Based on the design decision making process from an architect’s point of view, a related literature review, theoretical analyses, and inductive inferences, this thesis proposes a new interpretation of high-performance building (HPB), translates/maps criteria issues related to building environmental assessment (BEA) tools for key design decision making elements, and identifies sources of inspiration for HPB designs. This thesis intends to propose an integrated conceptual model for the design of HPBs to provide direct knowledge-based decision making support to architects in the early design phase. Studies on key design decision making elements, sources of inspiration, and building information modeling are integrated into this genesis of conceptual design. The concept of the HPB proposed in this thesis emphasizes comprehensive sustainable building performance in environmental, economic, and socio-cultural aspects. The concept takes the view that HPBs should be aesthetically attractive, socio-culturally adapted, safe, healthy, and comfortable, and should operate at a high level of environmental, resource, and economic efficiency throughout their life cycle. This thesis discusses the topics of the necessity, benefits, and design principles of HPBs. An analysis of the characteristics of BEA tools and HPB design decision making revealed their relationship: the consequence of goals and the mismatch of practices. BEA tools provide the basic information (such as framework, content, evaluation methods, and processes) related to decision making to promote a holistic HPB design at a practical level. However, given the mismatch of practices between BEA tools and HPB design decision making, most such tools are still used for testing and verifying the design results and do not consider the design decision making process. Existing BEA tools primarily guide or indirectly affect the design work but, in practice, play a limited role in directly helping architects make early decisions regarding HPB design. First, for a detailed comparison, this thesis identified the common criteria issues for the three existing BEA tools: SBTool 2012 (maximum version), LEED NC-v3, and the Chinese Evaluation Standard for Green Building (ESGB). A total of 51 common/similar criteria issues were identified and such issues were found to be primarily allocated in the energy and resources, indoor environmental quality, environmental loads, and site areas. SBTool 2012 contains the widest range and most comprehensive criteria issues of building performance, whereas the LEED NC-v3 and ESGB frameworks poorly cover social- and economic-related issues. Second, this thesis separated the criteria into whether they relate to decision making factors or building performance factors. Third, this thesis mapped HPB criteria issues into HPB design decision making elements. This thesis establishes a framework for key design decision elements for Chinese residential buildings by selecting a residential building type in China as a case study for the mapping approach application. The optimum criteria issues for Chinese residential buildings contain 10 primary criteria issues and 35 sub-criteria issues that cover aspects within the entire sustainable performance range and that correspond to key design decision making elements in this framework. This thesis also proposes two fundamental support approaches to creative design for HPBs: rational technical support and irrational divergent inspirational support. Based on practical design examples, three major types of irrational sources of inspiration in an architect’s design for HPBs have been identified: previous empirics, nature objects and phenomena, and advanced science and technologies. Finally, a new integrated conceptual model to support an architect’s early design decisions is established based on the BIM platform. The model contains two main aspects of the work: an initial building information model and an optimal building information model for HPBs during the early design stage. This conceptual model is presented as a generic approach that can be customized for different designers and project conditions. The model can also be used as a framework for providing knowledge-based creative support for decision making related to HPB design. In summary, this thesis intends to provide both a theoretical base and feasible measures for better HPB design and references for developing design decision making support tools for architects to use during the early HPB design process. / <p>QC 20131115</p>

For all types of clothing and body worn technologies it is important to consider how they integrate and interact with the complex shapes that form the unique profile of the human body. This interaction determines the fit of these products and it is often difficult to generate a fit that can simultaneously accommodate these complex shapes. Achieving the correct fit is determined by a number of different factors that must be combined appropriately to create the fit associated with a particular product. This is particularly applicable to Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to ensure it provides protection while maintaining comfort, mobility and good interaction with the surrounding environment. Integrating suitable anthropometric data into the design and manufacture of this type of clothing plays a critical role in achieving a good fit. By using various processes of Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Computer Aided Manufacture (CAM), the detail contained within these data can be quickly and accurately transferred into physical tools. The aim of this study was to demonstrate and validate a method of enhancing the fit of PPE handwear. This has been achieved through an action research strategy using descriptive and practical research methods. The research tools primarily used are case studies, used to demonstrate how manually collected 2D anthropometric data can be used to generate computer models that represent these data in a 3D form. The products of the case studies are tools that have been introduced into the design and manufacture processes of commercial handwear manufacturing environments. The tools have successfully been used to produce gloves using two different manufacturing methods and been assessed to analyse their fit. An improvement in fit for the gloves has been quantified through user trials to determine the level of increased performance afforded to the wearer. The conclusions drawn from the case studies demonstrate that the integration of anthropometric data and CAD/CAM can greatly influence the fit of handwear and improve the iterative processes of its design. However, the data alone does not achieve this as the added integration of tacit knowledge related to glove design is needed to ensure the correct properties are included to the meet the needs of the target population. The methods developed in the case studies have the potential to be applied to other products where fit and interaction with the human body are important design considerations.

A wager is a one time bet, staking money on one among a collection of alternatives having uncertain reward. Wagers represent a common class of engineering decision, where “bets” are placed on the design, deployment, and/or operation of technology. Often such wagers are characterized by alternatives having value that evolves according to some future cash flow. Here, the values of specific alternatives are derived from a cash flow modeled as a stochastic marked point process. A principal difficulty with these engineering wagers is that the probability laws governing the dynamics of random cash flow typically are not (completely) available; hence, separating the gambler’s preference among wager alternatives is quite difficult. In this dissertation, we investigate a computational approach for separating preferences among alternatives of a wager where the alternatives have values that evolve according to a marked point processes. We are particularly concerned with separating a gambler’s preferences when the probability laws on the available alternatives are not completely specified.

