ASCE has honored Burcu H. Akinci, Ph.D., M.ASCE, with the 2020 Computing in Civil Engineering Award for her significant contributions at the interface of computing, construction and infrastructure management. Her main contributions have been in Building Information Modeling (BIM), laser scanning and sensing applied to civil infrastructure systems.
Akinci’s primary offerings are in the development and application of information and communication technologies for construction and facility/infrastructure management. In particular, she has made notable contributions in the area of BIM technologies and their integration with sensing and data acquisition devices. Her pioneering work in this area, which includes methods for automatically generating as-built models from laser-scanned point clouds as well as methods for automated deviation analysis using these models, has helped fuel the widespread adoption of BIM by the construction industry and improved the efficiency of BIM-related workflows in professional practice.
Moreover, her work on modeling and integrating information from disparate sources to support fault detection and diagnosis of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems in buildings has the potential to significantly improve the way HVAC systems are maintained and operated, leading to large energy and costs savings. The products of this line of research are being commercialized through a spin-off company.
The Computing in Civil Engineering Award recognizes outstanding achievement and contribution in the use of computers in the practice of civil engineering.
