paper we describe the development of ontologies for building product properties, aligning with standards, and demonstrate their usage in achieving semantic interoperability. First, a top-domain ontology, BPPO (Buiding Product Property Ontology), is developed for building product properties. This top-domain ontology is used to guide the development of domain ontologies for properties in different categories of products or groups of product categories. Subsequently, a domain ontology, LPPO (Lighting Product Property Ontology), is built for lighting product properties, with guidance from BPPO, in this work. The ontological terminologies of both BPPO and LPPO are aligned with the standards set forth by the BIM community. Furthermore, the ontologies have been used in an application to support and enhance the interoperability between the manufacturer’s product database and the BIM platform.

To satisfy the rising demand for higher product quality and giga-casting requirements, the casting process is undergoing significant changes. However, current control methods rely significantly on human expertise and experience, making process availability and stability difficult to ensure. The semisolid casting process is more complicated than conventional liquid casting due to the additional casting parameters incorporated during the slurry preparation, which can have an effect on the quality of the final product. Therefore, an efficient tool is required to simplify the complete process of semisolid casting. The introduction of an AI system to aid in the supervision of the casting manufacturing procedure is one potential solution. This paper introduces a new casting system named”Smart-Cast” developed for this specific purpose. The paper describes the functions of the system and its current development process. Using an AI system as an assistant can help to achieve the goal of enhancing the efficacy of casting process control, and it can also help foundries step into the Industry 4.0 era.

The built environment is heavily dependent on wasteful linear economic models and needs to transition to the circular economy (CE). One of the key enablers of CE is Digital Product Passports (DPPs). However, determining the necessary information and selecting suitable technologies remains to be challenging in practical implementations. This research aims to present a framework for implementing DPPs using Knowledge Graphs (KGs). A literature review was conducted to identify the key components of the framework. The result shows that the key elements encompass use cases identification, data collection, modelling, integration, governance, access and querying, and maintenance and updating.

Semisolid casting has emerged as an attractivealternative to conventional casting methods due to its potentialto yield superior mechanical properties, reduce environmentalpollution, and decrease production costs. However, optimizingprocess parameters and controlling the casting process remainschallenging. Process control largely relies on human expertise,associated with significant time and cost expenditures. Inresponse, this study presents a third-circle research project toinvestigate the correlation between the casting process and thesolidification process. The study proposes leveraging AI technologyto digitize the entire process control, thereby increasing thereliability and stability of cast products’ quality. The researchwill focus on understanding the key factors influencing thecasting process and developing an AI-based decision supportsystem to aid in process parameter selection and optimization.The outcomes of this study are expected to contribute to thedevelopment of more reliable and efficient semisolid castingprocesses.

Resource-efficient manufacturing is a foundation for sustainable and circular manufacturing. Semi-solid processing typically reduces material loss and improves productivity but generally requires a better understanding and control of the solidification of the cast material. Thermal analysis is commonly used in high-pressure die casting (HPDC) processes to determine casting process parameters, such as liquidus and solidus temperatures. However, this method is inadequate for semi-solid casting processes because the eutectic temperature is also a crucial parameter for successful semi-solid casting. This study explores the feasibility of using machine learning and artificial neural networks to predict fundamental values in Al-Si alloy casting. The Thermo-Calc 2022 software Scheil-Gulliver calculation function was used to generate the training and the test datasets, which included features such as melting temperature, alpha aluminium solidification temperature, eutectic temperature, and the solid fraction amounts at eutectic temperature. The results show that both models have a symmetric mean absolute percentage error (SMAPE) of less than 2 % with temperature prediction, with the machine learning model achieving a better accuracy of less than 1 %. A case study comparing practical measurements with prediction results is also discussed, demonstrating the potential of AI methods for predicting semi-solid casting processes.