Simulation and BIM in building design, commissioning and operation: a comparison with the microelectronics industry

Analogy between the Microelectronics and Building industries is explored with the focus on design, commissioning and operation processes. Some issues found in the realisation of low energy buildings are highlighted and techniques gleaned from microelectronics proposed as possible solutions. Opportunities identified include: adoption of a more integrated process, use of standard cells, inclusion of controls and operational code in the design, generation of building commissioning tests from simulation, generation of building operational control code (including self-test) from simulation, inclusion of variation and uncertainties in the design process, use of quality processes such as indices to represent design robustness and formal continuous improvement methods. The possible integration of these techniques within a building information model (BIM) flow is discussed and some examples of enabling technologies given

Reducing the administrative burden in the European Union

The Netherlands wants to reduce the administrative burden for businesses between 2003 and 2007 with a quarter. With the aid of the so called Standard Cost Model, the burden is estimated to amount to 16.4 billion euro in 2002. This is about 3.6 % of the Dutch gross domestic product (GDP). However, a significant part of the administrative burden, over 40% of the total, is the direct result of international, mainly European legislation. This makes the reduction of the administrative burden a European issue. Besides, a reduction in one member state may affect the economies in other member states. This memorandum considers the direct and indirect effects of reducing the administrative burden on firms. Reducing the burden is expected among other things to boost investment, adding to the increase in production and labour productivity. For an individual country a unilateral reduction probably has different effects than a reduction that is part of a co-ordinated, European effort to scale down the administrative burden of government regulations. To assess the indirect effects, within the economy of the European Union and between European economies, we employ the CPBÂ’s general-equilibrium model WorldScan, which simultaneously takes account of the different product and factor markets in the world economy and which models many European economies in detail. The Netherlands is one of the very few countries, which currently has detailed information on the administrative burden of government regulations. Therefore, we assume that the key figures for the Netherlands also hold for the other member states of the European Union. This assumption implies that for the whole European Union an administrative burden exists of 340 billion euro in 2002. Better data for other member states are needed to arrive at a complete assessment of direct and indirect effects.

A survey of energy saving techniques for mobile computers

Portable products such as pagers, cordless and digital cellular telephones, personal audio equipment, and laptop computers are increasingly being used. Because these applications are battery powered, reducing power consumption is vital. In this report we first give a survey of techniques for accomplishing energy reduction on the hardware level such as: low voltage components, use of sleep or idle modes, dynamic control of the processor clock frequency, clocking regions, and disabling unused peripherals. System- design techniques include minimizing external accesses, minimizing logic state transitions, and system partitioning using application-specific coprocessors. Then we review energy reduction techniques in the design of operating systems, including communication protocols, caching, scheduling and QoS management. Finally, we give an overview of policies to optimize the code of the application for energy consumption and make it aware of power management functions. Applications play a critical role in the user's experience of a power-managed system. Therefore, the application and the operating system must allow a user to control the power management. Remarkably, it appears that some energy preserving techniques not only lead to a reduced energy consumption, but also to more performance

The system architecture of the Pocket Companion

In the Moby Dick project we design the architecture of a so-called Pocket Companion. It is a small personal portable computer with wireless communication facilities for every day use. The typical use of the Pocket Companion induces a number of requirements concerning security, performance, energy consumption, communication and size. We have shown that these requirements are interrelated and can only be met optimal with one single architecture. The Pocket Companion architecture consists of a central switch with a security module surrounded by several modules. The Pocket Companion is a personal machine. Communication, and particularly wireless communication, is essential for the system to support electronic transactions. Such a system requires a good security infrastructure not only for safeguarding personal data, but also to allow safe (financial) transactions. The integration of a security module in the Pocket Companion architecture provides the basis for a secure environment.\ud Because battery life is limited and battery weight is an important factor for the size and the weight of the Pocket Companion, energy consumption plays a crucial role in the architecture. An important theme of the architecture is: enough performance for minimal energy consumption

Octopus - an energy-efficient architecture for wireless multimedia systems

Multimedia computing and mobile computing are two trends that will lead to a new application domain in the near future. However, the technological challenges to establishing this paradigm of computing are non-trivial. Personal mobile computing offers a vision of the future with a much richer and more exciting set of architecture research challenges than extrapolations of the current desktop architectures. In particular, these devices will have limited battery resources, will handle diverse data types, and will operate in environments that are insecure, dynamic and which vary significantly in time and location. The approach we made to achieve such a system is to use autonomous, adaptable modules, interconnected by a switch rather than by a bus, and to offload as much as work as possible from the CPU to programmable modules that is placed in the data streams. A reconfigurable internal communication network switch called Octopus exploits locality of reference and eliminates wasteful data copies

What is Strategic Competence and Does it Matter? Exposition of the Concept and a Research Agenda

Drawing on a range of theoretical and empirical insights from strategic management and the cognitive and organizational sciences, we argue that strategic competence constitutes the ability of organizations and the individuals who operate within them to work within their cognitive limitations in such a way that they are able to maintain an appropriate level of responsiveness to the contingencies confronting them. Using the language of the resource based view of the firm, we argue that this meta-level competence represents a confluence of individual and organizational characteristics, suitably configured to enable the detection of those weak signals indicative of the need for change and to act accordingly, thereby minimising the dangers of cognitive bias and cognitive inertia. In an era of unprecedented informational burdens and instability, we argue that this competence is central to the longer-term survival and well being of the organization. We conclude with a consideration of the major scientific challenges that lie ahead, if the ideas contained within this paper are to be validated