Abbas Rajabifard

University of Melbourne | MSD · Department of Infrastructure Engineering

Renewable Energy Systems (RES) adoption in Multi-Owned Buildings (MOBs) is inferior due to ownership disagreements and social disputes. The multiple ownership of the RES in common properties of MOBs develops energy and benefit allocation concerns among the apartment owners. Accordingly, there is a need for a postu-lation that encapsulates the energ...

Background: Fire behaviour simulation and prediction play a key role in supporting wildfire management and suppression activities. Aims: Using machine-learning methods, the aim of this study was to predict the onset of fire propagation (go vs no-go) and type of fire behaviour (surface vs crown fire) in southern Australian semiarid shrublands. Met...

Topography plays a significant role in determining bushfire severity over a hilly landscape. However, complex interrelationships between topographic variables and bushfire severity are difficult to quantify using traditional statistical methods. More recently, different Machine Learning (ML) models are becoming popular in characterising complex rel...

Purpose Building information modeling (BIM) is a striking development in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry, which provides in-depth information on different stages of the building lifecycle. Real estate valuation, as a fully interconnected field with the AEC industry, can benefit from 3D technical achievements in BIM tec...

Machinery operations on construction sites result in many serious injuries and fatalities. Practical training in a virtual environment is the key to improving the safety performance of machinery operators on construction sites. However, there is limited research focusing on factors responsible for the efficiency of virtual training in increasing ha...

Rapid development of underground space necessitates the efficient management of underground areas. Data modelling plays an underpinning role in integrating and managing underground physical and legal data. The physical data refers to semantic and spatial data of underground assets such as utilities, tunnels, and basements, while the legal data comp...

A 2D land administration system is insufficient for managing private properties and common property areas in a multi-story structure. Building information modelling (BIM) can be used to provide a clearer representation and more efficient management of the rights, restrictions, and responsibilities (RRR) inside buildings and address the challenges o...

Bushfires have always been an inherent phenomenon of the Australian environment. However, climate change is linked with increased bushfire frequency and severity, which may have altered the course of the post‐fire vegetation recovery process. In this study, we examined the severity of bushfires and assessed the post‐fire recovery process by using s...

Underground Land Administration (ULA) plays a paramount role in recording, registering and managing underground ownership boundaries and rights, restrictions and responsibilities associated with underground assets. 3D digital models provide a great potential to modernise ULA as it is evident in research studies. Several steps, from data acquisition...

Along with the increase in the frequency of disastrous wildfires and bushfires around the world during the recent decades, scholarly research efforts have also intensified in this domain. This work investigates divisions and trends of the domain of wildfire/bushfire research. Results show that this research domain has been growing exponentially. It...

3D geospatial data are being progressively adopted in urban land administration to represent 3D ownership rights in multistorey buildings. The integrity of urban land administration highly depends on the validity and quality of cadastral data. However, a large portion of research deals with the conceptual principles of internal and external spatial...

Property disputes in multi-owned buildings (MOB) should be effectively managed to ensure harmonious land use in urban areas. Many studies indicate that a well-planned governance structure of MOBs relying on ownership systems could mitigate property disputes by eliminating their causes contrary to owner needs. However, issues in MOB use and manageme...

Prediction of wildfire propagation plays a crucial role in reducing the impacts of such events. Various machine learning (ML) approaches, namely Support Vector Regression (SVR), Gaussian Process Regression (GPR), Regression Tree, and Neural Networks (NN), were used to understand their applicability in developing models to predict the rate of spread...

Could computer simulation models drive our ambitions to sustainability in urban and non-urban environments? Digital twins, defined here as real-time, virtual replicas of physical and biological entities, may do just that. However, despite their touted potential, digital twins have not been examined critically in urban sustainability paradigms—not l...

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the goods distribution patterns for both Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Customer (B2C) segments. This paper investigates the pandemic impacts on B2B and B2C parcel delivery changes in the Sydney metropolitan area. For this purpose, initially, the spatial pattern of the parcel delivery in 2020 has been c...

The increasing trend of urbanization has challenged the traditional ways of urban planning, design, and management [...]

Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) is an international standard for defining both semantic and spatial information connected with rights, restrictions, and responsibilities (RRRs) that affect land, water, built assets, natural resources, underground spaces, and airspaces. Since LADM is currently a conceptual land administration model, one of t...

Currently, many cities around the world use underground space for different applications such as tunnels, utility networks, parking, walkways, and shopping malls. Due to the increasing use of underground areas, management of this space is very important for decision-makers and stakeholders. A 3D Underground Land Administration (ULA) data model has...

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) seek to address complex global challenges and cover aspects of social development, environmental protection, and economic growth. However, the holistic and complicated nature of the goals has made their attainment difficult. Achieving all goals by 2030 given countries’ limited budgets with the economic and s...

Land administration systems are being modernised to streamline the cadastral data lodgement. However, in many jurisdictions, cadastral data are still stored as a flat file. This method of data storage has significant limitations in terms of effective access, management, query, and analysis of cadastral data. Therefore, this study elicited the requi...

Scholarly literature on terrorism is analysed in its full scope with three main goals: (i) to objectively determine the structural makeup of the field, (ii) to document its current and past temporal trends; and (iii) to identify underrepresented areas. The size of the literature is estimated to have exceeded 18,000 items. At the highest level of ag...

Construction and demolition waste (C&DW) contribute to approximately 30% of the total waste generation worldwide, by which heterogeneous ecological impacts, such as resource depletion, global warming, and land degradation, are engendered. Despite ongoing research efforts to minimize construction waste via the Building Information Modeling (BIM)-aid...

The decisions of surveyors on Plans of Subdivision play a crucial role in creating a good title and a governance structure in multi-owned buildings. The plans are drawn in compliance with legislative requirements to clearly define ownership boundaries and establish Owners Corporation (OC) structure. In some cases, it contains inappropriate aspects...

The development and use of underground space is a necessity for most cities in response to rapid urbanisation. Effective underground land administration is critical for sustainable urban development. From a land administration perspective, the ownership extent of underground assets is essential for planning and managing underground areas. In some j...

Many research studies have been recently conducted in Australia and New Zealand to explore a range of technical, legal, and institutional aspects related to modernisation of 3D cadastre. Most of these studies focus on a particular jurisdiction. This stems from the fact that each jurisdiction is responsible for their own cadastral system. Therefore,...

The aim of this study is to understand the collective movements of individuals and to observe how individuals interact within a physical environment in a crowd dynamic, which has drawn the attention of many researchers. We conducted an experimental study to observe interactions in the collective motions of people and to identify characteristics of...

The detection of informal settlements is the first step in planning and upgrading deprived areas in order to leave no one behind in SDGs. Very High-Resolution satellite images (VHR), have been extensively used for this purpose. However, as a cost-prohibitive data source, VHR might not be available to all, particularly nations that are home to many...

The prolific growth in multi-story buildings in Victoria, Australia challenges the efficiency of 2D land administration system in dealing with spatially complex situations. Therefore, 3D digital approaches are being investigated to facilitate the management of rights, restrictions and responsibilities (RRRs) in cities. Previous research has focused...

Among 3D models, Building Information Models (BIM) can potentially support the integrated management of buildings' physical and legal aspects in cadastres. However, there is not a systematic approach to author the cadastral information into the BIM models. Moreover, the common approaches for data validation only check the final cadastral output, an...

Cadastral surveying plays an important role in defining legal boundaries of land and property. The current practice for recording cadastral survey data mainly relies on 2D digital or analog documents. This practice is efficient for simple land parcels but can be challenged in complex building developments. To address the issues stemmed from 2D meth...

In urban areas, managing the lifecycle of land and property data related to interlocked and intertwined structures and infrastructure services is a grand challenge for cadastral systems. Addressing the physical and legal complexities of vertically stratified ownership arrangements is a major step towards the modernization of cadastral systems. The...

Purpose The achievement of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) for all communities and jurisdictions require a comprehensive roadmap that encompasses all dimensions of data infrastructure, social, economic, environmental and governance ecosystems. With this in mind, this paper aims to establish the link between the curriculum and intended lear...

Geospatial information plays an important role in managing location dependent pandemic situations across different communities and domains. Geospatial information and technologies are particularly critical to strengthening urban and rural resilience, where economic, agricultural, and various social sectors all intersect. Examining the United Nation...

