B7 - Course Reflection

Intelligent Buildings was a course that provided a wide variety of exposure in terms of what will be leading most industries in the future. The future which holds nothing, but technological methods and improvement as explored through our lecture topics and discussions.

The initial class discussion of what makes a building intelligent opened doors to understanding how the future industries will account for nothing but technology to complete minor and major tasks of a given work load to achieve time efficiency, and higher productivity rates, while that was proven through the discussed topics of what Artificial Intelligence are, the use of 3D printers, learning and understanding what is a database, and what BIM tools are capable of. In addition to preforming a research to further explore what intelligent buildings are.  

The knowledge taken from this class were all very useful and eye opening to what is going on in the real world, but what I personally feel was very useful was learning how to use Microsoft Access for creating a database as I would never through in million years to check what Microsoft Access is, what it does, and how it works. In addition to using Revit to create families.

Before using Revit to create families, I wasn’t proficient with Revit and I still have more to learn and practice to achieve proficiency using the program, but this assignment has helped me become more familiar with Revit.

This course has definitely well prepared me for the future, as the knowledge gained through this course has allowed me to think out of the box in terms of building design, where every time I will think of designing a building I will thinking about all the technological methods and feature we talked about in class and see how I can implement them to my design to make my building more intelligent. Another thing this course has prepared me for is when I buy my own house when day I will install HVAC sensors to increase energy efficiency and indoor air quality, while having lower utility bills : D  

Since we have come to the end of this course I would like to share my current definition of intelligent buildings: Intelligent buildings is where there are high levels of control that does require constant interaction from human.   

Comments:
Hillinger
I agree with you the guest lectures were interesting and helpful, because it was nice having someone in the profession close to our age that we can related to in terms of our future careers. 

Abad
I agree with you in terms of how guest speakers were very useful to have as I am digital building concentration too, and I was confused about what can really be done with a digital building concentration up until we had our guest speakers and having further discussion with Professor Mitchell.

Sisson
I have to agree with you as engineers I believe BIM tools will just be involved in everything we do whether analysis or design.

Sensors and Controls for HVAC Systems

Group Members: Shuyuan Zhang & Shaden Dahroug

The following project was selected to research based on the interest and knowledge of the importance of HVAC systems within a building since it’s one of the main contributing factors of energy consumption within a building, whether during the summer or winter season or even spring since an HVAC system is required all year around to maintain the building’s condition to achieve comfort of occupants within a building, while maintaining indoor air quality. As sensors may be used to increase energy efficiency, it’s also important for maintenance of the required indoor condition as non-efficient sensors may lead a building to overheat or overcool, leading occupants of the building to feel uncomfortable and that may impact their productivity within a work environment.

Sensors and controls for HVAC systems is believed to be an important aspect of an intelligent buildings, because of its technological features that doesn’t require manual control from humans in order to maintain its requirements, where it’s control is achieved through sensors that only require implementing the program of the sensors with the building requirements to do its job of maintaining the buildings indoor air condition for occupant’s comfort.

The research will be focused on how sensors collect data for an HVAC system, and how the equipment or system process the data to control the indoor air conditions. In addition to exploring the advantage and disadvantage of each sensor to determine which would be the most relevant for an intelligent building to achieve maximum comfort of occupants and energy efficiency. In addition to determining what effects the performance of a given sensor.

The following sensors listed below are the sensor that will be researched for this project, while other parameters that will be put into consideration for the following project will be trying to understand the initial and maintenance cost of the following sensors as those are influential factors for an owner when selecting most component within a building.

o   Carbon-dioxide emission sensor

o   Occupancy sensor (movement)

o   Radiation sensor (heat)

o   Traditional temperature / humidity sensor

A model will also be created for research purposes to determine the relevance of our findings for the research, and that will be achieved through using eQuest for energy analysis to have a closer look at which sensor may truly be more energy efficient compared to the other sensors selected for research.  

The process of determining the relevance of our findings for the project will be a challenge as eQuest may not be enough for this evaluation, and that may lead to requiring database expertise in order to create a database to determine the relevance of the findings of the project.

Comments:

B4 - Term Project Description

Dung Tran,

A life on mars sounds interesting, and your project is very interesting but it leads me thinking how many spaceships and trips will this require for building one place “let’s say a house” and what are the environmental impacts of those spaceship as they leave earth and go into space, and since automated construction will definitely increase the traffic in space, I wonder if that will have an impact on the environment in space. I would also like to comment about your problem statement it shows that you have thoroughly thought the challenges that may come with your project.

Best of Luck on your project.

Anibaba - Project Description Blog Post

Malik Anibab,

I find the scope of your project interesting because it questions whether a building can be green and intelligent or just intelligent or just green. Probably increasing a building’s intelligence may be increasing a building’s energy consumption in some sort of way, but there is probably methods of using plants for energy production, where a building feeds energy of itself.

The following links below are articles about the BIQ building which is located in Hamburg, Germany. The building is interesting because it has double skin to make the building green, where the second skin is made out of a bioreactor. Thought of sharing since this may be helpful with your research.

Best of Luck on your project.

http://algadisk.eu/biq-first-building-in-the-world-with-bioreactor-facade/

https://www.iba-hamburg.de/en/themes-projects/the-building-exhibition-within-the-building-exhibition/smart-material-houses/biq/projekt/biq.html

 

Term Project Description

Zac Arnold,

It’s intelligent of you and Mark to take advantage of the project and choose Revit as a project to increase your familiarity with its use and try to determine its flaws through experimenting it yourselves which is an important thing to do, because you only get better by practicing using the software more and more. In addition, how you considered the scope of construction business as whole when it comes to general contractors, subcontractors, owners, etc.  

Best of Luck on your project.