published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

Taking a look at building management in Hong Kong, it is observed that some Owners’ Corporations (OC) initiate maintenance before orders are received from the Government, others do not. This illustrates that OCs of buildings have different perceptions of risks and are responding to these risks in their own ways - some actively considering and prioritising stakeholders’ safety and interests, yet others may not. OCs that implement self-initiated building maintenance work before receiving any statutory order may have certain attributes lacking in those that implement building maintenance only after receiving Government orders that may be subject to penalty. Similarly, some Owners are willing to contribute their personal time and effort for collective good. They pay attention to building management and maintenance; some even become executive members of OCs. It is assumed that Owners willing to spare their own time to take part in OC work and be committee members with no formal reward, may hold characteristics different from those of other Owners. It is proposed that these characteristics are General Citizenship, "Organizational Citizenship Behavior" (OCB) and "Corporate Social Responsibility" (CSR), and these factors may show value disparity amongst different Owners and OCs. If every OC holds a considerable level of citizenship and tries to learn the lesson by observing risk events, the Government can save cost from the need to deploy additional resources to promote and monitor maintenance work on private buildings. This thesis therefore aims to identify the differences between OCs and other Owners in building management and maintenance, as well as the impact of citizenship on building management and maintenance, with reference to the Social Learning Theory proposed by Bandura. Both qualitative and quantitative findings supported the objectives and hypotheses of this study. Independent sample t-test confirmed that OC members demonstrate high levels of General Citizenship, OCB and CSR than other Owners. Multiple regression model indicated that 43.2 per cent of the variation in OCs in taking initiative to maintain their buildings may be explained by four explanatory variables, namely CSR, OCB, Group Cohesiveness and General Citizenship. The implications of this study suggested that in addition to the direct impact of citizenship on building maintenance, citizenship may spillover from one form to another in the context of building management, and the transformation is mediated by the organizational context and other situational factors. This study concludes that in order to achieve a stronger effect of citizenship in different settings, further improvement is required in the political system and in education to cultivate a more complete sense of citizenship for citizens of Hong Kong. In addition, future study shall be extended to explore the impact of citizenship on OC decisions on other aspects of building management, including community and estate activities, facilities, security and cleansing, as well as planning and budgeting. Further research and testing can be conducted to develop a more robust conceptual framework, including the mediating effects among the manifestation of citizenship and its impact on building management and maintenance. / published_or_final_version / Real Estate and Construction / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

Technologijos sparčiai plečiasi, tačiau išlieka labai svarbus klausimas – centralizuotas namo sistemų valdymas. Šiame darbe tiriamos priemonės, skirtos namo inžinerinių mazgų ir sistemų automatizavimui, ir centralizuotam valdymui. Analizės dalyje pateikiama šiuo metu siūlomų įsigyti protingų namų sistemų, pastato valdymo ir automatizavimo sistemų apžvalga ir jose naudojamų standartų apžvalga ir trūkumai ir sistemų integracijos galimybės. Specifikacijoje apibrėžiamos protingo namo sistemos atliekamos funkcijos bei vartotojo atliekamos funkcijos. Sistemos funkciniai reikalavimai yra pateikiami naudojant UML diagramas. Pateikiami nefunkciniai reikalavimai, kuriuos turi atitikti sistema tam, kad ji būtų saugi ir veiktų korektiškai. Projektavimo dalyje pateikiama suprojektuota protingo namo sistemos struktūra, protingo namo sistemos serverio, valdiklio ir nuotolinio valdymo programinė įranga ir kompiuterių nuotolinio valdymo programinė įranga. Testavimo dalyje pateikiamas sistemos prototipo testavimas, kuris susideda tiek iš atskirų posistemių, tiek ir iš apjungtų sistemos posistemių testavimo. Taip pat pateikiami testavimo rezultatai. Eksperimento dalyje tiriamas įmonės, kuri įsikūrusi keturių aukštų pastate kompiuterių suvartojamos energijos kiekis ne darbo metu, ir bandoma pritaikyti suprojektuotą protingo namo sistemą įmonės kompiuterių valdymui – sumažinti kompiuterių suvartojamos energijos kiekį įmonės ne darbo metu. / The technologies are developing rapidly; however, an important issue, i.e. centralized control of home systems, still remains. This paper presents an analysis on of the tools designed for the automation of the home engineering services and systems, and centralized control. The analytical part is focused on reviewing the currently available smart home systems, building control and automation systems, the standards employed in such systems, their drawbacks and system integration possibilities. The specification defines the functions of the smart home systems and those of their users. The functional requirements of the system are visualized by employing UML use case diagrams. Also, non-functional requirements that the system must comply with to be safe and to operate adequately are presented. The design part of the paper presents the structure of a designed smart home system, the software for the smart home system server, controller, and remote control, and the computer remote control software. The testing part of the paper includes the testing of the software prototype which is comprised of both separate subsystem and connected subsystem testing. Also, the testing results are provided. The research part is focused on studying the energy consumed during non-working time by the computers of a company located in a four-storey building. Also, an attempt is made to apply the designed smart home system for the company’s computer control, i.e. to reduce the energy consumed by the... [to full text]

