209,725 research outputs found
Designing a novel virtual collaborative environment to support collaboration in design review meetings
Project review meetings are part of the project management process and are organised to assess progress and resolve any design conflicts to avoid delays in construction. One of the key challenges during a project review meeting is to bring the stakeholders together and use this time effectively to address design issues as quickly as possible. At present, current technology solutions based on BIM or CAD are information-centric and do not allow project teams to collectively explore the design from a range of perspectives and brainstorm ideas when design conflicts are encountered. This paper presents a system architecture that can be used to support multi-functional team collaboration more effectively during such design review meetings. The proposed architecture illustrates how information-centric BIM or CAD systems can be made human- and team-centric to enhance team communication and problem solving. An implementation of the proposed system architecture has been tested for its utility, likability and usefulness during design review meetings. The evaluation results suggest that the collaboration platform has the potential to enhance collaboration among multi-functional teams
Recommended from our members
A decision support system for fostering smart energy efficient districts
The role of ICT is becoming prominent in tackling some of the urban societal challenges such as energy
wastage and increasing carbon emissions. In this context, the concept of DAREED aims to deliver an
integrated decision support system (DSS) to drive energy efficiency and low carbon activities at both a
building and district level. The main aim of this paper is to present the technical concept of the Best
Practices recommendation component of the DAREED system. This component seeks to compare and
identify existing best practices to recommend practical actions to various stakeholders (e.g. building
managers, citizens) in order to improve energy performance considering the global needs of a building.
This paper also discusses the context of the three field trial sites (based in UK, Spain and Italy) in which
the DAREED platform along with the best practices tool is to be tested and validated.This work evolved in the context of the project DAREED (Decision support Advisor for innovative
business models and useR engagement for smart Energy Efficient Districts), www.dareed.eu, a project cofunded
by the EC within FP7, Grant agreement no: 609082
MONROE-Nettest: A Configurable Tool for Dissecting Speed Measurements in Mobile Broadband Networks
As the demand for mobile connectivity continues to grow, there is a strong
need to evaluate the performance of Mobile Broadband (MBB) networks. In the
last years, mobile "speed", quantified most commonly by data rate, gained
popularity as the widely accepted metric to describe their performance.
However, there is a lack of consensus on how mobile speed should be measured.
In this paper, we design and implement MONROE-Nettest to dissect mobile speed
measurements, and investigate the effect of different factors on speed
measurements in the complex mobile ecosystem. MONROE-Nettest is built as an
Experiment as a Service (EaaS) on top of the MONROE platform, an open dedicated
platform for experimentation in operational MBB networks. Using MONROE-Nettest,
we conduct a large scale measurement campaign and quantify the effects of
measurement duration, number of TCP flows, and server location on measured
downlink data rate in 6 operational MBB networks in Europe. Our results
indicate that differences in parameter configuration can significantly affect
the measurement results. We provide the complete MONROE-Nettest toolset as open
source and our measurements as open data.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, submitted to INFOCOM CNERT Workshop 201
J-PET Framework: Software platform for PET tomography data reconstruction and analysis
J-PET Framework is an open-source software platform for data analysis,
written in C++ and based on the ROOT package. It provides a common environment
for implementation of reconstruction, calibration and filtering procedures, as
well as for user-level analyses of Positron Emission Tomography data. The
library contains a set of building blocks that can be combined by users with
even little programming experience, into chains of processing tasks through a
convenient, simple and well-documented API. The generic input-output interface
allows processing the data from various sources: low-level data from the
tomography acquisition system or from diagnostic setups such as digital
oscilloscopes, as well as high-level tomography structures e.g. sinograms or a
list of lines-of-response. Moreover, the environment can be interfaced with
Monte Carlo simulation packages such as GEANT and GATE, which are commonly used
in the medical scientific community.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure
Breakthroughs in Shared Measurement and Social Impact
A surprising new breakthrough is emerging in the social sector: A handful of innovative organizations have developed web-based systems for reporting the performance, measuring the outcomes, and coordinating the efforts of hundreds or even thousands of social enterprises within a field. These nascent efforts carry implications well beyond performance measurement, foreshadowing the possibility of profound changes in the vision and effectiveness of the entire nonprofit sector. This paper, based on six months of interviews and research by FSG Social Impact Advisors, examines twenty efforts to develop shared approaches to performance, outcome, or impact measurement across multiple organizations. The accompanying appendices include a short description of each system and four more in-depth case studies
KRATOS: An Open Source Hardware-Software Platform for Rapid Research in LPWANs
Long-range (LoRa) radio technologies have recently gained momentum in the IoT
landscape, allowing low-power communications over distances up to several
kilometers. As a result, more and more LoRa networks are being deployed.
However, commercially available LoRa devices are expensive and propriety,
creating a barrier to entry and possibly slowing down developments and
deployments of novel applications. Using open-source hardware and software
platforms would allow more developers to test and build intelligent devices
resulting in a better overall development ecosystem, lower barriers to entry,
and rapid growth in the number of IoT applications. Toward this goal, this
paper presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of KRATOS, a low-cost
LoRa platform running ContikiOS. Both, our hardware and software designs are
released as an open- source to the research community.Comment: Accepted at WiMob 201
The role of linked data and the semantic web in building operation
Effective Decision Support Systems (DSS) for building service managers require adequate performance data from many building data silos in order to deliver a complete view of building performance. Current performance analysis techniques tend to focus on a limited number of data sources, such as BMS measured data (temperature, humidity, C02), excluding a wealth of other data sources increasingly available in the modern building, including weather data, occupant feedback, mobile sensors & feedback systems, schedule information, equipment usage information. This paper investigates the potential for using Linked Data and Semantic Web technologies to improve interoperability across AEC domains, overcoming many of the roadblocks hindering information transfer currently
Sustainable urban development in practice:the SAVE concept
The need for sustainable development of the urban environment presents the research community with a number of challenges and opportunities. A considerable volume of research has been undertaken into the constituent parts of this complex problem and a number of tool kits and methodologies have been developed to enable and encourage the application of specific aspects of research in practice. However, there is limited evidence of the holistic integration of the body of knowledge arising from the research within real-life decision-making practices. In this paper we present an overview of the existing body of knowledge relating to sustainable development of the urban environment and propose a generic framework for its integration within current practices. This framework recognises the need to: understand social, economic, and environmental issues; understand the decision-making processes; provide a means of measurement, assessment, or valuation of the issues; provide analytical methods for the comparative assessment of complex data to enable an evaluation of strategies and design options and to communicate effectively throughout the process with a wide range of stakeholders. The components of a novel sustainability assessment, visualisation and enhancement (SAVE) framework, developed by the authors to ‘operationalise’ the body of knowledge are presented and justified. These include: decision-mapping methods to identify points of intervention; indicator identification and measurement approaches; appropriate mathematical and analytical tools and an interactive simulation and visualisation platform which integrates and communicates complex multivariate information to diverse stakeholder groups. We report on the application of the SAVE framework to a major urban development project and reflect on its current and potential impact on the development. Conclusions are also drawn about its general applicability
- …