Data analytics is an essential skill in modern engineering where all disciplines now involve large-scale data collection and digitalisation. A key challenge is how can we manage this ‘big data’ and analyse it to exploit useful information and insights that can guide decision making.
This paper will equip postgraduate students with interests in infrastructure engineering, such as construction, transportation, traffic, water engineering and urban analytics with data analytics skills to handle real-world data challenges. While this course does not require any in-depth prior knowledge in programming or data analytics, it is still an advanced course in data analytics. We will cover the knowledge from basic Python programming, to the popular tools and the critical thinking skills to apply the core theories in data analytics to solve a range of engineering problems with elements of ambiguity and complexity. For real-world relevance, the course will utilise real datasets from a range of New Zealand infrastructure owners/operators such as local councils, and government departments. These will further be accompanied by relevant guest lectures from industry and academia.
Over the years, our class has always been the 'safe place' for students to ask questions, work together on data analytics problems and learn from each other. Upon finishing the course, the students will feel confident in writing small programs to analyse large datasets, identify patterns and insights from the data that will improve decision-making process and choose the right tools, algorithms and methods to solve common data analytics problems in infrastructure engineering.