Software and Mobile Apps as a Strategy for Productivity Improvement in the Construction Industry

The construction industry, known for its low productivity, is increasingly utilising software and mobile apps to enhance efficiency. However, more comprehensive research is needed to understand the effectiveness of these technology applications. The PRISMA principles utilised a scoping review methodology to ascertain pertinent studies and extract significant findings. From 2013 onwards, articles containing data on mobile applications or software designed to enhance productivity in the construction sector were obtained from multiple databases, including Emerald Insight, Science Direct, IEEE Xplore, and Google Scholar. After evaluating 2604 articles, 30 were determined to be pertinent to the study and were subsequently analysed for the review. The review identified five key themes: effectiveness, benefits, successful implementation examples, obstacles and limitations, and a comprehensive list of software and mobile apps. In addition, 71 software and mobile apps have shown potentially how these technologies can improve communication, collaboration, project management, real-time collaboration, document management, and on-the-go project information and estimating processes in the construction industry, increasing efficiency and productivity. The findings highlight the potential of these technologies such as Automation, Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID), Building Information Modeling (BIM), Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Internet of Things (IoT) to improve efficiency and communication in the construction industry. Despite challenges such as cost, lack of awareness, resistance to change, compatibility concerns, human resources, technological and security concerns and licensing issues, the study identifies specific mobile applications and software with the potential to enhance efficiency significantly, improve productivity and streamline workflows. The broader societal impacts of construction software and mobile app development include increased efficiency, job creation, and sustainability.

Research on Software Production Support Structure

Firstly, it is found that process design is necessary for software process improvement after analyzing its complexity. Then, research methods and concepts framework are put forward, and the research content is also provided. The find-ings of research, including propositions of complexity of software process, the work program of complexity of software process improvement, software enterprise model and software production support structure are clarified. Finally, the demonstration, including mindbugs (cognitive barriers) in software process and the knowledge integration support structure of quality software production, is illustrated with case study. It is concluded that the research is useful for both software production and knowledge economy in the future.

Application and Analysis of Computer Virtual Simulation Technology in Three-dimensional Animation Production

With the continuous promotion of computer technology, the application system of virtual simulation technology has been further optimized and improved, and has been widely used in various fields of social development, such as urban construction, interior design, industrial simulation and tourism teaching. China's three-dimensional animation production started relatively late, but has achieved good results with the support of related advanced technology in the process of development. Computer virtual simulation technology is an important technical support in the production of three-dimensional animation. In this paper, firstly, the related content of computer virtual simulation technology was introduced. Then, the specific application of this technology in the production of three-dimensional animation was further elaborated, so as to provide some reference for the improvement of the production effect of three-dimensional animation in the future.

Design and Implementation of Traceability Management System of Agricultural Products Quality and Safety Based on Domestic Basic Software of China

[Objective] To establish the traceability mechanism of agricultural products safety, and the application of promote domestic based software in the supervision area of agricultural products quality and safety. [Method] Through the analysis on the circulation characteristics of agricultural products, like fruits, vegetables, livestock and poultry, the agricultural products quality safety management and traceability query business component libraries were designed. Based on the run-time-supporting environment provided by domestic based software, traceability management system of agricultural products quality and safety was constructed. [Result] The traceability management system provided the information interaction and comprehensive management platform of agricultural product quality and safety based on domestic based software for the government, enterprises and consumers. [Conclusion] Through the application demonstration, the quality control and information traceability of full circulation of agricultural products was achieved effective and reliably, and the management level of agricultural products quality and safety was improved.

Identifying Counterexamples Without Variability in Software Product Line Model Checking

Product detection based on state abstraction technologies in the software product line(SPL)is more complex when compared to a single system.This variability constitutes a new complexity,and the counterexample may be valid for some products but spurious for others.In this paper,we found that spurious products are primarily due to the failure states,which correspond to the spurious counterexamples.The violated products correspond to the real counterexamples.Hence,identifying counterexamples is a critical problem in detecting violated products.In our approach,we obtain the violated products through the genuine counterexamples,which have no failure state,to avoid the tedious computation of identifying spurious products dealt with by the existing algorithm.This can be executed in parallel to improve the efficiency further.Experimental results showthat our approach performswell,varying with the growth of the system scale.By analyzing counterexamples in the abstract model,we observed that spurious products occur in the failure state.The approach helps in identifying whether a counterexample is spurious or genuine.The approach also helps to check whether a failure state exists in the counterexample.The performance evaluation shows that the proposed approach helps significantly in improving the efficiency of abstraction-based SPL model checking.

