B5-Uses of databases in design offices

In my opinion, the most obvious character that the database is playing in office buildings is to control the energy system. The book, Energy Buildings is saying: “The resulting database and model are expected to provide the simple, direct decision-making process for helping estimate the energy-saving potential of some energy conservation measures to retrofit existing office buildings quickly.” For example, the picture below is showing a schematic outline of the research for developing an energy prediction model, which can quickly estimate the annual electricity use of office buildings. 

                                                

By the database, the energy treatment methods can be listed out. So how? The database can organize various results by a list of input variables. For example, for previously analyzing the natural light going through a glass curtain wall, the input can be the properties of the curtain wall, the building location characters and the time of the day, so the output can be the amount of energy going into the building, the serving area of the natural light and the efficiency of the wall. The engineers do not need to build the actual sample wall first and then go collecting the data for estimations. The database can serve for the building load and the HVAC system. By putting the data into the database, such as the building envelope, the building thermal mass, the system operations, the refrigeration and heat rejections and so on for the energy control, the tables can be created for each of them, and the tables can interact with each other.

For example, after input a thermal mass table, and a heat rejections table, we can do this in the database (Linux) to get what the thermal load should be in the office building A during the winter:

SQL> SELECT minimum thermal mass required in the office, the maximum heat rejections
1    FROM thermal mass, heat rejection
2    WHERE season= ‘winter’
3    AND building_name= ‘office A’;

Then the possible range for the thermal load will pump up as a result table. By the database, the using time of the energy systems can also be controlled. We can select the office closing time and the office opening time from the time table, and then the unoccupied period for every day through the week, the month, or the year will be listed out, so the heating or cooling systems can automatically switch on an off according to that unaccompanied period. From my Blog 1 (link), you can learn why the time control for the energy system is essential.

After the prediction designs based on the databases, the time and the money which will be used on estimating the energy system in the office building could be reduced, because the data will be organized and shared, so for the operation of the building or the other similar building, the same database can be referenced again for higher efficiency.

Works Cited:

Mao, Jiachen and Pan, Yiqun and Fu, Yangyang. Towards fast energy performance evaluation: A 

pilot study for office buildings; Energy Buildings. Volume 121, 2016, Pages 104-113, ISSN 0378-7788, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2016.03.077

Comments:
Yicheng Li
Yes, as you said, the SQL can help us to organize the large databases and it became the foundation of many nowadays' computer software. For SQL, the data input methods are various and simple enough to be understood, so it has already envolve in our daily life.

Tyler Madden
I totally agree with you that the smarter "relational" databases can improve the efficiency of production because the data tables are separated but they can interact with each other, and the users can use various data sets at the same time and come out with another table for showing the results. Besides Microsoft's SQL server, for the Mac system, the terminal is the SQL server.

Alec Silverstone
Agree. The data appear during the building design, and construction processes are very complex, and if there is not a database to organize those data, the mistakes and misunderstanding between the engineers and the constructors will occur frequently, and to find the reason of the error will be a suffer work. Therefore, the database is essential for construction.

Blog 4, Project Outline: A Villa BIM

    The final project is going to design a small-apartment-size villa BIM. The building profile is set to: Located on the outskirts of Philadelphia, with a total living area of approximately 500 square meters, totally three floors, including the basement, the first floor and the second floor. The main rooms include living room, bedroom, kitchen, parking garage and so on. After reading some pictures and plans of the villa model online, I combined these and my life experience and mastery of Revit software to make a rough design of my project.

  

   

1. Overview:
     Right now, in my outline, only two layers of the villa were completed, one layer is 3.3 meters high and the second floor is 3.25 meters high. The overall shape is formed by several sets of rectangular. The second floor separates an open-air balcony as a Large balcony, a place for outdoor recreation. Most of the exterior surfaces of the building are made of 200mm concrete façade, combined with some glass windows.

2.Distribution:
      The villa is positioned as a small family villa. In the uncompleted design, the first floor has a living room, dining room, kitchen, secondary bedroom, parking garage, game room and restroom; the second floor is mainly the master bedroom, cloakroom, living room, lounge, Open-air balcony and lumber room.                            

