A comparison of measured and estimated electric energy use and the impact of assumed occupancy pattern

The use of building performance simulation (BPS) tools to guide decisions during the design process in its early stages requires making assumptions. That is as the design specification, information about building use and future external climate are not available. This may lead to differences between the buildings performance in operation and its predicted performance. The aim of the presented work is to assess the impact of the building use on observed differences in performance. Parameters of concern are occupation period, occupancy density, electrical energy use and sensible heat gains from equipment and light fittings. The results of the study show that the difference between estimated and measured local electric energy use is below 10%. The important parameters related to the office use are identified as occupation period and heat gains from light fittings. In case of the considered building the use of medium high internal heat gains would have lead to overestimating the cooling demand by 30%. The identified parameters should be considered with great care when using BPS–tools for guiding the design of office buildings as they contribute significantly to the accuracy of simulation results

Efficient Real-Time Rendering of Building Information Models

A Building Information Model (BIM) is a powerful concept, since it allows both 2D-drawings and 3D-models of buildings or facilities to be extracted from the same source of data. Compared to a general 3D-CAD model a BIM is a different kind of representation, since it defines not only geometrical data but also information regarding spatial relations and semantics. However, because of the large number of individual objects and high geometric complexity, 3D-data obtained from a BIM are not easily used for real-time rendering without further processing. In this paper we present a culling system specifically designed for efficient real-time rendering of BIM’s. By utilizing the unique properties of a BIM we can form the required data structures without manual modification or expensive preprocessing of the input data. Using hardware occlusion queries together with additional mechanisms based on specific BIM-data, the presented system achieves good culling efficiency for both indoor and outdoor cases

Fixing the Maze: Redesigning the KSU Johnson Library Map

The purpose of this report is to research and implement new ways to redesign the KSU Johnson Library map and increase the amount of navigation signage. Through time studies and surveys, the team identified resources that take a long time to find. A second round of time studies and surveys was conducted to ensure that the new implementations, signages, and maps are effective. The team also suggests redesigning the floor plans to make them clearer and easier to understand. Team Scrappy concludes that the redesigned map and library signage have significantly improved the ease of navigation within the Johnson Library. The implementation of new designs and changes in scenery has resulted in reduced time taken by many test subjects to find their resources

Do Your Library Spaces Help Entrepreneurs? Space Planning for Boosting Creative Thinking

Supporting entrepreneurship and innovation is a goal for many college campuses. How can your library support those goals? Should you add a makerspace to your library? Or make other costly changes? Library spaces help students think at a higher level, to be creative, innovative, and entrepreneurial. It is rare to have a dedicated spot on campus for thinking. Our libraries are those spaces. Spaces that strongly foster entrepreneurial thinking range from quiet reflective spaces to noisy collaborative spaces. You do not need to do an elaborate study to understand your library spaces. To assess your library spaces as they relate to innovative and entrepreneurial thinking, first take an inventory of your existing library spaces. By examining your existing spaces and the activities in them, you see which of the six essential types of spaces you have and which ones you lack. Once you have done a space assessment, you can see how you can readily add any of the six spaces you lack. A case study of an academic library’s space inventory, assessment, and recommendations helps illustrate the process. You use your space inventory for present and future space planning and to communicate your worth to your stakeholders. Libraries can market unique spaces to students (e.g. “Here are spaces to help you think creatively”), support Creative Campus initiatives, and promote library spaces which foster entrepreneurial thinking

Historic house museums and their change of use: searching for balanced building performance: a case study in São Paulo, Brazil

A house museum has its own particularities, presenting many challenges in terms of conservation of the building itself and its surroundings. This article aims to present integrative methods that can be adopted by museum managers and teams to monitor the building performance of a historic house museum. An exploratory study was carried out using Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE), a multi-methods non-invasive application, at the Ema Klabin historic house museum in São Paulo, Brazil. This approach analyses qualitative and quantitative aspects of the environments to evaluate their performance and the context in which they operate, including the point of view aired by researchers/evaluators, other experts, and regular users. Summary charts and maps regarding diagnosis and recommendations were developed to demonstrate the results achieved with these methods. They are the result of cross-sectional surveys, providing input to aid decision making and developing possible guidelines for future projects with similar characteristics.As particularidades de uma casa-museu apresentam diversos desafios na conservação da edificação e seu entorno. Este artigo tem como objetivo apresentar possíveis métodos a serem adotados pelos gestores e equipes para o monitoramento do seu desempenho físico com práticas adequadas a essa tipologia. Foi elaborado um estudo exploratório contemplando a aplicação de multimétodos da avaliação pós-ocupação (APO) em um caso de estudo, a casa-museu Ema Klabin em São Paulo, Brasil. Esta abordagem inclui verificações sobre aspectos qualiquantitativos dos ambientes para avaliação do desempenho da casa-museu e do contexto em que se insere, incluindo os pontos de vista dos pesquisadores/avaliadores, de outros especialistas e de seus usuários regulares. O desenvolvimento de quadros e mapas sínteses de diagnósticos e de recomendações demonstram os resultados da aplicação desses métodos. Estes são decorrentes do cruzamento de levantamentos técnicos e da visão de especialistas com a percepção e a satisfação dos demais usuários e propiciam insumos aos gestores para as tomadas de decisão e formulação de possíveis diretrizes relativas a futuros projetos com características de uso semelhantes

