Managing Uncertainty and Data

Construction Managers and Engineers have to make decisions on a daily basis. In some cases, the decisions are critical and can cause a project to be successful or to fail. To ensure rational, unbiased decision-making, construction managers or engineers should be able to observe and make sense of different types of data. They should be able to identify the data they need, the most convenient manner of organizing or presenting the data so it can be better understood and the information they can safely derive from the data. The last point is paramount because any dataset is associated with a given amount of uncertainty. In other words, construction management implies making decisions in conditions of uncertainty, thus, identifying and incorporating such uncertainty into the process will result in well-grounded decisions.

The course Managing Uncertainty and Data (MUD) will provide students with the knowledge and tools to adequately deal with data and uncertainty to support their decision-making process during their professional development as construction managers and engineers.

The topics presented in the MUD course can be classified into data- and uncertainty-related as follows;

DATA

• Data collection: sensing and monitoring

• Observation theory

• Model-based data generation

• Sensitivity analysis

UNCERTAINTY

• Probability theory

• Risk and reliability

• Uncertainty quantification