          First Floor    

                                                                       Second Floor

3.Following Task:
      Next, I will gradually improve the basement and the details of the interior of the building, including stairs and some furniture. And I will finish some related labels and schedules.



Reference:
Alnuaimi, “Overdesign of Villa Structures in Oman”, Dec. 12. 2015, https://doaj.org/article/262b61fa791843fabb9f3b62167fbde3

Bjorhovde, “Connections in steel structures III behaviour, strength, and design : proceedings of the third international workshop held at Hotel Villa”, May, 29,1995,
https://drexel.alma.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/openurl?institution=01DRXU_INST&rfr_id=info:sid%2Fsummon&rft_dat=ie%3D51128040300004721,ie%3D51140003190004721,language%3DEN&svc_dat=CTO&u.ignore_date_coverage=true&vid=01DRXU_INST:Services

Newman, Oscar, “Model security code for residential areas”, 1974, New York: Institute for Community Design Analysis


Comment:
Ren
    Your layout of the outline is very good. You mainly focus on the analysis of the medical industry by BIM technology. Specifically, it can be divided into the application of BIM in the medical industry at present, its advantages and challenges that will be encountered. But I think when  you write the final paper, there should be more examples in it. For example, BIM analysis of a hospital, making readers understand the application of BIM in this field easier. This is just a little bit of my opinion on the final paper.

Weiyi Tang
    The topic you choose is good, and your outline is clear. Firstly, it is the research results of the current building and the future building. And then it is the thinking of the team members on the research results. Compared to just a single study, I feel having own thoughts and ideas is better. You have two team members and hope you have a clear division of labor, which will improve the efficiency of your group.

Alec Silverstone
    The role of robots in future buildings, this topic I think it is very interesting. In the future, robots will definitely play an important role in the intelligent buildings. But in the second part, robot, I think the advantages and disadvantages in first point can be combined with the potential of the future, the third point, because its advantages and disadvantages determine the future role of this technology, so I think this two points are related.

B3-How far will the AEC industry go in 10 years?

The computers used half-century to walk into ordinary people's life. How long will it take for the AEC industry? There was an advertising slogan for 4G (the fourth generation of broadband cellular network technology) when the 3G was commonly used several years ago-"The future is here." However, now, in China, 5G has already walked into our life. Therefore, the future is never far away from us. In Bill's presentation, I agree with his appointment that data optimization is the AEC industry's future. I believe that for one day, those AI BIMs and the robots will take an important role in the building designing process and take some jobs from the designers, but how long will they take? Ten years? Or another half-century?

About five years ago, the 3D printed residential houses were selling in some countries, which were high-efficiency for both money and time, and even environmental friendly since the printer was using construction wastes as the ink. However, for 2019, most buildings are still constructing by human beings. Why? It is because the technology for 3D printing houses is not progressed enough to receive the truths from the public. For the safety reasons, most of those 3D-printed buildings were dismantled in several months after built. It is improving, but not good enough. So we cannot predict how far the 3D printing construction will go in 10 years. 

For the Grasshopper and the Dynamo, which are the BIM programs that Bill mentioned in the presentation, since the sample programs have already been created, and they were only going to feed the applicable algorithmic modelings to the Revit and let the designers choose the model at the last, I am holding a positive viewpoint for their developments in following 10 years. Since human is still the object to make the final decisions, and the program itself is only providing reasonable options, this method is similar for nowadays’ AI working theory. Like the food delivery apps, it will help you to get rid of those far restaurants, the food you do not like, and show up all the options with a rated list. All you need to do is to choose your food at the last step. 

The AEC industry will realize the data optimization, but this will not come true instantaneously, and this might be a long journey so that it can be ten years, 20 years or a half-century. Haste makes waste, so nothing should go in a rush. The human beings already finished a lot of amazing pioneering works in 10,000 years, which is an extremely short period for the Earth, which is about 4.5 billion years old. Bill said in the presentation that we are fortunate for living now because many exciting things are happening. Future will be here, and the future will never be far away from us. 

