Connected systems in smart cities: use-cases of integration of buildings information with smart systems

Realisation of smart cities is highly dependent on innovative connections between the deployed systems in the cities. This implies that successfully deployment of individual smart systems which meet citizens’ needs, is not sufficient to make a city smart. Indeed, the smart cities require to innovate and connect establish infrastructures for the citizens and organisations. To enable connected systems in smart cities, the possibilities to exchange and integration information between different systems is essential. Construction industry is one of the domains which owns huge amount of valuable information asset. Buildings information can be utilised to create initiatives associated with various domains like, urban and infrastructure planning, maintenance/facility management, and energy monitoring. However, there are some barriers to realise these initiatives. This paper introduces and elaborates the details about three use-cases which need to utilise buildings information to present innovative smart services. The three use cases are: 1) Energy Usage Monitoring for positive energy usage district areas in Smart Cities (a use case from River City-anonymous name of the city); 2) Services for Facility Management Industry (a use-case from Estates office in Quay University); 3) Safety & risk management for buildings in 3D Hack event in Dublin. Each use-case considers various stakeholders’ perspectives. Also they include elaborated details related to the barriers and challenges associated with utilisation and integration of buildings information. This paper concludes by the detailed barriers to benefit from valuable buildings information to create innovative smart services. Further, recommendations are provided to overcome the presented challenges

Impacts of adding knowledge flow to an activity‑based framework for conceptual design phase on performance of building projects

The construction industry suffers from an incomplete knowledge flow that leads to overrun cost and time. A considerable portion of this problem is attributable to the design stage which is a tacit knowledge-dominated area. Since knowledge tacitness results in an incomplete knowledge flow, we posit that adding the knowledge flows beside the workflow of the architectural conceptual design phase can attenuate both the overrunning cost and time. In order to fulfill such an objective, we integrated the Nissen multidimensional model – the knowledge flow theory for the enterprise life cycle – with Macmillan’s framework – the conceptual design framework – to test whether or not adding the knowledge flow to the conceptual design work flow could attenuate the cost and time overrunning. This paper elaborates on the process of validation testing by means of Simvision. Analysis of the results reveals that specifying the entity of the required knowledge during the conceptual design phase could reduce the cost and time overruns

Taxonomy of smart elements for designing effective services

Smart cities use ICT to improve citizens’ quality of life. Therefore, to address the citizens’ needs and meeting the smart city’s quality factors, defining appropriate goals and objectives is paramount. However, a considerable count of services does not have a goal to respond to the smart cities’ demands. Defining stakeholders’ needs, setting consequent objectives and specifying other technical requirements happen during the design phase of the services. Therefore, there is a need to provide a view of the required smart considerations. This paper aims at introducing a taxonomy for the required elements needed to be taken into account during the design of smart services. The proposed taxonomy is evaluated using a real case study in a European smart city council. The outcome of this research contributes to defining an architecture for designing more effective services in terms of enabling responses to citizens’ concerns and meeting the smart city quality requirements

Investigating HCI challenges for designing smart environments

With the advancement of technologies related to ‘Internet of Things’, we are moving towards environments characterised by full integration and semantics. Various environments are often summarized with terms such as ‘Smart City’, ‘Smart Home’, ‘Smart Buildings’ or ‘Smart Commerce’. In the meantime, technologies and standards for interoperability have been developed. However, to realise the full potential one remaining challenge is the design, integration and interoperability of many elements into a smart environment. In order to address this challenge, researchers have proposed concepts for Information Systems Design and Enterprise Architectures. By inspecting interaction challenges -in particular activities in which Humans are involved- during the design process, we endeavour in this paper to identify key challenges for designing smart environments. In order to address the challenges we propose a conversational approach that supports the main design phases and allows professionals to interact during the design phases for smart environments

