Modelling human behaviours and reactions under dangerous environment

This paper describes the framework of a real-time simulation system to model human behavior and reactions in dangerous environments. The system utilizes the latest 3D computer animation techniques, combined with artificial intelligence, robotics and psychology, to model human behavior, reactions and decision making under expected/unexpected dangers in real-time in virtual environments. The development of the system includes: classification on the conscious/subconscious behaviors and reactions of different people; capturing different motion postures by the Eagle Digital System; establishing 3D character animation models; establishing 3D models for the scene; planning the scenario and the contents; and programming within Virtools (TM) Dev. Programming within Virtools (TM) Dev is subdivided into modeling dangerous events, modeling character's perceptions, modeling character's decision making, modeling character's movements, modeling character's interaction with environment and setting up the virtual cameras. The real-time simulation of human reactions in hazardous environments is invaluable in military defense, fire escape, rescue operation planning, traffic safety studies, and safety planning in chemical factories, the design of buildings, airplanes, ships and trains. Currently, human motion modeling can be realized through established technology, whereas to integrate perception and intelligence into virtual human's motion is still a huge undertaking. The challenges here are the synchronization of motion and intelligence, the accurate modeling of human's vision, smell, touch and hearing, the diversity and effects of emotion and personality in decision making. There are three types of software platforms which could be employed to realize the motion and intelligence within one system, and their advantages and disadvantages are discussed

A multidisciplinary research approach to energy-related behavior in buildings

Occupant behavior in buildings is one of the key drivers of building energy performance. Closing the “performance gap” in the building sector requires a deeper understanding and consideration of the “human factor” in energy usage. For Europe and US to meet their challenging 2020 and 2050 energy and GHG reduction goals, we need to harness the potential savings of human behavior in buildings, in addition to deployment of energy efficient technologies and energy policies for buildings. Through involvement in international projects such as IEA ECBC Annex 53 and EBC Annex 66, the research conducted in the context of this thesis provided significant contributions to understand occupants’ interactions with building systems and to reduce their energy use in residential and commercial buildings over the entire building life cycle. The primary goal of this Ph.D. study is to explore and highlight the human factor in energy use as a fundamental aspect influencing the energy performance of buildings and maximizing energy efficiency – to the same extent as technological innovation. Scientific literature was reviewed to understand state-of-the-art gaps and limitations of research in the field. Human energy-related behavior in buildings emerges a stochastic and highly complex problem, which cannot be solved by one discipline alone. Typically, a technological-social dichotomy pertains to the human factor in reducing energy use in buildings. Progressing past that, this research integrates occupant behavior in a multidisciplinary approach that combines insights from the technical, analytical and social dimension. This is achieved by combining building physics (occupant behavior simulation in building energy models to quantify impact on building performance) and data science (data mining, analytics, modeling and profiling of behavioral patterns in buildings) with behavioral theories (engaging occupants and motivating energy-saving occupant behaviors) to provide multidisciplinary, innovative insights on human-centered energy efficiency in buildings. The systematic interconnection of these three dimensions is adopted at different scales. The building system is observed at the residential and commercial level. Data is gathered, then analyzed, modeled, standardized and simulated from the zone to the building level, up to the district scale. Concerning occupant behavior, this research focuses on individual, group and collective actions. Various stakeholders can benefit from this Ph.D. dissertation results. Audience of the research includes energy modelers, architects, HVAC engineers, operators, owners, policymakers, building technology vendors, as well as simulation program designers, implementers and evaluators. The connection between these different levels, research foci and targeted audience is not linear among the three observed systems. Rather, the multidisciplinary research approach to energy-related behavior in buildings proposed by this Ph.D. study has been adopted to explore solutions that could overcome the limitations and shortcomings in the state-of-the-art research

A technical framework to describe occupant behavior for building energy simulations