Works cited:

Allen, Bill. “The Future of BIM Will Not Be BIM—and It's Coming Faster than You Think.” YouTube, uploaded by Autodesk University, 23 November 2016,   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq6yKyauu-o

Comments:


Matt Mullen:

I agree with you that the VR walkthrough will be more popular than the 3D printing models in the future. One is because the VR will cost less money and the 3D printing models might create wastes. The other reason is that the 3D printed model is a static model and VR is an intuitionistic digital model, so if the model needs any change, VR walkthrough model is only going to change the alternative part while the 3D model is going to be rebuilt entirely.



Gabriel Grajewski:

I agree with you because I believe that to realize the data optimization will take a long time for the AEC industry, but I do not have an exact idea about how long it will be. Although they are progressing the data manipulation, the data gathering is still the central part of the AEC industry. Many examples, which Bill provided in the presentation, were the underlying ideas and samples. Therefore, the data optimization is not easy to be realized in only ten years.



Jenny Fretta:

Like you, I doubt that 3D printing will be used to construct an entire building ten years later. Because of the limitation of the materials, the development of the 3D-printing technique for the building was not fast in the past ten years. The limitation of the materials will still be a problem either before founding or creating new material or another printing method. Although the improving speed is ideal, the progress of it never stops. The road is 3D printable now, so it is sure that 3D printing will assist a lot for the construction in the future.

Blog 1-The HVAC system and the environmental challenges for the future buildings

  Now is 2019, so the “future” is here. Currently, for those new buildings, computers and smartphones are not the only staffs can connect to the internet and log in the database. The doorbell can record guess’ message when we are not home; the lights would be turned off automatically when there is no one occupied in the room; the fire alarm would call the fireman for us. But the future is still coming. “The home devices are able to communicate with each other, send the message to the host, and take commands for improving. This is not science fiction anymore. Because of the Internet of Things (IoT), it is possible to build the home automation.” Wrote by Colon and Griffith. [1] When it comes to practice, the HVAC system would be the main part to be automated. Here is an AD for the air vent, “Keen’s Smart Vents make it possible for homeowners to close the vents when the room is not in use with an app, instead of a ladder. The vents are rigged with sensors for temperature and pressure. After you install it, you can set up a profile for the room to tell the vent how it should work. For an office room, the original program is set to work between 9 in the morning and 6 in the afternoon for the workdays. If there is a hard-working guy wants to stay longer, he can use the app to adjusted time. Keen will also remember user habits and intelligently open and close vents accordingly. Initial studies show that Keen can reduce 22% of running time on the air vents.” [2] The benefit of the automated HVAC system and the electricity system is to save our planet. Rhodes wrote, “If we turn down the air vents during the unoccupied period, the efficiency of a 3,500-square-foot building can decrease to the same efficiency serving a 2,000-square-foot home.” [2] A lot of energy would be saved.  

  Of course, as engineer students, we all have been told that environmental problem is not an ignorable problem for the building constructions. “40% of greenhouse gas is produced by the buildings in the U.S. In New York, this number even raises to 80%. This happens because the commercial buildings waste a large amount of energy by heating and lighting unoccupied buildings. There is also another problem for the architects and engineers, the green building conferences are packed with everything from recycled building materials to solar awnings. The challenge is choosing the products that offer the best return on investment and fitting them into an overall design.” Martin LaMonica wrote. [3] For better life of our progenies, engineers should start to save the Earth. However, to construct a green building is not as easy as its definition. Martin LaMonica wrote: “One of the challenges in green building design is making dramatic energy reductions to existing buildings. The constructor would fill the insulations, such as the vacuum insulation panels, between the brick walls or ceilings. The building will use efficient lighting and HVAC systems. Engineers and designers can save energy and money by using smaller HVAC machines in an insulated and tight constructed building. Another method to improve the overall efficiency of the building is by certain practices like, to precool the conference rooms before meetings, Cheimets says.” [3]

 The development of the buildings and technology is important but it does not mean that we can ignore the problems they have, such as environmental problems. I believe the balance is much more essential than the developing speed. 