Improving knowledge capture during conceptual design phase of building projects

Incomplete knowledge flow between architects and mechanical/electrical engineers engenders huge expense and untimely delivery of building projects. It is essential to consider mechanical electrical requirements from the early stages of design; and many experienced architects acknowledge this knowledge entities and the necessity for considering them at the right time.Therefore, inefficient knowledge flow among professionals during architectural conceptual design is emphasized as a problem for this study. For overcoming this problem, the study intends to improve knowledge capture during conceptual design phase of building project by formalizing the fundamental requirements of necessary mechanical/electrical knowledge. During this phase. To achieve this goal, this research develop three objectives: 1) Specify an appropriate knowledge capture technique for tacit dominated conceptual design phase; 20 Identify fundamental mechanical/electrical requirement to consider by architects during conceptual design phase and 3) Develop a framework for formalizing tacit mechanical/electrical knowledge during conceptual design phase. Firstly, the study selects an appropriate technique to capture expert’s tacit based on a literature survey by matching existing knowledge capture techniques with conceptual design characteristics. Secondly mechanical/electrical knowledge is obtained through a case study during conceptual design of a green building project. The mechanical/electrical knowledge and activities are matched in the McMillan Framework (2001) for the conceptual design phase. Later, mechanical/electrical knowledge is matched and assigned to the architectural concept design activities. At the conclusion of the exercise, the study developed a mechanical/electrical knowledge-based framework for the conceptual design phase. Validation of the result was obtained by using computational organizational theory simulation. This study contributes in extending McMillan’s Framework to include explicit fundamental required mechanical/electrical knowledge during the conceptual design phase; developing a tacit knowledge capture technique by combining tacit observation and explicit repertory grid documentation; and improving Nissen’s (2006) multidimensional model (MDM) by integrating knowledge into Macmillan’s framework for conceptual design activities. These results support the need to mitigate potential knowledge losses in tacit-dominant area between experts during conceptual design phase of building projects

Explicating mechanical and electrical knowledge for design phase of green building projects

Construction projects usually encompass numerous disciplines, requiring the integration of knowledge from civil, mechanical, electrical and other engineering domains. Some researchers contend that the integration of construction knowledge and experience at the early design phase would improve the overall project performance. Domination of tacit knowledge during design phase of building projects is the major source of knowledge flow problems between involved professionals. Therefore, this study intends to explicate the required mechanical and electrical knowledge which has to be considered during the conceptual design phase of a green building project. To fulfil this goal, a case study has been conducted to specify the entity of the required mechanical and electrical knowledge. The primary method for the data collection here is observation. Furthermore, this study employs the triangulation method in order to validate the collected data. The results contain the required mechanical and electrical knowledge which has to be considered during the conceptual design phase of a green building project

A technique to capture multi-disciplinary tacit knowledge during the conceptual design phase of a building project

The construction industry is suffering from incomplete knowledge flow that results in time and cost over-runs. Many researchers believe that a large part of this problem is related to the design phase being a tacit knowledge-dominated area. Since tacitness of knowledge contributes to incomplete flow of knowledge, we posit that facilitating the conversion of tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge can improve the overall knowledge flow. Within this context, this paper analyses recognised knowledge-capturing techniques and compares them in view of the operating characteristics of the conceptual design phase. This paper proposes a new tacit knowledge-capturing technique for this phase. The outcomes include a new knowledge-capturing technique, a method for validation of the proposed technique, and recommendations on how to deal with the challenges concomitant with the application and utilisation of the proposed technique in the building industry. By proposing a combinational tacit knowledge-capturing technique, this study attempts to mitigate the impact of the potential incomplete knowledge flow during the conceptual design phase in building projects

Standardisation of enterprise architecture development for smart cities

Managing the complexity of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) services in smart cities raises a need to use enterprise architecture frameworks to solve the complexity issues. However, the majority of the existing enterprise architecture frameworks have been developed to address the concerns and issues of the stakeholders in their associated world. To address challenges including complexity, multi-stakeholders and the service oriented nature of smart cities, this paper presents an enterprise architecture framework that can be used as a way to manage enterprise architectures in smart cities. This framework focuses on establishing contextual requirements and definitions for smart city systems and services. In contrast to other approaches, in this paper we focus on two important layers, i.e., context layer and service layer, as well as their relationships. The framework is valuable in developing smart services. It also contributes to the understanding of smart city enterprise architectures

A Comparison of Smart City Development and Big Data Analytics Adoption Approaches.

This paper intends to elucidate the similarities between smart city development and big data analytics adoption. Both concepts promise new opportunities: smart cities to improve citizens’ life quality and big data analytics to drive companies towards the competitive edge. Consequently, the number of organisational big data initiatives and efforts to implement smart city concepts are increasing. In the context of big data analytics adoption, it could be shown that there are two distinct approaches companies follow. They either focus on the search for potential use cases or on the development of a technology infrastructure. Based on a comparison of various smart city and big data analytics use cases, this paper discloses that both of these approaches either concentrate on developing new service development or providing the required infrastructures for future services

Improving dynamic knowledge movements with a knowledge movements with a knowledge-based framework during conceptual design of a green building project

Many researchers believe that tacitness of knowledge contributes to incomplete knowledge flow. In this article, the authors focus on obtaining the required mechanical and electrical tacit knowledge for architectural conceptual design purpose by observing activities of a design team involved in a green building project. The authors used the case study research methodology to demonstrate how the authors could utilize Macmillan's conceptual design framework and integrate it with the structure of repertory grid technique to obtain a framework of knowledge-based conceptual design for a green building project. The contribution of this study is developing a technique for capturing tacit knowledge during the conceptual design process that leads to an improvement in knowledge movements during the architectural conceptual design stage