Enhancing Space Modeling and Mobile Resources Planning in Construction Operations Through A Simulation Driven Visualization Framework

Simulation modeling is a strong tool that has not been utilized to its expected potential in day to day construction industry activities. One of the reasons contributing to that is the inability of simulation models to depict changes in site space in an intuitive way. This research tries to address this limitation in simulation modeling by developing a simulation driven visualization (SDV) framework which helps in modeling changes in both: site space geometry and site layout, throughout a simulated construction project. This framework makes use of the robustness inherited in simulation techniques and 3D modeling to provide a powerful tool that addresses the inability of simulation models to represent construction sites’ spatial data in an intuitive way. The framework’s pathfinding mechanism extension (PME) builds on the framework ability to model changes in space, through performing tempo-spatial planning for resources mobilization in a dynamically changing site layout throughout the lifecycle of a construction project. This is done through the site mesh generation mechanism and the A* search algorithm implemented inside the framework. Simulation driven visualization is a relatively new area of research in the construction management field. This area of research integrates Computer-Aided Design (CAD) modeling with animation and simulation techniques to create SDV frameworks or mechanisms that build on the strengths of each of those individual components. Although the prominent of those frameworks have contributed much to this area of research in the construction management field, they do have some limitations. To achieve the aforementioned aims, this developed framework had to address some of the technical limitations that exist in the current construction research state of the art SDV mechanisms. This research presents a new SDV framework which uses distributed simulation as its foundation. In addition to using this framework to achieve the aforementioned goals, the framework is also used to validate construction logic and validate simulation models. The research also makes use of visual analytics and display design principles in the framework’s visualization component conceptual design and the transformation of the simulation’s object classes’ statuses into visualization behaviors, respectively.