A Model for Software Product Quality Prediction

When the expression “Software Quality” is used, we usually think in terms of an excellent software product that fulfills our expectations. These expectations are based on the intended use. Number of models has been proposed for evaluation of software quality based on various characteristics. In this paper quality of software product is defined in terms of basic components as constituent part of any program or software and proposed a software quality prediction model based on basic components. It has been justified with example that if any software quality model uses the tacit knowledge that will be better than any other model in terms of quality.

Learning to Support Derivation of Adaptable Products in Software Product Lines

Software product line engineering is a large scale development paradigm based on mass production. It consists in building a common platform from which a set of products can be derived. Under the constraints of continuous evolution and costs optimization, the derivation process must be able to answer customers’ requirements and provide adequate products in a short time without defects. However, this purpose cannot be achieved if the customer must wait for the change is implemented in the common platform. In this paper, we describe our work which proposes a framework to manage derivation of adaptable products. An adaptable product is obtained by deriving the most similar product from the common platform and changing it to support the new requirements. The aim of the framework is to give quick response to the customers need while the new requirements are being implemented in the common platform. The framework includes tools for processing natural language requirements, computing the similarity between products on the basis of their requirements, and the product adaptation effort measuring.

The Measurement of the Software Ecosystem’s Productivity with GitHub

Software productivity has always been one of the most critical metrics for measuring software development.However,with the open-source community(e.g.,GitHub),new software development models are emerging.The traditional productivity metrics do not provide a comprehensive measure of the new software development models.Therefore,it is necessary to build a productivity measurement model of open source software ecosystem suitable for the open-source community’s production activities.Based on the natural ecosystem,this paper proposes concepts related to the productivity of open source software ecosystems,analyses influencing factors of open source software ecosystem productivity,and constructs a measurement model using these factors.Model validation experiments show that the model is compatible with a large portion of open source software ecosystems in GitHub.This study can provide references for participants of the open-source software ecosystem to choose proper types of ecosystems.The study also provides a basis for ecosystem health assessment for researchers interested in ecosystem quality.

What can Software Engineers Learn from Manufacturing to Improve Software Process and Product?

The purpose of this paper is to provide the software engineer with tools from the field of manufacturing as an aid to improving software process and product quality. Process involves classical manufacturing methods, such as statistical quality control applied to product testing, which is designed to monitor and correct the process when the process yields product quality that fails to meet specifications. Product quality is measured by metrics, such as failure count occurring on software during testing. When the process and product quality are out of control, we show what remedial action to take to bring both the process and product under control. NASA Space Shuttle failure data are used to illustrate the process methods.

Conversion of Object Oriented System into Software Product Line with Delta Modeling Abstract Behavioral Specification

This article contains a system conversion from object oriented design into Software Product Line (SPL) using delta modeling of Abstract Behavioral Specification (ABS). ABS is a modeling language which targets system with high level of variety and supports SPL development with delta modeling. The case study of this thesis is a digital library system called Library Automation and Digital Archive (LONTAR). Originally, LONTAR only uses SOAP-based web service. With ABS, LONTAR will be converted into SPL and implement another web service called REST. The motivation of this conversion of LONTAR from object oriented into SPL is because it is easier to develop system with ABS than using regular object oriented. Product definition in ABS is relatively easier than creating a new subclass and do customization to make it works well.

