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Applied AI in Infrastructure
Research supervisors: Professor Tim Broyd and Dr Ling Ma
Start date: September 2019
Vast amounts of data are collected and generated across all modern infrastructure projects within the UK. This is done, successfully, to aid visualisation, understanding and communication between various parties throughout a typical project lifecycle. Modern AI and Machine Learning (ML) techniques may provide ways to analyse the multidimensional data and deliver valuable real time insight into the complex world of infrastructure projects to support complex engineering risk management. ML is an effective predictive analytics tool and can extract trends, interrelationships, patterns of interest, and useful insights from interdependent, complex data sets. This would potentially accelerate learning by developing insights that could be shared and used for future projects across the organisation as well as supporting real time decision making during project delivery.
Research will be conducted in collaboration with a UK based Tier 1 contractor, Costain plc, to test the application of various ML techniques to deliver support for proactive programme and commercial risk management. Tools will be developed and tested that are embedded within the current Costain operational framework to allow for better decision making through greater awareness of progress, or lack thereof, and their contributing elements. Ultimately, this could lead to a more productive and reliable organisation to deliver better and more efficient infrastructure that underpins the wider economy.
