B5-Reflection

AE 410/510, the Intelligent building, is one of my required class. My concentration is intelligent building for Architectural Engineering as well, so the knowledge for intelligent building helped me to get a basic idea about the technologies would be used in the future building. As a future engineer, this course gave me a primary guide for how the future building would be built, and how many other things I can do other than designing the buildings traditionally. The new BIM model programs, which were introduced in the course, such as the REVIT, Grasshopper, and other BIM programs, would be the most direct help for my future career because those programs would simplify the designing processes. Another helpful thing would be the MS Access database study. I am learning SQL by using Oracle in the information courses, and that was interesting as well, but the difference was that the MS Access was more intuitionistic and easy to be organized and edited.

I am always excited about learning new kinds of stuff. Now is the end of the term, I am still feeling interested in taking this course, but this course is not as simple as I thought. This does not mean that I do not like this course, but I do feel a little bit tired to do the projects and blogs. One thing cannot be denied is that those assignments and projects have helped me to learn more new stuff about intelligent buildings, such as the AI, the database, the BIM models and other interesting technologies. And to listen to the presentation from other professors and engineers were fun and expanded my mind. However, personally, some of the courses were too general to be followed, and there were too many pieces of information jumping up in each class, so it was hard for me to absorb those new bits of knowledge. In other words, I am not confident about this course. No detail was copied into my brain.

Besides those new technologies, I was expecting to hear something about how intelligent buildings would be improved, so that the negative effects from the building to the environment in the future would be decreased. But nothing was mentioned related to the future environment. This is a little bit different from what I thought about the intelligent building. Everything that I have learned from this course only benefits the people inside the building, but not outside of the building.

I am not a critic, and I do love this course, but, for personally, the course is a little bit hard to be patiently followed, and the project was too general to be focused. Hope these parts can be improved in future courses.

Comments:

Tsitsios: Yes, the BIM programs and the MS Access database were the most interesting and helpful things that we learned from this course. These can help us a lot for our future career.


Ren: You are right. The BIM model can simplify the engineers' lives, and there are many other BIM model programs in the business, which might be much more useful than the Revit in some specific categories. The database study will help us a lot for organizing. And, yes, to learn new knowledge from other professors is interesting and beneficial as well.

Laney Fries: Same, I am planning to study construction management in graduate school. The information from this course was a little be complex, but this should be similar to our future works, such as construction, operation, renovation, and demolition. I do agree that the BIM and the database study were the most important and interesting things we learned from this course. And, yes, to learn new knowledge from other professors is interesting and beneficial as well.

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.

B4:Group project_Future residential houses

Group project outline link

  The basic idea of this project is to learn about future residential buildings and to try to design a simple model. The propers of this project is to know how convenience the future residential house can be and what we as the future engineers can do to realize these ideas. In the final report, there will be two parts-90% of the research results and discussion about the future residential building and 10% of a BIM model for showing a better explanation for the future residential building. For the first part, the research results for the current buildings and future buildings will be displayed, the discussions, and the personal thinkings from the group members for the researching results. The discussion will focus on three aspects: the exterior, the house system with database controlling, and the environmentally friendly building, which specific for the energy saving and zero construction waste. For the BIM model, the 3D model, the floor plans, the elevations, and the sections will be showing in the report. This model will only be used to explain the idea, so the evaluation of the BIM model will be concise. BIM tools- Revit and Formit will be our tools to create the models. The models' properties are initially assumed: 10 years later, this four-people residential house will be located in Philadelphia, PA, USA. This house will be a 2,500 square foot two-story building with one-car parking and one storage. 

  Since there are three members in this group, labor separation is necessary for this relatively large project. Generally, every member should write about the personal thinking of the researching results. I will in charge of the current residential houses, and the model designing on the Revit and Formit. Chun Ming Tse will research the future residential buildings, and assist to draw the Revit model. Lin Qiaodanthe will be responsible for the discussion and conclusion. The research will be taking place on the Drexel online library, Prof. Mitchell's shared Evernote, and the Google search. As an example, here is the first piece of information for this project: link.

Comments:

Alec Silverstone: 

Your idea is very interesting. The robots will definitely play an essential role in the future intelligent building. Actually, some of the robots have already started to show their abilities for current buildings. The only thing I am worried about is your 3rd part of the report-the intelligent building design. Are you only going to talk about only the intelligent building? Or are you going to focus on the robotic technology-related story with the intelligent building? If you are doing the first one, won't that be abrupt? If you are doing the second one, I think you can combine this to the 2nd part of the report.

Christain Tait:

I am also interesting about the AR. I think AR is much more efficient than the 3D printed models because the size of the printed model is fixed, the editing of the model is tough and for some aspects, it is not accurate. And the 2D printed BIM models, those are showing the limit faces of the building and they are not intuitionistic. The AR can solve all these problems and even do better. However, currently, the AR model is only an idea so it may take a long time to come to be the truth.