Binary Oriented Feature Selection for Valid Product Derivation in Software Product Line

Software Product Line(SPL)is a group of software-intensive systems that share common and variable resources for developing a particular system.The feature model is a tree-type structure used to manage SPL’s common and variable features with their different relations and problem of Crosstree Constraints(CTC).CTC problems exist in groups of common and variable features among the sub-tree of feature models more diverse in Internet of Things(IoT)devices because different Internet devices and protocols are communicated.Therefore,managing the CTC problem to achieve valid product configuration in IoT-based SPL is more complex,time-consuming,and hard.However,the CTC problem needs to be considered in previously proposed approaches such as Commonality VariabilityModeling of Features(COVAMOF)andGenarch+tool;therefore,invalid products are generated.This research has proposed a novel approach Binary Oriented Feature Selection Crosstree Constraints(BOFS-CTC),to find all possible valid products by selecting the features according to cardinality constraints and cross-tree constraint problems in the featuremodel of SPL.BOFS-CTC removes the invalid products at the early stage of feature selection for the product configuration.Furthermore,this research developed the BOFS-CTC algorithm and applied it to,IoT-based feature models.The findings of this research are that no relationship constraints and CTC violations occur and drive the valid feature product configurations for the application development by removing the invalid product configurations.The accuracy of BOFS-CTC is measured by the integration sampling technique,where different valid product configurations are compared with the product configurations derived by BOFS-CTC and found 100%correct.Using BOFS-CTC eliminates the testing cost and development effort of invalid SPL products.

Green Measurements for Software Product Based on Sustainability Dimensions

Software is a central component in the modern world and vastly affects the environment’s sustainability.The demand for energy and resource require-ments is rising when producing hardware and software units.Literature study reveals that many studies focused on green hardware;however,limited efforts were made in the greenness of software products.Green software products are necessary to solve the issues and problems related to the long-term use of soft-ware,especially from a sustainability perspective.Without a proper mechanism for measuring the greenness of a particular software product executed in a specific environment,the mentioned benefits will not be attained.Currently,there are not enough works to address this problem,and the green status of software products is uncertain and unsure.This paper aims to identify the green measurements based on sustainable dimensions in a software product.The second objective is to reveal the relationships between the elements and measurements through empirical study.The study is conducted in two phases.Thefirst phase is the theoretical phase,where the main components,measurements and practices that influence the sustainability of a software product are identified.The second phase is the empirical study that involved 103 respondents in Malaysia investigating current practices of green software in the industrial environment and further identifying the main sustainability dimensions and measurements and their impact on achiev-ing green software products.This study has revealed seven green measurements of software product:Productivity,Usability,Cost Reduction,Employee Support,Energy Efficiency,Resource Efficiency and Tool Support.The relationships are statistically significant,with a significance level of less than 0.01(p=0.000).Thus,the hypothesised relationships were all accepted.The contributions of this study revolve around the research perspectives of the measurements to attain a green software product.

Quality-Oriented Software Product Line Architecture Design

Software architecture design is a critical step of software development. Currently, there are various design methods available and each is focusing on certain perspective of architecture design. Especially, quality-based methods have received a lot of attentions and have been well developed for single system architecture design. However, the use of quality-based design methods is limited in software product line (SPL) because of the complexity and variabilities existing in SPL architecture. In this paper, we introduce an extra view to the Quality-Driven Architecture Design and quality Analysis (QADA) method, in order to provide a more effective quality-based architecture design framework for SPL. In this framework, the quality attributes of a software system will be taken into account in the early stage of architecture design and the reference architecture of SPL will be elicited based on quality-related consideration.

Knowledge Management of Software Productivity and Development Time

In this paper, we identify a set of factors that may be used to forecast software productivity and software development time. Software productivity was measured in function points per person hours, and software development time was measured in number of elapsed days. Using field data on over 130 field software projects from various industries, we empirically test the impact of team size, integrated computer aided software engineering (ICASE) tools, software development type, software development platform, and programming language type on the software development productivity and development time. Our results indicate that team size, software development type, software development platform, and programming language type significantly impact software development productivity. However, only team size significantly impacts software development time. Our results indicate that effective management of software development teams, and using different management strategies for different software development type environments may improve software development productivity.

