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ItemRisk-conscious design of off-grid solar energy houses(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-11-16) Hu, HuafenZero energy houses and (near) zero energy buildings are among the most ambitious targets of society moving towards an energy efficient built environment. The "zero" energy consumption is most often judged on a yearly basis and should thus be interpreted as yearly net zero energy. The fully self sustainable, i.e. off-grid, home poses a major challenge due to the dynamic nature of building load profiles, ambient weather condition and occupant needs. In current practice, the off-grid status is accomplishable only by relying on backup generators or utilizing a large energy storage system. The research develops a risk based holistic system design method to guarantee a match between onsite sustainable energy generation and energy demand of systems and occupants. Energy self-sufficiency is the essential constraint that drives the design process. It starts with information collection of occupants' need in terms of life style, risk perception, and budget planning. These inputs are stated as probabilistic risk constraints that are applied during design evolution. Risk expressions are developed based on the relationships between power unavailability criteria and "damages" as perceived by occupants. A power reliability assessment algorithm is developed to aggregate the system underperformance causes and estimate all possible power availability outcomes of an off-grid house design. Based on these foundations, the design problem of an off-grid house is formulated as a stochastic programming problem with probabilistic constraints. The results show that inherent risks in weather patterns dominate the risk level of off-grid houses if current power unavailability criteria are used. It is concluded that a realistic and economic design of an off-grid house can only be achieved after an appropriate design weather file is developed for risk conscious design methods. The second stage of the research deals with the potential risk mitigation when an intelligent energy management system is installed. A stochastic model based predictive controller is implemented to manage energy allocation to sub individual functions in the off-grid house during operation. The controller determines in real time the priority of energy consuming activities and functions. The re-evaluation of the risk indices show that the proposed controller helps occupants to reduce damages related to power unavailability, and increase thermal comfort performance of the house. The research provides a risk oriented view on the energy self-sufficiency of off-grid solar houses. Uncertainty analysis is used to verify the match between onsite sustainable energy supply and demand under dynamic ambient conditions in a manner that reveals the risks induced by the fact that new technologies may not perform as well as expected. Furthermore, taking occupants' needs based on their risk perception as constraints in design evolution provides better guarantees for right sized system design.
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ItemProcess-mediated Planning of AEC Projects through Structured Dialogues(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2005-11-18) Verheij, Johan MichielProject planning in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry at present relies heavily on individual skills, experience and improvisation. In an attempt to increase predictability and efficiency, and to improve knowledge retention across projects, this thesis proposes a more systematic approach to project planning. It does so by introducing the notion of a meta-process model that embodies and cultivates the logic and intelligence of incremental and collaborative planning activities in a given domain. Planning tasks are encoded and enforced as a set of structured dialogues between project partners. To make this possible, a taxonomy extension to current workflow modeling technology is introduced. The concept of the chosen approach can thus be classified as process mediation through structured dialogues. It is applied to the particular example case of Design-Build project delivery for which a detailed workflow model was created. This model serves as a partial instantiation of the larger Project Management Body Of Knowledge, an abstract framework put forward by the US Project Management Institute. A prototype system architecture is devised as an extension to an existing collaborative virtual environment developed in the European e-HUBs research project. This experimental Web-based platform supports the enactment of workflows that are expressed in the standardized syntax of the neutral process definition language XPDL. The functional richness of the structured dialogue extensions is demonstrated through a dialogue management prototype developed as a separate MS Access database application.
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ItemA method to predict reverberation time in concert hall preliminary design stage(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2005-10-04) Zhang, YanA historical review is performed to study the impact of acoustical knowledge on concert hall developments. It shows that although acoustics developed from myth to real science, there is still a gap between its fast growing knowledge and relatively slow applications to improve designs. Architectural acoustics research and education shall help populating the tacit knowledge and experience of acousticians to reduce the gap between design and knowledge. The established paradigm in this field is to identify the performance goals of concert halls, recognize the available design information in different stages, and establish models to link them together. Placed in this general picture, this thesis focuses on providing design support for preliminary stage. It develops a model to link accessible design features with the most important acoustics performance index, reverberation time. A literature review on exiting reverberation time prediction methods shows that they are based on either too demanding or over-simplified for this stage. This study intends to develop a model that makes maximum use of available information and improves prediction accuracy in comparison with existing simplified methods. Through literature survey and data analysis, three factors (geometrical shape, non-uniform material distribution and scattering effect) are recognized as significant for reverberation time prediction. This thesis developed a simplified model taking these factors into consideration and calibrated this model with empirical data through Bayesian statistical method.
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ItemAssessing Mold Risks in Buildings under Uncertainty(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2005-07-15) Moon, Hyeun JunMicrobial growth is a major cause of Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) problems. The implications of mold growth range from unacceptable musty smells and defacement of interior finishes, to structural damage and adverse health effects, not to mention lengthy litigation processes. Mold is likely to occur when a favorable combination of humidity, temperature, and substrate nutrient are maintained long enough. As many modern buildings use products that increase the likelihood of molds (e.g., paper and wood based products), reported cases have increased in recent years. Despite decades of intensive research efforts to prevent mold, modern buildings continue to suffer from mold infestation. The main reason is that current prescriptive regulations focus on the control of relative humidity only. However, recent research has shown that mold occurrences are influenced by a multitude of parameters with complex physical interactions. The set of relevant building parameters includes physical properties of building components, aspects of building usage, certain materials, occupant behavior, cleaning regime, HVAC system components and their operation, and other. Mold occurs mostly as the unexpected result of an unforeseen combination of the uncertain building parameters. Current deterministic mold assessment studies fail to give conclusive results. These simulations are based on idealizations of the building and its use, and therefore unable to capture the effect of the random, situational, and sometimes idiosyncratic nature of building use and operation. The presented research takes a radically different approach, based on the assessment of the uncertainties of all parameters and their propagation through a mixed set of simulations using a Monte Carlo technique. This approach generates a mold risk distribution that reveals the probability of mold occurrence in selected trouble spots in a building. The approach has been tested on three building cases located in Miami and Atlanta. In all cases the new approach was able to show the circumstances under which the mold risk could increase substantially, leading to a set of clear specifications for remediation and, in for new designs, to A/E procurement methods that will significantly reduce any mold risk.