The global climate is changing; there are many predictions about the ecological impacts, and even more uncertainty. Predicted ecological impacts include northward shifting biomes, invasive species, decoupling of biotic interactions, all of which are threats to the ecological integrity (EI) of Canada’s National Parks System. To maintain EI, parks must be managed for resilience with climate change in mind. Lack of human and financial resources are restrictions to managing for climate change, challenges exacerbated by government cutbacks in 2012. To overcome these restrictions a tool for informing management in a climate was designed using an existing research program and management based scenario building at the case study location of Bruce Peninsula National Park (BPNP). The tool designed for informing management is called Scenario Building, which accounts for uncertainty and focuses on the essential drivers of the local ecological community. Diversity and health in the forest community are essential drivers in the BPNP ecosystem with interactions at many tropic levels so the forest health research program was selected as the basis for scenarios. Results show a range of tree species that require a variety of soil and moisture regimes. Understanding the ecology of the keystone forest species allows for understanding of how they may reacted to predicted climate changes. Regional climate predictions based on the A2 and B1 primary climate scenarios of the IPCC were integrated with the forest health data, and two levels management option- passive and active to develop 4 scenarios that can inform management of the park. Passive and active management were defined by the number of dollars spent on active management. The 4 scenarios developed were: Scenario 1 B1 Passive Management - Status Quo, Scenario 2 B1 Active Management - Regional Resilience, Scenario 3 A2 Passive Management - Evolving Forests, Scenario 4 A2 Active Management- Anticipatory Restoration. A set of scenarios allows managers to set a management trajectory balances resilience and EI with economic viability in the face of climate change. Analysis of the BPNP scenario suite tell us that BPNP is one park that is in a good position to be able to adapt to a changing climate without major risk to EI, however significant steps can be taken to minimize losses or even improve EI by anticipating needs and investing in active management.

Communicating devices are on the rise. Fueled by the introduction of Internet-of-Thing (IoT) and Industry 4.0, more and more devices are capable of information sharing. There is a long history of communicating devices in industrial and building management contexts that previously relied on fieldbuses. One of these legacy fieldbuses is the Modbus protocol, originating in serial communication and now adapted for use with Ethernet. It has significant adoption in the fields of industrial automation systems (IAS) and building management systems (BMS) but carries many limitations. Industrial systems often have a long lifespan and fundamental changes are not introduced quickly. This leads to a need for legacy communication protocols to be able to function alongside the new paradigms for the foreseeable future. In order to facilitate this phase, an attempt to improve system integration in the Modbus context is performed in this thesis. By utilizing standardization and automation principles, additional functionality and definitions are proposed to the Modbus protocol to help improve system integration. By using interviews with system integrators and document reviews of available Modbus description documents three iterative development processes are performed to answer the research questions.  A proposed data model is presented, allowing for a standardized way to represent the contents of a Modbus register. Its attributes are clearly defined with descriptions and constraints. A new function code specification (0x47) is defined and presented in the same form as other function codes are described in the current Modbus specification. It allows for Modbus descriptors to be retrieved directly from the slave device. As a proof-of-concept the function code is developed in an existing Modbus implementation (Modbus4J). A client application is created to allow for fully functional demonstrations for a broader audience. The resulting communication is captured in Wireshark and presented as proof-of-concept.

This master´s thesis is dealing with designing wireless management system for existing buildings. In the first part there is description of topologies a communication protocols used for wireless automation. Further there are characterized some devices for lighting, heating, ventilation and cooling regulation. These are used for a model network of a building management, where is system OpenHAB also presented. In the next chapter is aprissed specific edifice and its typical operation where is also designed basic and extended solution for it. This part continues with computation of energy consumption in TRNSYS software, that are used to calculate economic return for both variants.

The motive of the diploma thesis is the redesign of the original project documentation of an block of flats into an information model for administration and maintenance. The first part deals with modeling the building according to the drawing part of the documentation in the Autodesk Revit. The second is about the outputs of the information model and its use in building management. It also includes an evaluation of the effectiveness of redesign in relation to the detail of the model and its link to the original drawing documentation.

The energy consumption of the use phase of buildings accounts for almost 30 per-cent of the global energy consumption and is expected to increase in the coming years (Santamouris and Vasilakopoulou, 2021). Furthermore, increasing demand for energy-efficient buildings can be expected due to the introduction of legislative frameworks, such as the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive and the Energy Efficiency Directive (European Commission, 2022b). With the use of building management systems, the energy use of a building can be monitored and optimized (Joseph, 2018). However, it is important not to shift the saved energy use of the building onto the large number of electronic devices needed in the systems. This can be prevented by using ecodesign, which refers to the integration of environmental aspects into the product development process (ISO, 2002).  This thesis aims to find solutions for reducing the environmental impact of electronic products in building management systems, both by finding redesign improvement options and improvement areas within the product development processes of the products. This involved a case study, conducted together with the R&D department at a multi-national company within the electrical equipment industry. Improvement options for four products within the building management system category were generated by using Quality Function Deployment for Environment, where normalized results from life cycle assessments of each product were used for environmental inputs. A total of six improvement options were developed, and the reduction in environmental impact that these would imply was quantified using life cycle assessments. For Product A, the prioritized option was to extend the lifetime of the product from 10 to 15 years. For Product B, changing the production country from Romania to Sweden would reduce the impacts the most. For Product C and Product D, introducing a power-saving mode was the most preferable option. Furthermore, improvement suggestions for environmental sustainability in the product development process at the company were developed by using a four-step method inspired by Charter and Tischner (2001), and ecodesign success factors identified by Johansson (2002). This resulted in nine improvement suggestions within the areas of management, customer relationships, development processes, and competence. Two aspects were considered to be of higher importance; 1. to specify the value and benefits of implementing ecodesign together with relevant stakeholders, and to identify activities and resources needed to achieve that; 2. to consider environmental aspects already at the first step of the product development process. It was also shown that it is of importance to create ecodesign implementation strategies and tools that are customized to the specific company considered for successful integration of environmental aspects in the product development process.