Facilitating responsive interaction between occupants and building systems through dynamic post-occupancy evaluation

Post-occupancy evaluation (POE) is a process that can reveal the interrelations between key building performance factors and successfully integrate indoor environmental quality, thermal comfort, functionality, environmental strategy and occupants’ satisfaction. POE has become a prerequisite for several building certification systems and it is often presented as a method to improve the commissioning of buildings and as a user experience feedback mechanism. This paper is based on a POE undertaken through stages at the University of Southampton Mayflower Halls of Residence complex. The first stage included the evaluation of occupant satisfaction, indoor environment quality and energy use. Results from temperature and relative humidity monitoring and an online POE questionnaire were analysed in the context of energy use, thermal comfort and building controls’ functionality. The second part of this study monitored the air temperature in a sub-sample of 30 rooms where the residents participated in a thermal comfort survey with a “right-here-right-now” questionnaire and a portable instrument that monitored air temperature, relative humidity, globe temperature and air velocity in the rooms. This paper presents the results of the POE and discusses approaches for the improvement in the buildings’ energy performance and the environmental conditions in the living spaces of the students. Results suggest that current use of controls is not always effective, with implications for the buildings’ energy use. Large variability was found in occupants’ thermal perception and preferences, which points to a need for occupant-centric solutions. In this study, POE is approached as a dynamic process that could be used to facilitate the responsive interaction of occupants with building systems and deliver through their engagement high energy performance and comfort

Building air quality

"Managing a building is a difficult and complex job. There are many competing demands -- health and safety, building maintenance, housekeeping, and communications with occupants and tenants. Building owners and managers are under pressure to contain or reduce operating costs and increase revenues. Such fiscal pressures can easily draw attention and resources away from important elements of building management such as indoor air quality (IAQ). Over the past twenty years, indoor air quality has emerged as a major concern for building owners and managers. As the public recognizes the importance of healthy, comfortable and productive indoor environments, its awareness and demand for good IAQ increases. People spend about 90 percent of their time indoors and air within homes and other buildings can be more polluted than the outside air, even in the largest and most industrialized cities. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) studies that compare risks of environmental threats to public health consistently rank indoor air pollution (including secondhand smoke, radon, organic compounds and biological pollutants) among the top five. Maintaining a healthy and comfortable indoor environment in any building requires integrating many components of a complex system. Indoor air problems are preventable and solvable and practical guidance on how to manage your building for good indoor air quality is available. The core of EPA's large buildings IAQ management practices guidance is contained in Building Air Quality: A Guide for Building Owners and Facility Managers (BAQ), widely recognized as one of the best references of its type since publication in 1991 (see Appendix 1 [PDF file; 1 page - 67 KB] for ordering information). Much of what BAQ recommends you will recognize as common principles of good facility management. It is organized as a comprehensive reference volume, by subject area. As such, BAQ is extremely useful in learning the principles of IAQ and how to manage a building for good IAQ. It is also a helpful resource if problems occur or if more detailed information is needed. However, despite BAQ's wide availability, EPA and other organizations continue to learn about indoor air problems that could have been easily prevented or fixed by implementing good building management practices. It is worth noting that the guidance emphasizes changing how you operate and maintain your building, not increasing the amount of work or cost of maintaining your building. Good IAQ does not have to compete with other building management priorities; in fact, it can enhance some. For example, the efficiencies gained by keeping your HVAC system clean and better controlled both enhance IAQ and reduce energy costs. To promote the use of these straightforward practices to improve IAQ, EPA and other leaders in the IAQ field developed this 8-step Building Air Quality Action Plan (BAQ Action Plan). This additional resource meets the needs of building owners and managers who want an easy-to-understand path for taking their building from current conditions and practices to the successful institutionalization of good IAQ management practices. The BAQ Action Plan leads you through a logical set of steps to achieve the goal of better indoor air quality in your building. There is broad agreement that both documents, BAQ and the BAQ Action Plan, used together, can significantly improve IAQ and reduce the likelihood of IAQ problems, thus lowering health risks, increasing comfort and productivity, and reducing exposure to liability from IAQ problems." - NIOSHTIC-2NIOSHTIC No 20000219"To be used with Building air quality: a guide for building owners and facilities managers."Cover title.Shipping list no.: 98-0374-P."June 1998.""EPA 402-K-98-001."Includes bibliographical references

3D Digital Interactive Model of IIT Hyderabad Campus

This project aims to provide campus visitors an interactive tour of the beautiful IIT Hyderabad campus, using a user-friendly interface. In this project, different navigation technology is used to bring up relevant information queried by a user using visual analysis. The concept is a 3-Dimensional interactive campus model. Any visitor can browse, view, and interact with the immersive campus environment by different user actions. User can click on a building, zoom in or out which can help the user to find required information with 360-degree images, and videos. The proposed model can provide the real feel of campus from anywhere. In this project, different design tools and interaction methods were learned and used. Tools like Sketchup, Photoshop, Unity, Adobe XD, helped in designing the model