A FRAMEWORK FOR PERFORMANCE-BASED FACADE DESIGN: APPROACH FOR AUTOMATED AND MULTI-OBJECTIVE SIMULATION AND OPTIMIZATION

Buildings have a considerable impact on the environment, and it is crucial to consider environmental and energy performance in building design. Buildings account for about 40% of the global energy consumption and contribute over 30% of the CO2 emissions. A large proportion of this energy is used for meeting occupants’ thermal comfort in buildings, followed by lighting. The building facade forms a barrier between the exterior and interior environments; therefore, it has a crucial role in improving energy efficiency and building performance. In this regard, decision-makers are required to establish an optimal solution, considering multi-objective problems that are usually competitive and nonlinear, such as energy consumption, financial costs, environmental performance, occupant comfort, etc. Sustainable building design requires considerations of a large number of design variables and multiple, often conflicting objectives, such as the initial construction cost, energy cost, energy consumption and occupant satisfaction. One approach to address these issues is the use of building performance simulations and optimization methods. This research first investigates and highlights the key research methods, issues and tools associated with building performance simulations and the optimization methods. Then a novel method for improving building facade performance is presented, taking into consideration occupant comfort, energy consumption and energy costs. The dissertation discusses development of a framework, which is based on multi-objective optimization and uses a genetic algorithm in combination with building performance simulations. The framework utilizes EnergyPlus simulation engine and Python programming to implement optimization algorithm analysis and decision support. The framework enhances the process of performance-based facade design, couples simulation and optimization packages, and provides flexible and fast supplement in facade design process by rapid generation of design alternatives. The dissertation describes the components and functionality of this framework in detail, as well as two-step optimization technique which is a new technique that combines GA and machine learning. The dissertation also presents results and validation techniques and provides conclusions of the study

Quantification d’incertitude sur fronts de Pareto et stratégies pour l’optimisation bayésienne en grande dimension, avec applications en conception automobile

This dissertation deals with optimizing expensive or time-consuming black-box functionsto obtain the set of all optimal compromise solutions, i.e. the Pareto front. In automotivedesign, the evaluation budget is severely limited by numerical simulation times of the considered physical phenomena. In this context, it is common to resort to “metamodels” (models of models) of the numerical simulators, especially using Gaussian processes. They enable adding sequentially new observations while balancing local search and exploration. Complementing existing multi-objective Expected Improvement criteria, we propose to estimate the position of the whole Pareto front along with a quantification of the associated uncertainty, from conditional simulations of Gaussian processes. A second contribution addresses this problem from a different angle, using copulas to model the multi-variate cumulative distribution function. To cope with a possibly high number of variables, we adopt the REMBO algorithm. From a randomly selected direction, defined by a matrix, it allows a fast optimization when only a few number of variables are actually influential, but unknown. Several improvements are proposed, such as a dedicated covariance kernel, a selection procedure for the low dimensional domain and of the random directions, as well as an extension to the multi-objective setup. Finally, an industrial application in car crash-worthiness demonstrates significant benefits in terms of performance and number of simulations required. It has also been used to test the R package GPareto developed during this thesis.Cette thèse traite de l’optimisation multiobjectif de fonctions coûteuses, aboutissant à laconstruction d’un front de Pareto représentant l’ensemble des compromis optimaux. En conception automobile, le budget d’évaluations est fortement limité par les temps de simulation numérique des phénomènes physiques considérés. Dans ce contexte, il est courant d’avoir recours à des « métamodèles » (ou modèles de modèles) des simulateurs numériques, en se basant notamment sur des processus gaussiens. Ils permettent d’ajouter séquentiellement des observations en conciliant recherche locale et exploration. En complément des critères d’optimisation existants tels que des versions multiobjectifs du critère d’amélioration espérée, nous proposons d’estimer la position de l’ensemble du front de Pareto avec une quantification de l’incertitude associée, à partir de simulations conditionnelles de processus gaussiens. Une deuxième contribution reprend ce problème à partir de copules. Pour pouvoir traiter le cas d’un grand nombre de variables d’entrées, nous nous basons sur l’algorithme REMBO. Par un tirage aléatoire directionnel, défini par une matrice, il permet de trouver un optimum rapidement lorsque seules quelques variables sont réellement influentes (mais inconnues). Plusieurs améliorations sont proposées, elles comprennent un noyau de covariance dédié, une sélection du domaine de petite dimension et des directions aléatoires mais aussi l’extension au casmultiobjectif. Enfin, un cas d’application industriel en crash a permis d’obtenir des gainssignificatifs en performance et en nombre de calculs requis, ainsi que de tester le package R GPareto développé dans le cadre de cette thèse

