T. Biswas - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by T. Biswas
BIM in Current and Future Practice, 2015
The transition from conventional to sustainable building depends on a number of factors? technolo... more The transition from conventional to sustainable building depends on a number of factors? technological, environmental, economic and social. From a computer-aided design perspective, the first two are perhaps the most significant. We are working on a project with an emphasis on developing tools, to evaluate environmental consequences for design decision-making. Our current thrust is given to reducing energy usage as well as carbon emissions in buildings.
Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2012
ABSTRACT Achieving sustainability on an urban scale is an overwhelming problem. We can address th... more ABSTRACT Achieving sustainability on an urban scale is an overwhelming problem. We can address this by dividing the problem into manageable proportions. Environmental impacts of urban design fall into measurable categories, for example, air quality, biodiversity, solid wastes, water and wastewater, hazardous materials, and impacts of nonrenewable energy use. Such measures are incorporated into building rating systems as a way of codifying sustainability. In this chapter, to illustrate such codification, we examine water use as well as generated wastewater according to the requirements of a specific sustainable building rating system. Conventional calculations are coupled with building information modeling to illustrate the overall effects of parametrically selecting fixtures, systems and materials to control the use of potable water. We further demonstrate how this approach of combining parametric building information modeling with measures of their environmental impacts can be employed on an urban scale, thereby, guiding the design of sustainable urban spaces.
International Journal of Architectural Computing, 2012
ABSTRACT Sustainable design assessment requires information, which is aggregated from different p... more ABSTRACT Sustainable design assessment requires information, which is aggregated from different phases of a building design, and evaluated according to criteria specified in a ‘sustainable building rating system.’ In the architecture engineering and construction (AEC) domain much of the necessary information is available through open source data standards such as Industry Foundation Classes (IFC). However, no single standard that provides support for sustainability assessment completely suffices as a data structure. This paper explores the augmentation of the Construction Operations Building information exchange (COBie) model, as an intermediary data structure, to bridge between requirements of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system and a building information model. Development of a general framework for data sharing and information management for LEED assessments is illustrated through an implementation of a prototype using functional databases. The prototype checks and augments available data as needed, which is used to populate LEED submission templates.
Journal of Green Building, 2013
ABSTRACT Designs which address sustainability requirements are becoming increasingly desirable, a... more ABSTRACT Designs which address sustainability requirements are becoming increasingly desirable, as the objectives of sustainable design reduce resource depletion of energy, water, and raw materials; prevent environmental degradation caused throughout their lifecycle; provide safe, comfortable and healthy living environments. Currently, sustainability in the building domain is judged against standards codified in rating systems. That is, design choices are validated, by measuring design performance against criteria specified by the rating system. Advances in building technologies, design and evaluation tools, and government policies together with tools to benchmark sustainability have created the momentum which fuels an increasing trend towards sustainable building design. However, certification is expensive. It is labor intensive, involving large volumes of data aggregation and information accounting, which, despite the best of intentions, often become a deterrent to designers and the design process. Compliance with a sustainability rating system is not mandatory; increasingly, it is becoming a goal that many designers and authorities would like to achieve. In turn, this demands a cost lowering improvement to the certification process. Since designers mainly tend to employ commercial design tools, it becomes imperative to create a general approach that utilizes information already available in digital form and combine it with rating system information requirements. The challenge lies in identifying informational requirements from rating systems, representing them in computable forms, mapping them to information available from a commercial design tool and evaluating the performance of the design. In this paper we present an overall framework for organizing, managing, and representing sustainability information requirements; to demonstrate an approach to integrating sustainability evaluations in a design environment. We employ a commercially available building information modeler and a sustainable building rating system to develop a process that bridges sustainability assessment requirements with information from the model for pre-evaluation prior to submission for certification. This will enable designers, owners, contractors and other professionals to communicate strategies and make informed decisions to achieve sustainability goals for a project.
Services that architects provide are no longer constrained to offering inspiring design solutions... more Services that architects provide are no longer constrained to offering inspiring design solutions to client needs and whims; their services are beginning to spread across domains to ensure that proposed designs are also 'green' and/or 'sustainable'. Indeed, design and delivery of sustainable buildings is gradually gathering momentum, manifest in the way that building performance and functionality are being viewed within an overall ecological context. The ongoing transformation from the traditional to a sustainable building design process is no longer a question of whether to build but rather how (Kibert 2005). Of the many tools available to aid sustainable design, building rating systems offer guidelines and means for comparing and benchmarking buildings performance (Fowler and Rauch 2006). The nature of sustainable building rating systems is such that they are evolving—in this respect this paper describes research that engages this paradigm through the deployment of...