The spatial data infrastructure literature reveals significant gaps in metadata systems concerning their efficiency and effectiveness for end-users. The literature proposes improvements to make the metadata systems more user-friendly. These improvements include new metadata elements and user interfaces that are in concert with each other. In this p...

Spatial metadata profiles have been designed and evolved by data custodians to manage, share, discover, and use spatial data. The end-users of spatial data often do not have much input in designing the profiles. The spatial data infrastructure literature reveals that they question the usability of spatial metadata. This paper analyzes the usability...

With the trend towards increased property disputes in multi-owned buildings (MOBs), a greater focus is needed on dispute management to prevent huge litigation costs, high-stress levels, and disharmony in urban communities. Existing studies have recognized that pinpointing sources of disputes allows proactively minimizing dispute occurrence and infl...

3D digital cadastral systems intend to provide a fully-integrated 3D view of legal boundaries and rights, restrictions and responsibilities (RRR) in multi-storey properties, which is aligned with the physical reality. Our cognitive understanding of legal boundaries and RRR information is more communicable when we link it to our visual perception of...

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework is recognised throughout the world as a significant global agreement that has been adopted by all UN members. These goals represent a solution to sustainability problems dealing with nations’ economies, the natural environment and societies. However, making progress towards achieving these goals ha...

Property boundaries have a significant importance in cadaster as they define the legal extent of the ownership rights. Among 3D data models, Industry Foundation Class (IFC) provides the potential capabilities for modelling property boundaries in a 3D environment. In some jurisdictions, such as Victoria, Australia, some property boundaries are assig...

The utilization of urban underground space (UUS) offers an effective solution to urban problems but may also negatively affect urban development. Therefore, UUS development needs better concerted guidelines to coordinate various urban systems and the multiple components of the underground world. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which should be...

Urban infrastructure has been dramatically increasing in Malaysian cities over the last decades. The current 2D-based practices are challenged by the stratified development of urban land in underground and aboveground areas. Currently, in Malaysia, surveying measurements are stored in a 2D-based cadastral database in the form of horizontal coordina...

There are different processes in 3D urban land administration in which spatial analysis plays an underpinning role. Among 3D data models, Industry Foundation Class (IFC) provides the potential capabilities for modelling legal and physical dimensions of urban properties. However, performing spatial analysis using IFC files cannot address the on-dema...

With the global order today undergoing rapid transition, Singapore endeavors to harness data, information and communication technologies (ICT), and artificial intelligence (AI) to improve living, create economic opportunities, and build closer communities in its transformation toward a Smart Nation. Singapore’s urban built environment has become mo...

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted by the United Nations in 2015 as a framework comprising 231 indicators to assess the level of sustainable development in all countries. However, the framework is criticised for lacking an inclusive evaluation of resilience despite accepting it as a component of sustainability. Many resilience indica...

The world’s rising urban density expansion has resulted in a proliferation of attempts to efficiently use space and a higher level of spatial complexity in metropolitan areas. 3D geospatial data models are increasingly being embraced to facilitate communicating the spatial dimensions of complex-built environments in different applications. For exam...

The world's rising urban density expansion has resulted in a proliferation of attempts to efficiently use space and a higher level of spatial complexity in metropolitan areas. 3D geospatial data models are increasingly being embraced to facilitate communicating the spatial dimensions of complex built environments in different applications. For exam...

With the growth of high-density living, disputes experienced by residents in multi-owned buildings (MOBs) have become an ongoing challenge in urban areas. A significant number of the disputations have found their root cause in the issues concerning improper use and management of MOBs by residents. It stems from their inaccurate understanding of own...

Spatial metadata is a critical part of any spatial data infrastructure, which enables the organising, sharing, discovery and use of spatial data. This paper highlights a knowledge gap in the usability of the metadata systems for the end–users. It then addresses the gap by applying the User Centred Design approach to investigate the usability of met...

The detection of spatial clusters and outliers is critical to a number of spatial data analysis techniques. Many techniques embed spatial clustering components with the aim of exploring spatial variability and patterns in a data set, caused by the spatial association that generally affects most spatial data. A frontier challenge in spatial data ana...

