Applications of case-based reasoning in construction engineering and management

The major purpose of this paper is to introduce the basic concept of Case-based Reasoning (CBR) and to discuss its feasible applications in construction engineering and management. CBR is a new technique in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) domain, it solves or provides suggestions for the current problem by remembering and learning from results of the past cases. In the experience-oriented construction industry, knowledge and judgments of past experience are key factors to resolving problems that may reoccur. It is concluded that CBR fits into computer application needs in the industry and that applying CBR to construction engineering and management may overcome the drawbacks of traditional expert systems and neural networks approaches. A comparison among CBR, expert systems, and neural networks is also provided in this paper.