One of the most important processes in the early stages of construction projects is to estimate the cost involved. This process involves a wide range of uncertainties, which make it a challenging task. Because of unknown issues, using the experience of the experts or looking for similar cases are the conventional methods to deal with cost estimation. The current study presents data-driven metho...

The cost of developing and operating control and automation systems is a crucial factor of productivity and competitiveness for a number of applications in manufacturing plants, quality control systems and robotics. This paper has been focused on practical use of technologies that provided significant cost reduction in operating automated systems for a variety of industrial applications and bui...

Globalization is influencing several agriculture aspects: market globalization has increased export from producing to consuming countries where different food safety or pesticide residue regulations apply, and has raised awareness of global problems linked to agriculture production (i.e., chemical pesticide pollution). Pests, diseases and weeds may cause significant damages to growers and the c...

Software cost estimation is one of the most challenging tasks in software engineering. Over the past years the estimators have used parametric cost estimation models to establish software cost, however the challenges to accurate cost estimation keep evolving with the advancing technology. A detailed review of various cost estimation methods developed so far is presented in this paper. Planned e...

The author describes an expert-system tool that can be used to analyze patterns of cost-driver ratings submitted for a Cocomo cost estimate. These results help users determine and rank associated sources of project risk. ood software risk management requires human judgment, and is often difficult to implement because of the scarcity of seasoned experts and the unique characteristics of individu...

The software cost estimation aims to predict the most realistic effort that is required to finish a software project and so it is critical to the success of a software project management. A Software Cost Estimation affects nearly all management activities, including project bidding, resource allocation and project planning. It is affected by a number of factors, such as implementation efficienc...

Agile methods have become the mainstream of software development due to their enriched practices. Some commonly used practices include collaborative development, meeting evolving requirements with working software, simple design etc. These methods address the problem of volatile requirements by applying above practices. Thus, these practices reduce cost of change at later stage of software deve...

To receive a project contract through competitive bidding, contractors submit a bid price determined by putting a markup on the estimated project cost. Since a bid is inevitably affected by an inaccurate cost estimate, sufficient resources should be allocated to cost estimation. This paper develops a novel optimization model for determining the bid markup and the resource allocation for cost es...