The purpose of this article is to present the preparation of Project Risk Assessment Methodology and its mitigation in complex construction projects. The main text provides a summary of the approach, the method used and the findings. The conclusions have been drawn that the proper tools for quantifying risks have to be based on the criteria specific for mathematical statistic and probability or at least fuzziness. Function, which makes possible to categorize any risks into one of the five categories, is a combination of probability and the impact on one of the items: people and their safety or budget, cost, schedule and planning or quality and performance. An attempt was made to express numerically the relationship between risks impacts and their level of likelihood. Also, a method of associating the influence of projects risks impacts on the extent of the likelihood of project risk occurrence which makes possible to determine the direction and the strength of this relationship was presented.
Supplementing well recognised practical models of project and construction management, based on probabilistic and fuzzy events may make possible to transfer the weight of the change and extra orders assessment from the qualitative form to a quantitative one. This assessment, however, is naturally burdened with an immeasurable, subjective aspect. Elaboration of probability of occurrence in a construction project unforeseen building works requires application (in addition to the non-measureable, qualitative criteria) of measurable (quantitative) criteria which still appear during construction project implementation. In reimbursable engineering contracts, a random event described as an extra, supplementary building work has a random character and occurs with a specific likelihood. In lump sum contracts, on the other hand, such a random event has a fuzzy character and its occurrence is defined in a linear manner by the function of affiliation to the set of fuzzy events being identical with unforeseen events. The strive for quantitative presentation of criteria regarded by nature as qualitative and the intention to determine relations between them led to the application of the fuzzy sets theory to this issue. Their properties enable description of the unforeseen works of construction projects in an unambiguous, quantitative way.
During implementation of construction projects, durations of activities are affected by various factors. Because of this, both during the planning phase of the project as well as the construction phase, managers try to estimate, or predict, the length of any delays that may occur. Such estimates allow for the ability to take appropriate action in terms of planning and management during the execution of construction works. This paper presents the use of the non-deterministic concept for describing the uncertainty of estimating works duration. The concept uses the theory of fuzzy sets. The author describes a method for fuzzy estimations of construction works duration based on the fact that uncertain data is an inherent factor in the conditions of construction projects. An example application of the method is presented. The author shows a fuzzy estimation for the duration of an activity, taking into consideration the distorting influence caused by malfunctioning construction equipment and delivery delays of construction materials.
New frequency domain methods for stability analysis of linear continuous-time fractional order systems with delays of the retarded type are given. The methods are obtained by generalisation to the class of fractional order systems with delays of the Mikhailov stability criterion and the modified Mikhailov stability criterion known from the theory of natural order systems without and with delays. The study is illustrated by numerical examples of time-delay systems of commensurate and non-commensurate fractional orders.
Construction projects, even exemplarily planned and organized, bear a risk of unforeseen events and problems which can result in completion of the works after the deadline, that is delays. The construction of bridges is an inseparable part of road and rail projects and construction and expansion of the transport network. The paper aims at finding a relationship between the independent variables characterizing bridge projects and the delays during their implementation. Two alternative models were proposed to solve the problem: logit and probit. The data set comprising road and rail bridges built in Poland in the last 12 years (2005–2017) was used to build the models. The evaluation, quality and accuracy parameters of proposed models were determined in the final part of the paper.
For many years, a digital waveguide model is being used for sound propagation in the modeling of the vocal tract with the structured and uniform mesh of scattering junctions connected by same delay lines. There are many varieties in the formation and layouts of the mesh grid called topologies. Current novel work has been dedicated to the mesh of two-dimensional digital waveguide models of sound propagation in the vocal tract with the structured and non-uniform rectilinear grid in orientation. In this work, there are two types of delay lines: one is called a smaller-delay line and other is called a larger-delay line. The larger-delay lines are the double of the smaller delay lines. The scheme of using the combination of both smaller- and larger-delay lines generates the non-uniform rectilinear two-dimensional waveguide mesh. The advantage of this approach is the ability to get a transfer function without fractional delay. This eliminates the need to get interpolation for the approximation of fractional delay and give efficient simulation for sound wave propagation in the two-dimensional waveguide modeling of the vocal tract. The simulation has been performed by considering the vowels /ɔ/, /a/, /i/ and /u/ in this work. By keeping the same sampling frequency, the standard two-dimensional waveguide model with uniform mesh is considered as our benchmark model. The results and efficiency of the proposed model have compared with our benchmark model.
The stability analysis for discrete-time fractional linear systems with delays is presented. The state-space model with a time shift in the difference is considered. Necessary and sufficient conditions for practical stability and for asymptotic stability have been established. The systems with only one matrix occurring in the state equation at a delayed moment have been also considered. In this case analytical conditions for asymptotic stability have been given. Moreover parametric descriptions of the boundary of practical stability and asymptotic stability regions have been presented.
The positive (minimal) realization problem for a class of singular discrete-time linear single-input, single-output systems with delays in state and delays in control is addressed. Solvability conditions for the positive (minimal) realization problem are established. It is shown that there exists a positive (minimal) realization of an improper transfer function T(z) = n(z) / d(z) if the coefficients of polynomial n(z) are non-negative and of the polynomial d(z) are non-positive except the leading one, which should be positive. A procedure for computation of the positive (minimal) realization of the transfer function is proposed and illustrated by an example.
Simple necessary and sufficient conditions for robust stability of the positive linear discrete-time systems with delays with linear uncertainty structure in two cases: 1) unity rank uncertainty structure, 2) non-negative perturbation matrices, are established. The proposed conditions are compared with the suitable conditions for the standard systems. The considerations are illustrated by numerical examples.
Simple new necessary and sufficient conditions for asymptotic stability of the positive linear discrete-time systems with delays in states are established. It is shown that asymptotic stability of the system is equivalent to asymptotic stability of the corresponding positive discrete-time system without delays of the same size. The considerations are illustrated by numerical examples.
Code Excited Linear Prediction (CELP) algorithms are proposed for compression of speech in 8 kHz band at switched or variable bit rate and algorithmic delay not exceeding 2 msec. Two structures of Low-Delay CELP coders are analyzed: Low-delay sparse excitation and mixed excitation CELP. Sparse excitation is based on MP-MLQ and multilayer models. Mixed excitation CELP algorithm stems from the narrowband G.728 standard. As opposed to G.728 LD-CELP coder, mixed excitation codebook consists of pseudorandom vectors and sequences obtained with Long-Term Prediction (LTP). Variable rate coding consists in maximizing vector dimension while keeping the required speech quality. Good speech quality (MOS=3.9 according to PESQ algorithm) is obtained at average bit rate 33.5 kbit/sec.
The aim of this publication is to design a procedure for the synthesis of an IDT (interdigital transducer) with diluted electrodes. The paper deals with the surface acoustic waves (SAW) and the theory of synthesis of the asymmetrical delay line with the interdigital transducer with diluted electrodes. The authors developed a theory, design, and implementation of the proposed design. They also measured signals. The authors analysed acoustoelectronic components with SAW: PLF 13, PLR 40, delay line with PAV 44 PLO. The presented applications have a potential practical use.