Application of association rule mining and social network analysis for understanding causality of construction defects

A construction defect can cause schedule delay, cost overrun and quality deterioration. In order to minimize these negative impacts of construction defects, this paper aims to analyze the causality of construction defects. Specifically, association rule mining (ARM) is used to quantify the interrelationships between defect causes, and social network analysis (SNA) is utilized to find out the most influential causes triggering generation of construction defects. The suggested approach was applied to 2949 defect instances in finishing work. Through this application, it was confirmed that the proposed approach can systematically identify and quantify causality among defect causes.