iPresCons is an Artificial Intelligence application, developed by researchers of the UPO based on a contract signed with the company DETEA, S.A. for the participation of the Research Group PAIDI Data Science & Big Data Lab (TIC 254), in the R&D project: “Predictive models for the collaborative management of estimates in client relation processes” (in Spanish, Modelos predictivos para la gestión colaborativa de estimaciones en procesos de relación con el cliente), to which DETEA, S.A. submitted to the call of the Technological Corporation of Andalusia (CTA, in Spanish). This app is useful in calculating the cost of a construction, as it predicts a price range for a specific real estate based on Machine Learning and Big Data techniques.
According to the terms of the contract between the parties, Pablo de Olavide University has gave up the rights to the company DETEA S.A. to exploit the intellectual property iPresCons – Gestión Inteligente de Proyectos de Construcción de Bienes Inmuebles. However, the UPO will keep a non-exclusive licence for research and teaching purposes. iPresCons is an artificial intelligence app developed by researchers of the Data Science & Big Data Lab of the UPO (Alicia Troncoso Lora, Gualberto Asensio Cortés, Francisco Martínez Álvarez, José Francisco Torres Maldonado and Samuel Conesa Ordoñez) which predicts a price range for a specific real estate based on Machine Learning and Big Data techniques.
For this, the experts have developed a software together with a comprehensive web application, which automates the process and constitutes the point of interaction between the user and the database. The information entered and the budgets generated are stored in a history on which Machine Learning techniques are applied. In addition, Machine Learning algorithms require that the input data are presented uniformly and with a well-defined structure, so the first phase of software development, made in collaboration with DETEA S.A. personnel, has been based on the analysis, structuring and packaging of the information corresponding to works already done, unifying the display format of the same and designing a database that allows to store all the existing information in a uniform and structured manner.
In addition, UPO researchers have designed a comprehensive web application that automate this process and is the point of interaction between the user and the database, facilitating the entry of information and generating budgets and storing all the data in the database to generate a history large enough to apply Machine Learning and Big Data techniques. Likewise, the application performs the construction management, including consulting, creation, modification and erasing. For each of these works, the work reference number, name, description and user who created it are persistently stored.
The system even offers complete budget management that includes the creation of new budgets associated with a specific work as well as their consultation, modification and deletion.
Within the framework of the DETEA, S.A. project “Predictive models for collaborative management of estimates in customer relationship processes”, the UPO has developed and registered the intellectual property of iPresCons as a result of the project. This project was undertaken within the framework of a research and development contract between the UPO and DETEA S.A., a research led by Alicia Troncoso Lora, Professor of Languages and Computer Systems at the UPO.
DETEA was founded in 1988 and started its activity with the industrial, commercial and singular buildings edification. It is a reference company within the engineering and construction sector and it has always been interested in offering the latest technologies in construction. That is why the company does not hesitate to count on the university to promote the development of its own innovation projects in which advances in knowledge are applied, as in the case of this project.
Source: UPO´s Research Results Transfer Office
