Dr Tom Beach
Reader in Construction Informatics
- beachth@cardiff.ac.uk
- +44 (0)29 2087 5796
- S0.12, Queen's Buildings - South Building, 5 The Parade, Newport Road, Cardiff, CF24 3AA
- Available for postgraduate supervision
Overview
I am a reader in Construction Informatics, I hold a PhD in Computer Science and have been working in the built environment research field for over 8 years.
I am passionate about applying state of the art computing technologies to deliver a safer, more efficient, more resilient built environment.
My research focuses on innovation in the built environment field underpinned by state of the art computing technologies. This combination of a background in Computer Science, a solid grounding in the built environment field, and expertise in Building Information Modelling (BIM) and built environment semantics, makes me ideally placed to conduct research towards creating a more intelligent, efficient and adaptable built environment.
More specifically, my research interests include: (a) specification and implementation of building/district/city data storage, (b) the Internet of Things(IoT) and its application to the monitoring and control of the built environment, (c) data analytics including machine learning and artificial intelligence, (d) application of cloud/distributed computing to data storage and processing for built environment applications and (e) the semantics of data within the built environment.
I am also heavily involved in the development of the Computation Urban Sustainability Platform and am the technical lead for this project.
I am currently conducted several funded research projects in these areas, and am active in publishing ( I have over 30 academic papers in peer reviewed journals) and reviewing papers. I am also available for postgraduate research supervision - please see Supervision for more information.
Related Links
Biography
I achieved my PhD degree in Computer Science in 2011. Between 2011 and 2014 I worked on a variety of projects related to BIM as a post doctoral research fellow. I have worked as a academic at Cardiff University since 2014.
Professional memberships
Member of the British Computer Society
Fellow of the Higher Education Society
Academic positions
My career as an academic includes:
2014->2018 - Lecturer - Cardiff University
2018->2020 - Senior Lecturer - Cardiff University
2020->Present - Reader - Cardiff University
Committees and reviewing
I was the chair of the organizing committee for European wide PRO-VE 2018 conference. The conference attracted, 80+ internationally reputable academics and proceedings of the conference were published as a book by Springer. My role was to coordinate all local arrangements for the conference as well as assisting the program chairs in formulating the scientific program and chairing a special track session within the conference.
I am also conference co-chair for the IEEE ICE 2020/2021 conference that was hosted virutally in 2020 and will be hosted physically in Cardiff in 2021. As part of this event, in addition to managing local arrangements, I am be responsible for allocating peer review, and making decisions on the formulation of the scientific programme. The ICE conference regularly attracts 120+ academics and industrialists from across Europe and the world.
I am also a reviewer for the following international journals:
- Journal of Expert Systems with Applications
- Journal of Civil Engineering and Management
- Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering
- Journal of Hydrology
- Journal of Future Generations of Computer Systems
- Automation in Construction
- IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems
- Energies
- Journal of Cloud Computing
- Semantic Web Journal
- Advanced Engineering Informatics
- Water
I am a member of the EPSRC peer review colleage and I am on the Program Committee for the International IEEE/ACM International Conference on Big Data Computing, Applications and Technologies
Publications
We are currently unable to retrieve the list of publications. Visit our institutional repository.Teaching
I am currently Civil Engineering MSc Tutor, looking after the day to day running of all civil engineering MSc Courses.
I also teach the following undergraduate courses:
- Civil Engineering Computing I - Basic Programming and Applications of Computing in the Built Environment
- Computing II - Advanced Programming and Introduction to BIM technologies in the built environment
- Engineering Analysis - Numerical Methods and their implementation in computer programming.