Online Fashion Retailer Bonobos Selects Gerber Technology's YuniquePLM^(TM) Industry-Tailored Software to Support Rapid Growth and Fast-Paced Product Innovation

Tolland,Connecticut,USA-Gerber Technology,a business unit of Gerber Scientific, Inc.(NYSE:GRB) and a world leader in automated CAD/CAM and PLM solutions for the apparel and flexible materials industry,announces that fast-growing internet retailer Bonobos,Inc. has selected the YuniquePLM product

Integration system research and development for three-dimensional laser scanning information visualization in goaf

An integration processing system of three-dimensional laser scanning information visualization in goaf was developed. It is provided with multiple functions, such as laser scanning information management for goaf, cloud data de-noising optimization, construction, display and operation of three-dimensional model, model editing, profile generation, calculation of goaf volume and roof area, Boolean calculation among models and interaction with the third party soft ware. Concerning this system with a concise interface, plentiful data input/output interfaces, it is featured with high integration, simple and convenient operations of applications. According to practice, in addition to being well-adapted, this system is favorably reliable and stable.

A Comparison of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean shipyard production technology

This paper compares Chinese, Korean, and Japanese shipyard production technology. Development in the world shipbuilding over recent years has influenced focus areas related to shipyard manufacturing technologies and product performance. Software systems, information technology, production technology, and local challenges of shipyards are compared with shipbuilding outputs among these three countries. Various technologies developments, shipyard production and the problems in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean shipyards are discussed respectively. Finally, future areas of research are pointed out.

3-D FRACTURE PROPAGATION SIMULATION AND PRODUCTION PREDICTION IN COALBED

In accordance with the fracturing and producing mechanism in coalbed methane well, and combining the knowledge of fluid mechanics, linear elastic fracture mechanics, thermal transfer, computing mathematics and software engineering, the three-dimensional hydraulic fracture propagating and dynamical production predicting models for coalbed methane well is put forward. The fracture propagation model takes the variation of rock mechanical properties and in-situ stress distribution into consideration. The dynamic performance prediction model takes the gas production mechanism into consideration. With these models, a three-dimensional hydraulic fracturing optimum design software for coalbed methane well is developed, and its practicality and reliability have been proved by ex-ample computation.

A Semantic Metadata Enrichment Software Ecosystem (SMESE) Based on a Multi-Platform Metadata Model for Digital Libraries

Software industry has evolved to multi-product and multi-platform development based on a mix of proprietary and open source components. Such integration has occurred in software ecosystems through a software product line engineering (SPLE) process. However, metadata are underused in the SPLE and interoperability challenge. The proposed method is first, a semantic metadata enrichment software ecosystem (SMESE) to support multi-platform metadata driven applications, and second, based on mapping ontologies SMESE aggregates and enriches metadata to create a semantic master metadata catalogue (SMMC). The proposed SPLE process uses a component-based software development approach for integrating distributed content management enterprise applications, such as digital libraries. To perform interoperability between existing metadata models (such as Dublin Core, UNIMARC, MARC21, RDF/RDA and BIBFRAME), SMESE implements an ontology mapping model. SMESE consists of nine sub-systems: 1) Metadata initiatives & concordance rules;2) Harvesting of web metadata & data;3) Harvesting of authority metadata & data;4) Rule-based semantic metadata external enrichment;5) Rule-based semantic metadata internal enrichment;6) Semantic metadata external & internal enrichment synchronization;7) User interest-based gateway;8) Semantic master catalogue. To conclude, this paper proposes a decision support process, called SPLE decision support process (SPLE-DSP) which is then used by SMESE to support dynamic reconfiguration. SPLE-DSP consists of a dynamic and optimized metadata-based reconfiguration model. SPLE-DSP takes into account runtime metadata-based variability functionalities, context-awareness and self-adaptation. It also presents the design and implementation of a working prototype of SMESE applied to a semantic digital library.

THEORY AND APPLICATION OF FRACTIONAL STEP CHARACTERISTIC FINITE DIFFERENCE METHOD IN NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF SECOND ORDER ENHANCED OIL PRODUCTION

A kind of second-order implicit fractional step characteristic finite difference method is presented in this paper for the numerically simulation coupled system of enhanced （chemical） oil production in porous media. Some techniques, such as the calculus of variations, energy analysis method, commutativity of the products of difference operators, decomposition of high-order difference operators and the theory of a priori estimates are introduced and an optimal order error estimates in l^2 norm is derived. This method has been applied successfully to the numerical simulation of enhanced oil production in actual oilfields, and the simulation results ate quite interesting and satisfactory.