Advancement of Decision-Making in Structural Design through Optimization for Monorail Girder Design

Competent decision-making in the field of civil engineering is a critical task. It is technically demanding and involves a high level of risk, as misjudgment might lead to a waste of resources and compromised safety. These concern site operations as well as the permanent structure under long-term operation. Furthermore, it is a time- and resource-intensive process to ensure accuracy in the decision reached. Thus arises the need to find new methods and technologies to conduct decision-making more precisely while maintaining efficiency. The solution lies in the use of artificial intelligence and structural optimization technologies in unison with achieving the most accurate decision for a specific set of parameters for a project. The proposed solution must also minimize resources and time consumed in the phase of decision-making. The paper introduces a software model solution that would aid decision-makers in the process of preliminary designing and establishing the optimal monorail system structural properties, focusing on construction material and girder span. A case study is performed on the Monorail project in Cairo, Egypt, to demonstrate the reliability of the software model and show the significant reduction in resources consumed for the estimation of the project.