Basel Elkhapery, Ph.D., LEED GA
Assistant Professor
- Milwaukee WI UNITED STATES
Dr. Basel Elkhapery is an accomplished educator, renowned for his passion in AI, building construction and project management.
Education, Licensure and Certification
Ph.D.
Civil Engineering
University of Delaware
2023
M.S.
Construction Management
American University in Dubai
2019
B.S.
Civil Engineering
American University in Dubai
2015
LEED Green Associate (GA)
Green Building Certification Institute
2020
Biography
Areas of Expertise
Languages
- English
- Arabic
Social
Research Interests
Construction Automation & AI
Robotic applications in the construction industry, i.e., wall construction. Exploring ways to facilitate ways to ensure construction tasks are completed more efficiently and in accordance with standards.
Selected Publications
Metaheuristic planner for cooperative multi-agent wall construction with UAVs
Automation in Construction2023
This paper introduces a wall construction planner for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), which uses a Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search Procedure (GRASP) metaheuristic to generate near-time-optimal building plans for even large walls within seconds. This approach addresses one of the most time-consuming and labor-intensive tasks, while also minimizing workers’ safety risks. To achieve this, the wall-building problem is modeled as a variant of the Team Orienteering Problem and is formulated as Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP), with added precedence and concurrence constraints that ensure bricks are built in the correct order and without collision between cooperating agents.
Tradeoff between well-being of students and cost of greening schools in arid regions
Management of Environmental Quality2023
Schools should be adequately built and operated to protect students' health. Green building rating systems, including Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), assist the construction industry in improving both the resource efficiency and indoor environmental quality of its buildings. Construction professionals may waive some green modifications and available optional credits due to their high costs or construction complexities. This study investigates whether cost-effective green modifications can adequately address the student health.
Feasibility Assessment of Renovating Schools in Arid Regions
IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science2022
Nowadays, renovation of buildings including schools is a common practice to enhance their indoor environmental conditions and resource efficiency, and to reduce their operation cost. Construction industry always has its reservation regarding the perceived excessive renovation costs when greening a building. Such perception has been discouraged property owners from greening and certifying their existing buildings according to USGBC's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating systems. This research established an optimization model with ability of distinguishing and sorting LEED feasible credits according to their costs to achieve cost-effective LEED certifications.
Exploratory Research towards Automated Masonry Construction using UAVs
IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering2022
Unmanned autonomous vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, are pervasive in modern society for both recreational and business purposes. This paper reports on exploratory research to investigate current efforts in automated construction of masonry walls using drones and drone swarms. Masonry was chosen due to the repetitive nature of the processes, which increases the probability of successful implementation. The results of a literature review are presented to establish the state of the art in this area. The proposed approach is evaluated based on the construction quality in accordance with standards, which entail both accuracy and precision requirements in the laying process.
Benefits of Retrofitting School Buildings in Accordance to LEED V4
Journal of Building Engineering2021
Pursuing green building certification for major renovation projects, including schools, has become common due to its associated resource efficiency, reduced operation cost, and enhanced indoor environmental conditions. The perceived renovation costs may discourage professionals from pursuing the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating systems. To attain cost-effective LEED certifications, the authors developed an optimization model capable of identifying practical credits then ranking them by their associated costs. A case study was performed using a random sample of nine constructed schools in Dubai.