Contracts
| Title | People | Sponsor | Value | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Discipline Hoppping for Freshwater Solutions | Durance, I, Beach T etc al | NERC | £65k | 1/1/2022->30/4/2022 |
| Utilising Innovative Methods of Data Capture for Regulatory Compliance Checking | Beach T | RIF | £25k | 1/1/2022->1/8/2022 |
| Digitising Construction Regulations | Beach T, Rezgui Y | Construction Innovation Hub | £480k | 1/7/20->31/6/2022 |
| Attenuating the Environmental Impact of our Buildings through Semantic-based Dynamic Life cycle Assessment (SemanticLCA) | Rezgui Y, Beach T, Petri I | EPSRC | £640k | 1/6/20->30/5/2022 |
| Evidence-based market and policy instruments implementation across the EU to increase the demand for energy skills across construction sector value chain | Rezgui Y, Beach T, Petri I | European commission - H2020 | £105k | 01/06/20 ->30/05/22 |
| Utilising Innovative Methods of Data Capture for Regulatory Compliance Checking | Beach T, Rezgui Y | ESRC(via UCL) | £90k | 1/2/20->31/7/20 |
| Towards a European Digital Platform for Construction | Rezgui Y, Beach T, Petri I | European commission - H2020 | £15k | 01/09/19 -> 28/02/21 |
| Digitisation of Requirements, Regulations and Compliance Checking Processes in the Built Environment | Beach T, Rezgui Y | Centre for Digital Built Britian | £55k | 01/7/18 -> 22/12/18 |
| WISDOM Water analytics and intelligent sensing for demand optimised management | Rezgui Y, Kwan A, Li H, Mourshed M, Beach T | European Commission (FP7) | £352,687 | 01/02/2014 - 31/01/2017 |
| BRE Studentship | Rezgui Y, Li H, Beach T | BRE Trust | £19,846 | 01/04/2012 - 31/03/2015 |
| Clouds4Coordination: Cloud Based project co-ordination in the AEC Sector | Prof O Rana (COMSC), Prof Y Rezgui, Beach T | TSB via BRE | £76,609 | 07/01/2013 - 31/12/2016 |
Supervised Students
| Title | Student | Status | Degree |
|---|---|---|---|
| EVALUATING FOR ENERGY EFFICIENCY OF EXISTING BUILDINGS ENVELOPE USING REMOTE SENSING | Amin Amin | Current | PhD |
| Generative Design Driven by Construction Regulations | Jonathan Yeung | Current | PhD |
| Smart Readiness Indicators | Majid Yahya Al Mughairi | Current | PhD |
| Spatially Disaggregated Building Stock Model of The UK Residential Sector | Adnan Hossain | Current | PhD |
| MULTI-SOURCE FUSION OF BIG DATA FOR REAL-TIME SUSTAINABILITY | Salem Khodair Algarni | Current | PhD |
| Managing BIM based Sustainable Construction Adoption in Saudi Araabia | Mushref Saad A Alghamdi | Current | PhD |
| Cyber Security in Digital Twins and Cyber Physical Systems | Kaznah Alshammari | Current | PhD |
| MODELLING EMBODIED ENERGY OF HOUSING STOCK. | ELALWANI Eman Mohamed Ali | Graduated | MPhil |
| Water Behaviour Modelling For Efficient ICT-Based Water Management In Urban Environments | TERLET Julia Jeanne Louise | Graduated | PhD |
| BIM BASED COST OPTIMISATION OF GREEN BUILDINGS. | MOHSIN Marwah | Submitted | PhD |
| BIM-Based Smart Compliance Checking to Enhance Environmental Sustainability | KASIM Tala | Graduated | PhD |
Supervision
I am interesting in supervising PhDs involving the following areas:
- Application of optimisation, machine learning, and AI in the built environment.
- Use cases for structured asset data (BIM)
- Automation of regulatory/sustainability assessments in the built environment
- Application of distributed leger (blockchain) for contracting/integrity applications in the built environment
- Semantics in the Built Environment
- Application of BIM technologies and tools within the BIM environment.
Even if your idea is not precidely aligned to these areas - please get in touch - it may still be something I can supervise (or co-supervise with a colleague).