One of the ubiquitous human behaviours observed in natural disasters and humanitarian crisis is irrational stockpiling (also known as hoarding or panic buying). Limited, distorted and exaggerated information during crisis disturbs people's judgement and results in aberrant actions which can be explained with economics and psychology theories. The o...

Various jurisdictions are currently in the process of reforming their cadastral systems to achieve a smart and multidimensional system that provides a range of land administration services to the wider community. The state of Victoria in Australia has been actively modernizing its cadastral system since the 1990s by developing a digital cadastre da...

One of the ubiquitous human behaviours observed in natural disasters and humanitarian crisis is irrational stockpiling (also known as hoarding or panic buying). Limited, distorted and exaggerated information during crisis disturbs people’s judgement and results in aberrant actions which can be explained with economics and psychology theories. The o...

Modelling and simulating pedestrian motions are standard ways to investigate crowd dynamics aimed to enhance pedestrians’ safety. Movement of people is affected by interactions with one another and with the physical environment that it may be a worthy line of research. This paper studies the impact of speed on how pedestrians respond to the obstacl...

3D cadastres aim to record, manage, and visualise spatial dimensions of volumetric legal objects in a 3D digital information environment. Definition of the geometry and topology of volumetric representations of legal objects is predicated on solid modelling approaches which are widely used in 3D modelling applications. Some solid modelling approach...

In this paper, an optimisation model for recovery planning of road networks is presented in which both social and economic resilience is aimed to be achieved. The model is formulated as a bi-level multi-objective discrete network design problem which forms a non-convex mixed integer non-linear problem. Solved by a Branch and Bound method, the solut...

This paper examines capabilities of a new Spatial Data Infrastructure called Urban Analytics Data Infrastructure (UADI), through deriving and evaluating transport sustainability indicators. The UADI was developed in Australia to support multi-disciplinary and cross-jurisdictional analytics to overcome the challenges related to model generalisation,...

This paper introduces an online spatial data portal with advanced data access, analytical and visualisation capabilities which can be used for evidence based city planning and supporting data driven research. Through a case study approach, focused in the city of Melbourne, the authors show how the Australian Urban Infrastructure Network (AURIN) por...

With the scale expansion of industrial processes, the relationship between process variables becomes complex and highly nonlinear. As a result, the requirements for fault diagnosis and safety monitoring become demanding. To address this problem, a novel and effective pattern matching method using kernel canonical variate analysis (KCVA) integrated...

After the incidence of a disaster, a high demand for first-aid and a huge number of injured will emerge at the affected areas. In this paper, the optimum allocation of the medical assistance to the injured according to a multi-criteria decision making is performed by Multiplicatively Weighted Network Voronoi Diagram (MWNVD). For consideration of th...

In multi-owned buildings, a community of residents live in their private properties while they use and share communal spaces and facilities. Proper management of multi-owned buildings is underpinned by rules related to health, safety, and security of the residents and visitors. Utilizing Internet of Things (IoT) devices to collect information about...

With the increasing complexity of large-scale industrial production processes, the number of variable factors is increasing. As a result, it is demanding to predict process key variables accurately. Currently, most of soft sensor models using support vector regression and artificial neural networks are based on point prediction. The soft measuremen...

New urban strategies encourage compact city and higher density urban development due to unprecedented city growth and rapid urbanisation. This has led to greater attention to multi-dimensional representation, modelling and analytics of urban settings among urban planners, decision makers, and researchers. Nowadays, urban planning and urban design p...

In the cadastral system of Victoria, the legal extent of properties is defined by a wide range of property boundaries referencing physical objects. These boundary types are typically represented in 2D plans. However, to address the challenges of 2D plans in complex buildings, there has been a growing trend towards the adoption of 3D models. These 3...

Underground space has been widely used in densely populated cities across the globe, and is attracting increasing attention among academics and practitioners toward further alleviating land use pressure, improving urban resilience and the quality of life. However, few attempts have been made to probe the potential threats posed by underground space...

School catchment has significant impacts on many urban planning and so-cio-economic aspects such as social infrastructure accessibility, livability, community health and wellbeing, and housing affordability. It is a challenging task for governments to strategically plan school catchments with a vision that not only supports the current school capac...