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ItemMaximizing the benefits of courtroom POEs in design decision support and academic inquiry through a unified conceptual model.(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2005-02-10) Pati, DebajyotiPost-occupancy evaluations represent an important missed opportunity. While POEs are often used to inform design guides, and to support facility management, they are seldom used to support design decision-making. While there are several technical, methodological, and cultural impediments to the ongoing use of POE results in design, characteristics of POE data and data structure is an important, and often overlooked, impediment. Some evaluators have attempted to resolve this problem by involving actively as consultants in design teams or involving users, such as Placemaking or Process Architecture. Recent advances in conceptual data modeling provide another strategy to interface POE findings and design decision-making. This thesis uses EXPRESS modeling language to develop a conceptual data structure for POE data, and integrate POE data with as-built building descriptions. While this effort has the potential to develop an improved way to structure POE data and make it more useful, it is also an extension of ISO-STEP. This study develops a data structure based on post-occupancy evaluations of state and federal trial courtrooms conducted by the researcher. Thirty-one courtrooms were evaluated, resulting in usable data from 93 courtroom users in 26 courtrooms. An EXPRESS-G schema was developed and was translated into a relational database for holding data and running queries. The investigator illustrated a range of query-generated outcomes to support decision-making during design and design review. Such outcomes include exploring existing courtrooms, comprehending the types of design decisions implemented across federal and state courtrooms, identifying design decisions that have been rated favorably or otherwise by courtroom users, rating design decisions based on evaluation data from existing courtrooms, and predicting a designed environments supportiveness to task performance. Further, multivariate analysis of the POE data provides the first scientific investigation of courtrooms as work settings. Finally, eight key performance indicators of courtrooms were developed based on the POE data.
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ItemA new formal and analytical process to product modeling (PPM) method and its application to the precast concrete industry(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2004-11-08) Lee, GhangThe current standard product (data) modeling process relies on the experience and subjectivity of data modelers who use their experience to eliminate redundancies and identify omissions. As a result, product modeling becomes a social activity that involves iterative review processes of committees. This study aims to develop a new, formal method for deriving product models from data collected in process models of companies within an industry sector. The theoretical goals of this study are to provide a scientific foundation to bridge the requirements collection phase and the logical modeling phase of product modeling and to formalize the derivation and normalization of a product model from the processes it supports. To achieve these goals, a new and formal method, Georgia Tech Process to Product Modeling (GTPPM), has been proposed. GTPPM consists of two modules. The first module is called the Requirements Collection and Modeling (RCM) module. It provides semantics and a mechanism to define a process model, information items used by each activity, and information flow between activities. The logic to dynamically check the consistency of information flow within a process also has been developed. The second module is called the Logical Product Modeling (LPM) module. It integrates, decomposes, and normalizes information constructs collected from a process model into a preliminary product model. Nine design patterns are defined to resolve conflicts between information constructs (ICs) and to normalize the resultant model. These two modules have been implemented as a Microsoft Visio ™ add-on. The tool has been registered and is also called GTPPM ™. The method has been tested and evaluated in the precast concrete sector of the construction industry through several GTPPM modeling efforts. By using GTPPM, a complete set of information items required for product modeling for a medium or a large industry can be collected without generalizing each company's unique process into one unified high-level model. However, the use of GTPPM is not limited to product modeling. It can be deployed in several other areas including: workflow management system or MIS (Management Information System) development software specification development business process re-engineering.
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ItemIdentifying Relevant Variables for Understanding How School Facilities Affect Educational Outcomes(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2004-01-07) Bosch, Sheila JonesMany school facilities in the United States are old, out-of-date, poorly maintained, and lack specific design elements that are likely to enhance teaching, learning, behavior, and other desirable outcomes. This study proposed that one reason why previous research regarding the effects of the physical school environment on educational outcomes has had little impact on the quality of schools is because there is a lack of knowledge about these relationships. A multi-method approach was used to solicit information from educators and researchers familiar with school facility effects literature to develop a set of research priorities to guide future research. In Phase I, a literature analysis provided important physical and outcome variables to seed brainstorming lists used in following phases of the research and provided the basis for a gap analysis to identify unavailable information. A concept mapping methodology was utilized in Phase II to solicit feedback from a group of seventeen experienced educators who were asked to brainstorm a list of measures of student, school, or school district success, sort their final list of more than 100 items into categories that made sense to them, and rate each item regarding how important it is to monitor or otherwise track. Using a Delphi method, a series of four questionnaires was given to a group of experienced researchers who developed a list of physical variables plausibly related to educational outcomes, rated the importance of those items, developed hypotheses that included top-rated physical variables and top-rated outcome variables (i.e., measures of success rated by educators), and then selected from those hypotheses several that became the basis of the recommended research priorities for the field. These research priorities propose investigations of the relationships between a set of physical variables (including the provision of team work stations and faculty collaborative spaces, well-designed circulation spaces, spaces for quiet reflection, adaptable seating, daylighting in classrooms, and overall maintenance and building quality) and a variety of educational outcomes (e.g., achievement, behavior, satisfaction, affective performance).
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ItemOccupant responsive optimal control of smart façade systems(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2003-05) Park, Cheol-Soo