School of Architecture, 2009
For sustainable building design, computational tools, mostly in the form of simulations, are empl... more For sustainable building design, computational tools, mostly in the form of simulations, are employed to determine loads and to predict systems performance typically in terms of energy use. Currently, sustainability, in the building domain, is judged by a rating system. Design choices are validated, by measuring against one. The objective of the framework is to provide a general approach to processing the informational needs of any rating system, by identifying, categorizing and organizing relevant data requirements. Aspects of sustainability that designers deal with intuitively will have a structured guideline and gauge as one selects a rating system of choice.
Purpose – This study aims to develop a web-based tool – LEED Energy Performance Online Submission... more Purpose
– This study aims to develop a web-based tool – LEED Energy Performance Online Submission Tool (LEPOST) to reduce the submission cost of the leadership in energy and environmental design (LEED) application process and facilitate green building design. Lifecycle cost reduction is a major driver for designing green buildings. LEED rating system has been well recognised and widely used in the green building industry. However, certification cost incurred in time and money is often a deterrent for some projects.
Design/methodology/approach
– LEPOST automatically maps EnergyPlus and eQUEST energy simulation results to the LEED energy performance requirement submission templates using an extensible markup language (XML) data structure. It incorporates the Energy Star Target Finder online engine and current utility data to calculate points required to assess LEED Energy and Atmosphere Prerequisite 2 and Credit 1 automatically.
Findings
– A comparative case study is conducted using an office building project. The study results show that the tool can reduce the amount of time for the LEED energy performance evaluation and submission process from more than 6 hours to 2 minutes. The total number of manual data entries is reduced from 442 to 20.
Research limitations/implications
– Future work includes the update to support LEED V4, the development of a parametric design function that can help design teams perform design alternatives to evaluate energy performance with minimum effort, and the integration with the LEED Online system.
Practical implications
– The use of the tool by the building industry may decrease the cost of LEED certification for building owners, developers and design teams by simplifying the submission process.
Originality/value
– The overall development framework of LEPOST contributes to the knowledge of the data interoperability in the building sector by demonstrating a viable solution to extract and map digital model information for achieving code and standard compliance purposes.
BIM in Current and Future Practice, 2015
The transition from conventional to sustainable building depends on a number of factors? technolo... more The transition from conventional to sustainable building depends on a number of factors? technological, environmental, economic and social. From a computer-aided design perspective, the first two are perhaps the most significant. We are working on a project with an emphasis on developing tools, to evaluate environmental consequences for design decision-making. Our current thrust is given to reducing energy usage as well as carbon emissions in buildings.
Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2012
ABSTRACT Achieving sustainability on an urban scale is an overwhelming problem. We can address th... more ABSTRACT Achieving sustainability on an urban scale is an overwhelming problem. We can address this by dividing the problem into manageable proportions. Environmental impacts of urban design fall into measurable categories, for example, air quality, biodiversity, solid wastes, water and wastewater, hazardous materials, and impacts of nonrenewable energy use. Such measures are incorporated into building rating systems as a way of codifying sustainability. In this chapter, to illustrate such codification, we examine water use as well as generated wastewater according to the requirements of a specific sustainable building rating system. Conventional calculations are coupled with building information modeling to illustrate the overall effects of parametrically selecting fixtures, systems and materials to control the use of potable water. We further demonstrate how this approach of combining parametric building information modeling with measures of their environmental impacts can be employed on an urban scale, thereby, guiding the design of sustainable urban spaces.
International Journal of Architectural Computing, 2012
ABSTRACT Sustainable design assessment requires information, which is aggregated from different p... more ABSTRACT Sustainable design assessment requires information, which is aggregated from different phases of a building design, and evaluated according to criteria specified in a ‘sustainable building rating system.’ In the architecture engineering and construction (AEC) domain much of the necessary information is available through open source data standards such as Industry Foundation Classes (IFC). However, no single standard that provides support for sustainability assessment completely suffices as a data structure. This paper explores the augmentation of the Construction Operations Building information exchange (COBie) model, as an intermediary data structure, to bridge between requirements of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system and a building information model. Development of a general framework for data sharing and information management for LEED assessments is illustrated through an implementation of a prototype using functional databases. The prototype checks and augments available data as needed, which is used to populate LEED submission templates.