ABSTRACT Green buildings that fail to meet expected design performance criteria indicate that technology alone does not guarantee high performance. Human influences are quite often simplified and ignored in the design, construction, and operation of buildings. Energy-conscious human behavior has been demonstrated to be a significant positive factor for improving the indoor environment while reducing the energy use of buildings. In our study we developed a new technical framework to describe energyrelated human behavior in buildings. The energy-related behavior includes accounting for individuals and groups of occupants and their interactions with building energy services systems, appliances and facilities. The technical framework consists of four key components: i. the drivers behind energy-related occupant behavior, which are biological, societal, environmental, physical, and economical in nature ii. the needs of the occupants are based on satisfying criteria that are either physical (e.g. thermal, visual and acoustic comfort) or non-physical (e.g. entertainment, privacy, and social reward) iii. the actions that building occupants perform when their needs are not fulfilled iv. the systems with which an occupant can interact to satisfy their needs The technical framework aims to provide a standardized description of a complete set of human energyrelated behaviors in the form of an XML schema. For each type of behavior (e.g., occupants opening/closing windows, switching on/off lights etc.) we identify a set of common behaviors based on a literature review, survey data, and our own field study and analysis. Stochastic models are adopted or developed for each type of behavior to enable the evaluation of the impact of human behavior on energy use in buildings, during either the design or operation phase. We will also demonstrate the use of the technical framework in assessing the impact of occupancy behavior on energy saving technologies. The technical framework presented is part of our human behavior research, a 5-year program under the

Enabling Self-aware Smart Buildings by Augmented Reality

Conventional HVAC control systems are usually incognizant of the physical structures and materials of buildings. These systems merely follow pre-set HVAC control logic based on abstract building thermal response models, which are rough approximations to true physical models, ignoring dynamic spatial variations in built environments. To enable more accurate and responsive HVAC control, this paper introduces the notion of "self-aware" smart buildings, such that buildings are able to explicitly construct physical models of themselves (e.g., incorporating building structures and materials, and thermal flow dynamics). The question is how to enable self-aware buildings that automatically acquire dynamic knowledge of themselves. This paper presents a novel approach using "augmented reality". The extensive user-environment interactions in augmented reality not only can provide intuitive user interfaces for building systems, but also can capture the physical structures and possibly materials of buildings accurately to enable real-time building simulation and control. This paper presents a building system prototype incorporating augmented reality, and discusses its applications.Comment: This paper appears in ACM International Conference on Future Energy Systems (e-Energy), 201

Beyond the shortest-path: Towards cognitive occupancy modeling in BIM

Current approaches to simulate occupants' wayfinding in AEC mostly employ direct routing algorithms that assume global knowledge of the navigation environment to compute a shortest path between two locations. This simplification overlooks evidence concerning the role of perception and cognition during wayfinding in complex buildings, leading to potentially erroneous predictions that may hinder architects' ability to design wayfinding by architecture. To bridge this gap, we present a novel simulation paradigm entitled Cognitive Occupancy Modeling in BIM to simulate wayfinding by means of a vision-based cognitive agent and a semantically-enriched navigation space extracted from BIM (Building Information Modeling). To evaluate the predictive power of the proposed paradigm against human behavior, we conducted a wayfinding experiment in Virtual Reality (VR) with 149 participants, followed by a series of simulation experiments with cognitive and direct routing agents. Results highlight a significant correspondence between human participants' and cognitive agents' wayfinding behavior that was not observed with direct routing agents, demonstrating the potential of cognitive modeling to inform building performance simulations in AEC

Study on the ability of black soldier fly larvae for reducing the house fly eggs in poultry manure

Black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) are a good source of protein for aquaculture, animal feed, pet and human nutrition. Larvae have a healthy appetite and can be used to make household waste compost and residual agricultural. For previous study [1], observed that the BSFL can be grown in a variety of organic waste stream including pig manure, kitchen waste, fruits and vegetables, and given to the fish. In addition, the larvae benefit from the use of natural resources to overcome the problem of life cycle of widespread flies in the poultry farm openly. Therefore, it is important to note that the poultry farms release many particles into the air that endanger human health and the environment