Calibración de un algoritmo de detección de anomalías marítimas basado en la fusión de datos satelitales

La fusión de diferentes fuentes de datos aporta una ayuda significativa en el proceso de toma de decisiones. El presente artículo describe el desarrollo de una plataforma que permite detectar anomalías marítimas por medio de la fusión de datos del Sistema de Información Automática (AIS) para seguimiento de buques y de imágenes satelitales de Radares de Apertura Sintética (SAR). Estas anomalías son presentadas al operador como un conjunto de detecciones que requieren ser monitoreadas para descubrir su naturaleza. El proceso de detección se lleva adelante primero identificando objetos dentro de las imágenes SAR a través de la aplicación de algoritmos CFAR, y luego correlacionando los objetos detectados con los datos reportados mediante el sistema AIS. En este trabajo reportamos las pruebas realizadas con diferentes configuraciones de los parámetros para los algoritmos de detección y asociación, analizamos la respuesta de la plataforma y reportamos la combinación de parámetros que reporta mejores resultados para las imágenes utilizadas. Este es un primer paso en nuestro objetivo futuro de desarrollar un sistema que ajuste los parámetros en forma dinámica dependiendo de las imágenes disponibles.XVI Workshop Computación Gráfica, Imágenes y Visualización (WCGIV)Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Anales del XIII Congreso Argentino de Ciencias de la Computación (CACIC)

Contenido: Arquitecturas de computadoras Sistemas embebidos Arquitecturas orientadas a servicios (SOA) Redes de comunicaciones Redes heterogéneas Redes de Avanzada Redes inalámbricas Redes móviles Redes activas Administración y monitoreo de redes y servicios Calidad de Servicio (QoS, SLAs) Seguridad informática y autenticación, privacidad Infraestructura para firma digital y certificados digitales Análisis y detección de vulnerabilidades Sistemas operativos Sistemas P2P Middleware Infraestructura para grid Servicios de integración (Web Services o .Net)Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Anales del XIII Congreso Argentino de Ciencias de la Computación (CACIC)

Contenido: Arquitecturas de computadoras Sistemas embebidos Arquitecturas orientadas a servicios (SOA) Redes de comunicaciones Redes heterogéneas Redes de Avanzada Redes inalámbricas Redes móviles Redes activas Administración y monitoreo de redes y servicios Calidad de Servicio (QoS, SLAs) Seguridad informática y autenticación, privacidad Infraestructura para firma digital y certificados digitales Análisis y detección de vulnerabilidades Sistemas operativos Sistemas P2P Middleware Infraestructura para grid Servicios de integración (Web Services o .Net)Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

A comparison of the CAR and DAGAR spatial random effects models with an application to diabetics rate estimation in Belgium

When hierarchically modelling an epidemiological phenomenon on a finite collection of sites in space, one must always take a latent spatial effect into account in order to capture the correlation structure that links the phenomenon to the territory. In this work, we compare two autoregressive spatial models that can be used for this purpose: the classical CAR model and the more recent DAGAR model. Differently from the former, the latter has a desirable property: its ρ parameter can be naturally interpreted as the average neighbor pair correlation and, in addition, this parameter can be directly estimated when the effect is modelled using a DAGAR rather than a CAR structure. As an application, we model the diabetics rate in Belgium in 2014 and show the adequacy of these models in predicting the response variable when no covariates are available

A Statistical Approach to the Alignment of fMRI Data

Multi-subject functional Magnetic Resonance Image studies are critical. The anatomical and functional structure varies across subjects, so the image alignment is necessary. We define a probabilistic model to describe functional alignment. Imposing a prior distribution, as the matrix Fisher Von Mises distribution, of the orthogonal transformation parameter, the anatomical information is embedded in the estimation of the parameters, i.e., penalizing the combination of spatially distant voxels. Real applications show an improvement in the classification and interpretability of the results compared to various functional alignment methods