Wenhan Fu:

Yes, you are right, future buildings will develop to be the intelligent building and the environmentally friendly building. I think these two parts cannot be separated, because saving the energy and environment is being the main part for a lot of other categories, for example, the vehicles-Tesla. You can start your research from the existing environmental friendly buildings, the environmental friendly certifications, such as BEAM Plus in Hongkong, LEED, BREEAM, and WELL.

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.

B2_Chapter 5_Scope of design services

  For Chapter 5, the author introduced the BIM (Building Information Modeling) for the architects and engineers.  Many experts of architectural, engineering and construction are currently using BIM tools for modeling. This design approach is evolving from simple warehouses to new complex buildings.  The BIM provides a virtual building model for the design teams (such as architects, surveyors, civil engineers, structural engineers, mechanical and electrical engineers) to be delivered to the contractor/owner, who can add their professional information, update, and track at each stage. Change and maintain this standard, single model. The result is a desire to reduce the information gaps and communication conflicts that occur when the project provides and receives information between participants.

  Design-bid-build is a traditional project delivery process. In this process, architects and engineers will do the design work individually, so they will not cooperate with the constructor and fabricators. When there is litigation, since collaboration is not the architects’ responsibility, they may withhold the information for their design. Therefore, it is not efficient both for money and time. For the improvement, there is the design-build process. In order to involve in the larger projects and to deal with the capitalization, the large firms will cooperate with small firms. For design-build delivery, the efficiency raised, but I like the new option—Integrated Project Delivery (IPD). For IPD, the architects, engineers, constructors, fabricators, and the owners will come together to form a single cooperation unit. During the collaboration, the architect and the engineer can receive potential payment and benefits for their contribution for the design performance, such as the project can be finished before the deadline, the building sustainability, the energy use saving, and environmentally friendly improvements. The reason why I like IPD the most is that it can dramatically increase the efficiency of time. Because of the potentially lucrative rule, the architects and the engineers will push the effort to design a better building. On the other hand, the technic improvement for saving the environment and energy will happen during this process. Moreover, the collaboration will reduce the conflicts between the constructors/owners and the designers. Different from the traditional methods, architecture and engineering take important roles in IPD, so it also benefits the design services.



Work Cited:

Eastman, Charles M. BIM Handbook: A Guide to Building Information Modeling for Owners, 

Managers, Designers, Engineers and Contractors. Vol. 2nd ed, Wiley, 2011. EBSCOhost, http://ezproxy2.library.drexel.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=364239&site=ehost-live.

Comments:

Harvin Bhandal:
I agree that using BIM tools will save your time and your money, for example, when you finished a 2-D drawing on Revit, you can also get a 3-D model for your floor, and you can also use Revit to analysis the sunlight effects on your design. You mentioned in your article that you never used Revit before.  Don't need to worry, the processes for using it is not complicated, and you might also find fun from it because when you can put your thought from the brain on an actual 3-D model is very cool.

Alec Silverstone:
I agree with you. Because of designed-bid-build and designed-build, which are the two traditional procurement processes, the relationship between architects, engineers, and constructors is not close cooperation. Therefore, for many cases, the constructors will join into the project at the very late, so the conflicts are hard to avoid at that time.  This case will waste time and money.

Christian Tait:
I agree with you because when I use Sketchup and Revit, or other Autodesk related products, I suffered a lot because of their incompatibility. Formit is undoubtedly a great product, but for now, it is not as widely used as Sketchup. As well, for some function tools, such as the content library, Formit is not as developed as Sketchup, because the database of Formit is not as plentiful as that of Sketchup. Therefore, the different BIM products from different companies cannot perfectly match each other, which is a problem for BIM.

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.

First post for self introduction-Weiyi Tang

  I am Weiyi Tang from China. My major is AE, and concentration is Digital Building. I was born in Hubei, China, and raised in Shenzhen, China. I am currently taking Korean 201 course for learning my third langue. For resting time, I do the Lego and the puzzles a lot. I travel a lot, and usually travel with my family.

  For the co-ops. I finished my first co-op in the Street Department of the Philadelphia Government. My main job during this was reviewing the projects' plans of the city, and check if those would affect the streets safety, the other buildings around them and the pipes or electricity lines underground. For my second co-op, I went back to Hongkong, China. The company was an environmental friendly counselor firm, so my job there was doing the site monitoring for the noise, dust, and little bit about the waste water pollution level for the constructing buildings, and then wrote the reports to helping those buildings to receive the certifications for BEAM Plus, WELL, or LEED.

  For my understanding, the Intelligent Building should be the building with the computer system that can automatically control the building HVAC system, Electricity system and any other system has the variability.