Journal of Green Building, 2013
ABSTRACT Designs which address sustainability requirements are becoming increasingly desirable, a... more ABSTRACT Designs which address sustainability requirements are becoming increasingly desirable, as the objectives of sustainable design reduce resource depletion of energy, water, and raw materials; prevent environmental degradation caused throughout their lifecycle; provide safe, comfortable and healthy living environments. Currently, sustainability in the building domain is judged against standards codified in rating systems. That is, design choices are validated, by measuring design performance against criteria specified by the rating system. Advances in building technologies, design and evaluation tools, and government policies together with tools to benchmark sustainability have created the momentum which fuels an increasing trend towards sustainable building design. However, certification is expensive. It is labor intensive, involving large volumes of data aggregation and information accounting, which, despite the best of intentions, often become a deterrent to designers and the design process. Compliance with a sustainability rating system is not mandatory; increasingly, it is becoming a goal that many designers and authorities would like to achieve. In turn, this demands a cost lowering improvement to the certification process. Since designers mainly tend to employ commercial design tools, it becomes imperative to create a general approach that utilizes information already available in digital form and combine it with rating system information requirements. The challenge lies in identifying informational requirements from rating systems, representing them in computable forms, mapping them to information available from a commercial design tool and evaluating the performance of the design. In this paper we present an overall framework for organizing, managing, and representing sustainability information requirements; to demonstrate an approach to integrating sustainability evaluations in a design environment. We employ a commercially available building information modeler and a sustainable building rating system to develop a process that bridges sustainability assessment requirements with information from the model for pre-evaluation prior to submission for certification. This will enable designers, owners, contractors and other professionals to communicate strategies and make informed decisions to achieve sustainability goals for a project.
Services that architects provide are no longer constrained to offering inspiring design solutions... more Services that architects provide are no longer constrained to offering inspiring design solutions to client needs and whims; their services are beginning to spread across domains to ensure that proposed designs are also 'green' and/or 'sustainable'. Indeed, design and delivery of sustainable buildings is gradually gathering momentum, manifest in the way that building performance and functionality are being viewed within an overall ecological context. The ongoing transformation from the traditional to a sustainable building design process is no longer a question of whether to build but rather how (Kibert 2005). Of the many tools available to aid sustainable design, building rating systems offer guidelines and means for comparing and benchmarking buildings performance (Fowler and Rauch 2006). The nature of sustainable building rating systems is such that they are evolving—in this respect this paper describes research that engages this paradigm through the deployment of...
School of Architecture, 2009
For sustainable building design, computational tools, mostly in the form of simulations, are empl... more For sustainable building design, computational tools, mostly in the form of simulations, are employed to determine loads and to predict systems performance typically in terms of energy use. Currently, sustainability, in the building domain, is judged by a rating system. Design choices are validated, by measuring against one. The objective of the framework is to provide a general approach to processing the informational needs of any rating system, by identifying, categorizing and organizing relevant data requirements. Aspects of sustainability that designers deal with intuitively will have a structured guideline and gauge as one selects a rating system of choice.
Purpose – This study aims to develop a web-based tool – LEED Energy Performance Online Submission... more Purpose
– This study aims to develop a web-based tool – LEED Energy Performance Online Submission Tool (LEPOST) to reduce the submission cost of the leadership in energy and environmental design (LEED) application process and facilitate green building design. Lifecycle cost reduction is a major driver for designing green buildings. LEED rating system has been well recognised and widely used in the green building industry. However, certification cost incurred in time and money is often a deterrent for some projects.
Design/methodology/approach
– LEPOST automatically maps EnergyPlus and eQUEST energy simulation results to the LEED energy performance requirement submission templates using an extensible markup language (XML) data structure. It incorporates the Energy Star Target Finder online engine and current utility data to calculate points required to assess LEED Energy and Atmosphere Prerequisite 2 and Credit 1 automatically.
Findings
– A comparative case study is conducted using an office building project. The study results show that the tool can reduce the amount of time for the LEED energy performance evaluation and submission process from more than 6 hours to 2 minutes. The total number of manual data entries is reduced from 442 to 20.
Research limitations/implications
– Future work includes the update to support LEED V4, the development of a parametric design function that can help design teams perform design alternatives to evaluate energy performance with minimum effort, and the integration with the LEED Online system.
Practical implications
– The use of the tool by the building industry may decrease the cost of LEED certification for building owners, developers and design teams by simplifying the submission process.
Originality/value
– The overall development framework of LEPOST contributes to the knowledge of the data interoperability in the building sector by demonstrating a viable solution to extract and map digital model information for achieving code and standard compliance purposes.