Visualization Configuration Model for Integrating Presentation of Construction Project Management Data

Abstract

Construction management tasks involve and produce voluminous, multidimensional data. Although many tasks currently are supported with software tools, it still requires great mental effort for project personnel to read information in datasets and analyze relationships from one dataset to another. Information visualization is widely considered to hold the potential of providing insights from datasets by visually presenting project management data and information relationships. Many visualization solutions are available to the construction domain, but they usually focus on specific application tasks, lacking flexibility and data integration in user-interaction for construction management. This paper proposes a Visualization Configuration Model (VCM), a novel visualization technique for construction project management. Integrated with the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) data model, the VCM is developed to be a configurable visualization environment, facilitating user-interactions to explore voluminous information. The model framework and underlying theories for integrating model components are provided. Through analysis of two case scenarios, the paper demonstrates the capability of the VCM supporting view configuration and illustrates the potential of visualization to benefit construction management tasks.