Bibliometric Maps of BIM and BIM in Universities: A Comparative Analysis

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is increasingly important in the architecture and engineering fields, and especially in the field of sustainability through the study of energy. This study performs a bibliometric study analysis of BIM publications based on the Scopus database during the whole period from 2003 to 2018. The aim was to establish a comparison of bibliometric maps of the building information model and BIM in universities. The analyzed data included 4307 records produced by a total of 10,636 distinct authors from 314 institutions. Engineering and computer science were found to be the main scientific fields involved in BIM research. Architectural design are the central theme keywords, followed by information theory and construction industry. The final stage of the study focuses on the detection of clusters in which global research in this field is grouped. The main clusters found were those related to the BIM cycle, including construction management, documentation and analysis, architecture and design, construction/fabrication, and operation and maintenance (related to energy or sustainability). However, the clusters of the last phases such as demolition and renovation are not present, which indicates that this field suntil needs to be further developed and researched. With regard to the evolution of research, it has been observed how information technologies have been integrated over the entire spectrum of internet of things (IoT). A final key factor in the implementation of the BIM is its inclusion in the curriculum of technical careers related to areas of construction such as civil engineering or architecture

Vessel tractography using an intensity based tensor model with branch detection

In this paper, we present a tubular structure seg- mentation method that utilizes a second order tensor constructed from directional intensity measurements, which is inspired from diffusion tensor image (DTI) modeling. The constructed anisotropic tensor which is fit inside a vessel drives the segmen- tation analogously to a tractography approach in DTI. Our model is initialized at a single seed point and is capable of capturing whole vessel trees by an automatic branch detection algorithm developed in the same framework. The centerline of the vessel as well as its thickness is extracted. Performance results within the Rotterdam Coronary Artery Algorithm Evaluation framework are provided for comparison with existing techniques. 96.4% average overlap with ground truth delineated by experts is obtained in addition to other measures reported in the paper. Moreover, we demonstrate further quantitative results over synthetic vascular datasets, and we provide quantitative experiments for branch detection on patient Computed Tomography Angiography (CTA) volumes, as well as qualitative evaluations on the same CTA datasets, from visual scores by a cardiologist expert

Visualization, Exploration and Data Analysis of Complex Astrophysical Data

In this paper we show how advanced visualization tools can help the researcher in investigating and extracting information from data. The focus is on VisIVO, a novel open source graphics application, which blends high performance multidimensional visualization techniques and up-to-date technologies to cooperate with other applications and to access remote, distributed data archives. VisIVO supports the standards defined by the International Virtual Observatory Alliance in order to make it interoperable with VO data repositories. The paper describes the basic technical details and features of the software and it dedicates a large section to show how VisIVO can be used in several scientific cases.Comment: 32 pages, 15 figures, accepted by PAS

Three-dimensional Radial Visualization of High-dimensional Datasets with Mixed Features

We develop methodology for 3D radial visualization (RadViz) of high-dimensional datasets. Our display engine is called RadViz3D and extends the classical 2D RadViz that visualizes multivariate data in the 2D plane by mapping every record to a point inside the unit circle. We show that distributing anchor points at least approximately uniformly on the 3D unit sphere provides a better visualization with minimal artificial visual correlation for data with uncorrelated variables. Our RadViz3D methodology therefore places equi-spaced anchor points, one for every feature, exactly for the five Platonic solids, and approximately via a Fibonacci grid for the other cases. Our Max-Ratio Projection (MRP) method then utilizes the group information in high dimensions to provide distinctive lower-dimensional projections that are then displayed using Radviz3D. Our methodology is extended to datasets with discrete and continuous features where a Gaussianized distributional transform is used in conjunction with copula models before applying MRP and visualizing the result using RadViz3D. A R package radviz3d implementing our complete methodology is available.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, 1 tabl

Offshore Turbine Arrays: Numerical Modeling and Experimental Validation

The interaction between wind turbines in a large wind farm needs to be better understood to reduce array losses and improve energy production. A numerical test bed for an array of offshore wind turbines was developed in the open-source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) framework OpenFOAM. It provides a computational tool which can be used in combination with physical model turbine array studies in the Flow Physics Facility (FPF) at UNH as well as other test facilities. Turbines were modeled as actuator disks with turbulence sources to reduce computational cost. Both k-ϵ and k-ω SST turbulence models were utilized to capture the flow in the near-wall, wake, and free stream regions. Experimental studies were performed in the FPF to validate the numerical results and to provide realistic initial and boundary conditions, for example turbulent boundary layer inlet velocity profiles. Mesh refinement and boundary condition studies were performed. Numerical simulations were executed on a custom-built server, designed to be the head node of a future CFD cluster. The entire project was built on open-source software to facilitate replication and expansion. The numerical model provides building blocks for simulations of large wind turbine arrays, computational resources permitting. The numerical model currently replicates a three by one array of wind turbines in the FPF, and provides detailed insight into the array fluid dynamics