Formalization and automation of time-space conflict analysis

With increasing pressure for shorter delivery schedules, space is a critical resource at construction sites. Current industry practice lacks a formalized approach or tool to help project managers analyze spatial conflicts between activities prior to construction. Consequently, time-space conflicts occur frequently and significantly impact construction processes. Time-space conflicts have three characteristics that impede the detection and analysis of time-space conflicts prior to construction: (1) They have a temporal aspect; (2) they have different forms creating different problems; and (3) multiple types of spatial conflicts can exist between a pair of conflicting activities. This research formalizes time-space conflict analysis as a classification task and addresses these challenges by automatically (1) detecting conflicts in four dimensions; (2) categorizing the conflicts according to a taxonomy of time-space conflicts that is developed; and (3) prioritizing the multiple types of conflicts between the same pair of conflicting activities. This research extends previous research on construction space management by developing a taxonomy of time-space conflicts and by defining an approach for the analysis of time-space conflicts prior to construction.