CTBUH has been awarded a 100,000,000 Korean Won (US$87,800) contract from the Research Institute of Industrial Science & Technology (RIST) as part of a research project sponsored by the Korean Institute of Construction and Transportation Technology Evaluation and Planning (KICTEP).

CTBUH Trustee David Scott is the principal investigator of the project and CTBUH Research Associate Dr. Payam Bahrami is managing the research activities. The one year effort entitled “Survey Research: Measuring the Perceptional Level of Core Technology in the area of Super Tall Buildings in Korea” started in January 2011.

The project stems from an initiative launched in 2010 by the Republic of Korea to engage in a comprehensive research program on super tall buildings entitled “The Super Tall Buildings R&BD Center (STBRC)” which is focused on obtaining core technologies needed for a comprehensive level of tall building expertise in Korea. The research project will seek the input from independent international and Korean experts on ongoing STBRC research projects and forecast its realization time for each key technology. The purpose of this research is to assess the potential benefits of KICTEP’s research projects; to compare the current level of expertise in Korea with other countries; and gauge the potential of developing expertise and its impact on the construction industry.

Each research area to be studied has been identified as part of a technology tree. The technology tree includes four basic research areas in the first level, eleven sub-areas in the second level, and twenty-three research projects at the third level (as shown in Figure 1). Based on the technology tree, a survey questionnaire asks experts to evaluate the current level of these technologies in comparison to the end stages. The questionnaire will be sent to domestic and international experts through an abridged Delphi process, a structured communication technique that is an interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of experts. The process for this study will include two rounds of questionnaires. The second round of questionnaires will be implemented if the results of the first round show huge gaps between the technology levels from Korean and international experts.

The output of this survey research will be evaluated by a Dynamic Technology Level Analysis using a “Gompertz function” a type of mathematical model for a time series, where growth is slowest at the start and end of a time period.  This model can be used to calculate present and future levels of each technology and its technology growth curve and it enables researchers to analyze the expected development trend of each technology and the potential gaps between Korea and other countries.