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Industrialised, Integrated, Intelligent sustainable Construction - I3con

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SUSTAINABLE CONSTRUCTION HANDBOOK 2<br />

and the different phases of its life cycle are significantly higher than in traditional manufacturing<br />

processes. Thereby, the application of such innovative technologies could significantly increase the<br />

sustainability of life cycle management in construction, not just with respect to economic means (e.g.<br />

more efficient processes), but also with respect to ecological (e.g. waste management in construction)<br />

and social aspects (e.g. worker safety on site).<br />

152<br />

Objectives<br />

This paper reveals potential areas of application of RFID in construction. Additionally RFID<br />

applications are embedded in the life cycle of a building and its contribution to sustainability.<br />

Thereby, special focus can be drawn to the application of RFID in industrialized construction where it<br />

can be applied for the production of building components and parts and tracking them from<br />

production to installation. Hence, a future prospective for the adoption of this technology in<br />

<strong>sustainable</strong> construction management throughout the life cycle of a building is developed. It is not<br />

intended, however, to give a complete overview of all possible applications in construction as done,<br />

for instance, by Wing (2006) and Jaselskis and El-Misalami (2003) as well as in König et al. (2009).<br />

Instead, the prospective encompasses issues like material management or safety on site, the<br />

automation and optimisation of facility management processes and monitoring of operating resources<br />

during occupation and operation of buildings, as well as environmentally sound deconstruction<br />

planning based on information gathered with RFID.<br />

RFID - Technology<br />

“Radio Frequency Identification” is a technique for the identification of objects with radio waves.<br />

Basically, a RFID system consists of three components: the transponder, the reader, and antenna.<br />

The transponder contains an integrated circuit (IC, i.e. chip) for the data storage and an antenna for<br />

sending and receiving data. It is directly tagged to the object and also referred to as “tag”. In general,<br />

there are two types of transponders. While active transponders contain a battery for internal power<br />

supply, passive transponders gain energy from the reader’s electromagnetic field (Sweeney, 2005;<br />

Jilovec, 2004). Usually, passive transponders are cheaper while active transponders have a higher<br />

memory capacity and higher reading ranges. Transponders or tags come along as, for instance, smart<br />

cards, coins or labels. The reader communicates and reads the information from the tag. Additionally,<br />

the reader can send new data to the tag. Data is usually further transferred to a backend system, like a<br />

standardised software application such as an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Attached to<br />

the reader is the antenna, this sends signals from the reader waiting for the reply of the transponder.<br />

For simplification, the device of the reader and antenna will be considered as “reading device” or<br />

“reader”. The reading range of a RFID system depends on the frequency of the electromagnetic<br />

waves. The higher the frequency, the higher the possible reading ranges. These ranges vary from<br />

some millimeters up to several metres. The bandwidth of the frequencies RFID systems use are<br />

subdivided into Low Frequencies (LF), High Frequencies (HF), Ultra High Frequencies (UHF) and<br />

Microwaves. Thereby the frequencies of 135 kHz, 13.56 MHz, 868/915 MHz, 2.45 GHz and 5.8 GHz<br />

are most commonly used depending on the application. 1 Generally, low-frequency tags are used for<br />

reading distances less than 25 cm, for instance, access control or work-in-progress inventory. In<br />

contrast, high-frequency tags are used for reading distances of a few metres (smart cards). Ultrahighfrequency<br />

tags are used, for instance, when high-speed reading is essential and the reading distances<br />

are up to several metres, e.g. for toll payment (Srivastava, 2004).<br />

RFID has already been proven to be successful for various applications in recent years. A well-known<br />

application is the installation of theft-secure devices, e.g. in supermarkets and department stores,<br />

recognizable by the antennas installed at the cash or exit of the stores. Therefore, transponders are<br />

tagged to the product and activate a signal at the exit of the store when moving into the reception area<br />

of a reading device, unless the RFID tag has been deactivated or removed and kept for further reuse<br />

1 A detailed survey of different RFID applications is given by Schoblick and Schoblick (2005), Finkenzeller<br />

(2003), and Schneider (2004).

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