Group A: Teaching Hospital

The stakeholders we identified for the teaching hospital include patients, attendings/residents/nurses/PAs, facilities staff, owner/board of trustees, AEC, and the community through research.  We identified these stakeholders through the various phases they would come into contact with a teaching hospital.  The technologies that we identified for these stakeholders as being most important are: acoustic analysis, lighting/MEP systems, sensors, robots, code analysis, database, cost estimate, and models.

• Patients would most benefit from sensors, lighting/MEP systems, code analysis, database, and acoustic analysis
• Doctors/nurses/PAs would benefit also benefit from the same technology that the patients would, with sensors being the most critical to their effectiveness of care.  An effective database will also aid in their research capabilities.
• Facilities staff would benefit greatly from sensors, lighting/MEP systems, models, robots, and cost estimates
• Owner/Board of Trustees would be most interested in code analysis, database, cost estimate, and models
• AEC would benefit from all technologies involved since they are involved in almost all phases of the building's life
• The community would most benefit from the database as doctors are able to pull the patient's personal information, the care the patient received, and the final outcome of the patient from this compiled database

Presentation

Project Topic: Intelligent and/or Green Buildings

For the term project, I will be focusing on the topic of “Intelligent and/or Green” with Gabrielle Carpenter.  I chose this topic because green buildings a hot topic of today in the building industry and I thought it would be interesting to explore the relationship between green and intelligent buildings. I don’t much background in either subject but I figured this would be a great opportunity to learn more about green buildings and intelligent buildings.

Intelligent, energy-efficient buildings are expected to be an important part of future energy systems.

There are practically no limits to the number of functions that can be incorporated into intelligent buildings: lighting, heating/ventilation, climate control and energy management among others. I’m very interested in how these systems will contribute to the “green image” of the building.   

As G. Carpenter mentioned in her post, I think the biggest challenge with our project is going to be finding information of intelligent buildings because they are referenced in many different ways and there is not one single description of an intelligent building. Everyone has their own definition of what exactly an intelligent building is.

Future of BIM Parametric Models

I believe BIM will change a lot of the next 5 years. I would anticipate that it will be more user-friendly and have an interface like AutoCAD. As mentioned in G. Carpenter’s post, “In AutoCAD, when drawing a building frame with joists, minimal mouse movement is required; type “l” for line, move the mouse slightly to the right, type in the length of the line, click “enter”, repeat for all directions of the basic frame.  A line can be highlighted and repeated for joists or offset for a column.  I could see this becoming the norm for BIM with the ability to construct a basic "outline" of the structure and then change the "basic" objects in the outline to reflect the different sized pipes, columns, etc.  In this way, a whole building can easily be constructed from a couple of mouse movements.” I believe that if BIM was to become more like this than it would be easier for current designer to make the transition.  

Lastly, during our last class meeting my group discussed how there is a major communication problem between programs. Both G. Carpenter and W. Chunyi brought this up again in their posts for this week and I completely agree with them. If BIM is to become the next big thing then it needs to become more compatible with other programs that are already in use today. I really liked W. Chunyi’s idea of being able to scan the blueprints of old buildings that were design by AutoCAD and creating a dataset in BIM.

Ch. 2 BIM Tools and Parametric Modeling

I too like W. Chunyi did not have any exposure to BIM prior to reading this chapter. Now that I have read Chapter 2 BIM tools and Parametric Modeling of the BIM Handbook, I have a better understanding of how BIM works and can see that it is an extremely powerful tool.

BIM is an innovative approach to building design, construction, and management that is characterized by the continuous availability of highly accurate, consistent and reliable building information. BIM allows the project team to visualize, simulate, and analyze a project before construction even begins using a three-dimensional model representing all of the physical and functional characteristics of a facility.

BIM was developed in part to address the issues of data loss as a building project moves through the various stages of development – from initial design to construction to operation. Refer to G. Carpenter’s post because I believe she explains this best in her opening paragraph.

Parametric Modeling is an approach to building construction that is characterized by designing with objects having real-world behaviors and attributes. Original (2D and 3D) CAD engines used specific, coordinate-based geometry to create graphic objects. Editing was burdensome and extremely error prone. Documentation was created by extracting coordinates from the model and generating standalone 2D drawings. As graphic engines matured, graphical entities were combined to represent a design element (a wall, a window, etc.). Surface and solid modelers added more intelligence to the elements and enabled the creation of complex forms. But the result was still an explicit (coordinate-based) geometric model, which was inherently difficult to edit and had a tenuous relationship to extracted drawings that easily fell out of sync with the model.

Then came parametric modeling engines that used parameters (numbers or characteristics) to determine the behavior of a graphical entity and define relationships between model components. For example, "the diameter of this hole is 1 inch" or "the center of this hole is midway between these edges.” This meant that the design criteria or intent could be captured during the modeling process. Editing the model became much easier and preserved the original design intent.

With state-of-the-art parametric building modeling, BIM software can coordinate a change made anywhere and everywhere it matters: in 3D views and drawing sheets, schedules and elevations, sections and plans.

BIM is not perfect there were many shortcomings in early BIM as discussed by my fellow group members and in Chapter 2 of the BIM Handbook. Also, C. Meraz made a good point in that the current design methods used “where each system is designed and contracted separately lacks the required coloration necessary to avoid the current ‘clashes’.”




Sources:
Chapter 2 of BIM Handbook (2008)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_information_modeling

Future Analysis Techniques

I would define the future as being anything within the next 5 years. But ultimately it depends on what is being considered. In terms of analysis techniques, it takes a few years to thoroughly check algorithms for as many probable scenarios and to find and fix all malfunctions.

Recently, examination and improvement in the design of sustainable intelligent buildings has gained attention. One of the things I found interesting is the utilization of the collected data from the building operation management that can be used to analyze the real time building information for hazard detection. In the article, the authors installed an indoor wireless sensor network to collect the air temperature data. A machine-learning algorithm was developed to analyze the collected data and automatically generate early warning signals for hazards such as overheat/fire. The system was designed to detect all possible potential hazards while allowing as few false alarms. The experimental results validate the proposed machine-learning algorithm and the effectiveness of using a wireless sensor network for early detection of building hazards.

As discussed by my fellow group members, similar algorithms can be used in analyzing more dynamic modeling software to help integrate all the different electrical  and mechanical components in a building. Thus, allowing buildings to be more energy efficient.

http://ascelibrary.org/doi/pdf/10.1061/9780784412343.0061

Flight Assembled Architecture Response

We believe that aspects of the video will be a part of the future.  However, to be a complete reality, advances in the technology will need to be accomplished.  Places where this would be useful would be in the micro-level where a designer could input a design into a computer program and the robots could construct it.  We agree that the human element in construction can never fully disappear though.

Graduate Students

Here is the list of Graduate students in the course.  This post is also used to create a "label" for each student so it's easy to label your posts later.

 

Group	Last Name	First Name	Major
A	Carpenter	Gabrielle	Civil Engineering
A	Gulbenkian	Gayaneh	Civil Engineering
A	Li	Xiang	Civil Engineering
A	Meraz	Cleonie	Civil Engineering
A	Wang	Chunyi	Environmental Engineering