Visual impact in the urban environment. The case of out-of-scale buildings

Recently, there has been an increasing need to apply methods for the estimation of the visual impact of buildings that are out-of-scale on its surrounding urban space, such as skyscrapers. In this paper, a method developed by the authors for the visual impact of buildings based on the viewshed analysis is applied to the out-of-scale buildings of the city of Turin. The method goes beyond the sole information if a cell is visible or not, which is typical of viewshed analyses, and also takes into account the various factors that cause the visual attenuation with the distance such as the visual acuity, the contrast between the target and the surrounding, the atmospheric visibility and the recognition proce ss of the subject. The application of this methodology is done on two out-of scale buildings of the city of Turin – Italy (two skyscrapers, one of which is under construction, located in different areas of the city). From the visibility maps, in various conditions, it can be noted how the new buildings are or will recently be major landmarks not for the entire city but also for the surrounding municipalities

Automatic interval management for aircraft based on dynamic fuzzy speed control considering uncertainty

A novel real-time autonomous Interval Management System (IMS) is proposed to automate interval management, which considers the effect of wind uncertainty using the Dynamic Fuzzy Velocity Decision (DFVD) algorithm. The membership function can be generated dynamically based on the True Air Speed (TAS) limitation changes in real time and the interval criterion of the adjacent aircraft, and combined with human cognition to formulate fuzzy rules for speed adjusting decision-making. Three groups of experiments were conducted during the en-route descent stage to validate the proposed IMS and DFVD performances, and to analyze the impact factors of the algorithm. The verification experimental results show that compared with actual flight status data under controllers’ command, the IMS reduces the descent time by approaching 30% with favorable wind uncertainty suppression performance. Sensitivity analysis shows that the ability improvement of DFVD is mainly affected by the boundary value of the membership function. Additionally, the dynamic generation of the velocity membership function has greater advantages than the static method in terms of safety and stability. Through the analysis of influencing factors, we found that the interval criterion and aircraft category have no significant effect on the capability of IMS. In a higher initial altitude scenario, the initial interval should be appropriately increased to enhance safety and efficiency during the descent process. This prototype system could evolve into a real-time Flight-deck Interval Management (FIM) tool in the future

Objective Validation of Airport Terminal Architecture using Agent-based Simulations

This thesis explores how airport terminal architecture is tested before it is built. The purpose of testing is to make sure an architectural layout aligns with the rest of the airport’s systems. The design of a terminal is a long and expensive process that must accommodate tens of thousands of passengers every hour, the movement of logistics, and control of security. Evaluating spaces for that many people can be difficult to measure, which can result in architects relying on their intuition and experience to judge the impact of a layout for daily operations without objective validation. It is not practical for designers to build a complete airport to see how it works and make renovations after finding aspects that have poor performance. As a result, testing airports requires using mathematical models and simulations to validate how well different systems work together. Designers try to validate architectural layouts in airport terminals by using crowd simulations to approximate passenger behaviour. Existing research in civil engineering and computer science has shown how mathematical models can predict patterns of human activity in the built environment on a large scale. However, these simulations have primarily focused on either modelling passengers as a process flow or people in emergency building evacuation. As a result, existing agent navigation does not consider how passengers use the surrounding architecture for decision-making during daily airport interactions. When passengers enter a terminal for the first time, they can be unaware of what they need to do or how to get there. Instead, passengers rely on using their perception of the environment (the architecture) to inform them what to do. However, there currently are no methods that incorporate architectural perception to validate a building layout in these conditions. This thesis develops an agent-based simulation to validate how well architectural layouts align with the daily operations of an airport terminal. It quantifies the value of a spatial arrangement as a function of people’s interactions in a given space. The model approximates human behaviour based on statistics from existing crowd simulations. It uses spatial analysis, like the isovist and graph theory, for agent navigation and measuring architectural conditions. The proposal incorporates agent perception to provide feedback between people’s decision-making and the influence of the surrounding space. The thesis calculates architectural value using normalized passenger priorities based on typical processing and non-processing airport domains. The success of a terminal layout is dependent on the agent’s ability to complete airport processing and fulfill their priorities. The final value of an architectural layout is determined using statistical methods to provide a probability distribution of likely values. The proposed agent simulation and mathematical models are built using Unity software, which is used to perform several simulation tests in this thesis. Basic functional components of the simulation are validated using existing crowd modelling standards. Tests are also performed to illustrate how different agent perception and priorities influence the value of architectural spaces. Monte Carlo simulations are created for simple terminal layouts to illustrate how changing the floor plan of a security area affects the architectural value for departing passengers. Finally, the architectural values of two real airport terminals are compared against an established passenger experience survey in a basic simulation model. The results of the testing shows that the agent simulation can differentiate between different architectural conditions, within reason, depending on the passengers’ priorities

Creating Through Mind and Emotions

The texts presented in Proportion Harmonies and Identities (PHI) Creating Through Mind and Emotions were compiled to establish a multidisciplinary platform for presenting, interacting, and disseminating research. This platform also aims to foster the awareness and discussion on Creating Through Mind and Emotions, focusing on different visions relevant to Architecture, Arts and Humanities, Design and Social Sciences, and its importance and benefits for the sense of identity, both individual and communal. The idea of Creating Through Mind and Emotions has been a powerful motor for development since the Western Early Modern Age. Its theoretical and practical foundations have become the working tools of scientists, philosophers, and artists, who seek strategies and policies to accelerate the development process in different contexts

Towards a GIS-based Multiscale Visibility Assessment Method for Solar Urban Planning

Urban areas are facing a growing deployment of solar photovoltaic and thermal tech-nologies on building envelopes, both on roofs and on façades, essential for the realization of the Swiss Energy Strategy 2050. This process often occurs regardless of the desirable archi-tectural integration quality in a given urban context, which depends on socio-cultural sensitivi-ty and on the visibility of the solar modules from the public space. Visibility and visual impact are recurrent decisional factors in spatial planning processes, with practical implications in-cluding touristic and real estate promotion, outdoor human comfort, way finding, public feeling of security and advertisement. In this thesis, the definition of visibility under a geometrical, physical and psycho-physiological perspective is explored, several quantitative indicators being described and test-ed. The objective is to provide a scale-dependent methodology to assess the visibility of build-ing envelope surfaces exposed to solar radiation, which could host solar modules, in urban areas. A visibility index is determined for inclusion as a variable in a multi criteria method, cover-ing areas from the strategic broad territorial scale to the district level, including neighborhoods and clusters of buildings. Accomplished research includes the estimation of public visual inter-est on the basis of crowd-sourced photographic databases, complementing geometry-based parameters such as cumulative viewsheds and solid angles. At each scale, the visibility index is systematically overlapped on an urban sensitivity layer issued from land use and on a spatial representation of the solar energy generation potential, at an appropriate level of detail. Results indicate that stakeholders can reasonably expect to harvest a serious amount of solar energy by means of building integrated solar systems without crucially affecting public perception. In the study area located in the city of Geneva (Switzerland), more than 50 m2 / building of non-visible envelope surface receiving sufficient solar radiation for an economically viable solar re-furbishment is available over half of the buildings. Solar thermal collectors or PV panels in-stalled on scarcely visible surfaces, mainly situated in courtyards, far from the streets or in deep urban canyons, could cover about 10% of the annual heating demand or alternatively, the same share of electricity needs on a district basis. At the same time, plenty of highly visible areas remain available for high-end solar deployments, which could also serve pilot and demonstration purposes