Reference:

[1] Colon, Alex and Griffith, Eric. “The Best Smart Home Devices for 2019.” PCMAG, 1 Nov. 2018,

https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2410889,00.asp. Accessed 13 Jan. 2019.

[2] Rhodes, Margaret. “The Brilliant Air Vents You Never Knew You Needed” Wired, 14 Jan. 2015,

https://www.wired.com/2015/01/brilliant-air-vents-never-knew-needed/. Accessed 13 Jan. 2019

[3] LaMonica, Martin. “Putting Building Science into Practice” Technology Review, 21 Jan. 2013,

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/510131/putting-building-science-into-practice/. Accessed 13 Jan. 2019.

Comments for others:

Alec Silverstone: (Blog Post 1- The Future of Sociology, Databases, and Networking)

I totally agree with your appointment. The problem is very serious. The database is not only sharing the information, which been put into the database on your own initiative but also passively. For example, nowadays, everybody talks to their smartphones for doing a favor, and we think they are helpful. However, did you ever think about that the devices are "monitoring" us by that function as well? One time, my friend told me about "23andme" which is a genetic resolution test and I had never heard about that and never searched anything related to the "23andme" using my smartphone before. But a few hours later, there was an ad of "23andme" showing on my device, and I and my friends were freaked out that time. If the personal privacy is not "personal" anymore, then who will care about the "person" as an individual in the future? Undeniable, the "big data" makes a convenient life, and humans will get more benefits from it in the future. However, the sociology will become one of the largest roadblocks for the development of the database.

Christian Tait:

Yes, the material is the largest limitations of 3-D printing. When it comes for the building construction, 3-D printing is an environmentally friendly method. The construction wastes can be reused by 3-D printing. In 2014, at Shanghai, China, there were 10 3-D printed houses built out for selling. The large properties of the "ink" were from the construction wastes. In this case, the building cost and the constructing time would decrease, and it is good for the environment. However, some parts of construction wastes were not safe enough, and for separate those harmful wastes, the cost would rise back. Also, the material is not fully developed, so the stability of the building is a big problem. So, because of the materials, 3-D printing still has a long path to go for constructing purpose.

Tyler Madden:
There is another interesting story about the facial identifying. Xueyou Zhang is a super famous artist in China, polices caught five escaped criminals on his concerts. This happened because of the real-name facial identifying system at ticket checking entrances. As you said, even though the database is touching our privacy, it is also helping us to get rid of the hiding dangerous. This contradiction will be sharpening in the future.

Introduction/Intelligent Buildings

My name is Harvin Bhandal. I am a junior in the BS/MS program pursuing civil and structural engineering.  I am from Rockland County, New York, which is located just north of New York City.

My hometown of Rockland County

Being in close proximity to New York City growing up and now Philadelphia at Drexel has allowed me to develop a deep interest in structures and engineering from these urban settings. For my co-op this past year, I worked at Transystems, a transportation and structural engineering firm. I worked in the bridge department and got hands-on experience performing structural evaluations on many different bridges in the Philadelphia area. I also had a fair share of design experience as well which as worthwhile. AE510 is my first architectural engineering course and I look forward to learning more about structures in terms of buildings as opposed to bridges. In my free time, I enjoy being active and love playing sports such as basketball and volleyball. Below is a picture of me on a recent trip to London this past winter break.

Me at Trafalgar Square, London  

To me, an intelligent building is one that uses technology in many different aspects of its life cycle to improve the building's efficiency, cost, or human comfort.

About This Blog

AE-410/510 is a course primarily for Seniors and Graduate Students in Architectural Engineering at Drexel University in Philadelphia, USA.  We consider the uses of Information Technology on the Design, Construction and Operation of buildings, hence the course title: Intelligent Buildings.

This blog is created by students in the course responding to assignments and class exercises.  Use the "Labels" on the right to see the work of individual students OR the topics on which they've written.

The syllabus for the course is available from the "Pages" link.