Thesis (doctoral)--Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 223-230).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009. / Committee Chair: Mavris, Dimitri; Committee Member: Bishop, Carlee; Committee Member: McMichael, James; Committee Member: Nixon, Janel; Committee Member: Schrage, Daniel

Orientador: Doris Catharine Cornelie Knaltz Kowaltowski / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Civil, Arquitetura e Urbanismo / Acompanhado de anexo em CD-ROM: Apêndice 4: Entrevistas estruturadas gravadas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-16T20:29:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Deliberador_MarcellaSavioli_M.pdf: 13949564 bytes, checksum: c9d9b5c1fa4754f133902873958aa599 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010 / Resumo: Essa pesquisa investigou os processos de projeto dos profissionais arquitetos que colaboram com a Fundação para o Desenvolvimento Escolar (FDE) em projetos de prédios escolares no Estado de São Paulo, com o objetivo de conhecer e caracterizar tal processo e identificar oportunidades de intervenção que favoreçam a melhoria do ambiente escolar público estadual. Avaliações pós-ocupação em prédios escolares, divulgadas na literatura, apontam problemas, principalmente relativos ao conforto ambiental e à funcionalidade, remetendo-se, de forma especial, às falhas de implantação e de projeto. Essa constatação e a crescente complexidade do projeto em arquitetura diante de exigências e responsabilidades ambientais, sociais e econômicas apontam para a necessidade de aprimoramento do processo de projeto, inclusive disponibilizando ambientes de apoio, discussão e divulgação de resultados de avaliações e estudos de caso. Nesta pesquisa, aplicaram-se entrevistas estruturadas aos profissionais registrados junto à FDE, com o objetivo de caracterizar o processo de projeto adotado atualmente e explorar a motivação para a adoção de novas práticas em busca de um ambiente escolar de qualidade. O desenvolvimento do instrumento de investigação (questionário) foi baseado em conceitos vindos de trabalhos teóricos sobre metodologia de projeto, com ênfase nas fases de análise e avaliação de projetos e nas avaliações pós-ocupação já realizadas nos ambientes escolares. Os resultados das entrevistas conduzidas junto aos profissionais que atuam nessa realidade mostram que o processo adotado atualmente se aproxima pouco do processo de projeto referencial levantado na literatura. Faltam várias etapas, principalmente de discussão e análise. Percebe-se também a ausência da participação da comunidade envolvida em uma reflexão sobre parâmetros de projeto, considerados essenciais à arquitetura escolar de qualidade. A análise dos dados advindos da aplicação das entrevistas estruturadas identificou oportunidades de intervenção no processo atual para promover uma arquitetura escolar de qualidade. Os resultados desta investigação devem também servir para pesquisas futuras, objetivando o desenvolvimento de ambiente de apoio ao processo de projeto de escolas públicas no Estado de São Paulo / Abstract: This research project investigated the design processes of architects who work for the Fundação para o Desenvolvimento Escolar (FDE) in the design of school buildings in São Paulo, with the objective of characterizing these processes and identify opportunities for intervention to ensure improvement of state public school environment. School buildings post-occupancy evaluations founded in the field's scientific literature indicate problems, mainly related to environmental comfort and functionality, probably connected to project failures. This finding, along with the increasing complexity of design process in architecture, faced with the modern patterns of environmental, social and economic requirements and responsibilities, indicates the need of improvement of the design process, including providing opportunities of discussion and dissemination of results of evaluations and case studies. In this study, the author applied structured interviews with professionals registered with the FDE, in order to characterize the design process adopted by them and explore the motivation for adopting new practices to improve the school environment. The research instrument was developed based on concepts extracted from theoretical works on design methodology, with emphasis on the phases of analysis and evaluation of projects and post-occupancy evaluations done in school environments. The results of interviews conducted with professionals working with FDE show that their design process has little similarities with the literature recommended design process. Several stages are missing, mainly those related to participatory discussions and design analysis, which are considered essential to a quality school architecture. The analysis of data from the interviews also identified opportunities to intervene in the current process to promote a school architecture which can aggregate a large sort of elements in order to improve its quality. The research results also future studies, focused on the enhancement of the design process of public schools in the State of São Paulo / Mestrado / Arquitetura e Construção / Mestre em Engenharia Civil

This research is devoted to the development of a multiobjective facility layout creation methodology. This methodology seeks to extend the scope of existing computerized and manual layout creation methods by capturing a greater level of both intuitive and quantitative inputs in a method applicable for moderate to large-scale problems. To do this, an extended theoretical basis for decision theoretic models applicable to layout design is described. Using these models as an evaluation basis, a new optimizing layout creation strategy is developed and a decision support system for its implementation is presented. The new layout creation method is computationally attractive, and based on extensive computational experience, is found to give better solutions than those generated by CORELAP. / Ph. D. / incomplete_metadata

Dieser Beitrag stellt ein neues, hybrides Modell für die Entwicklung mechanischer und mechatronischer Systeme vor. Ziel ist es, die derzeitig bestehende Lücke zwischen abstrakten Funktionsmodellen und sehr konkreten, geometrieorientierten 3D-CAD-Modellen zu überbrücken. Das hier vorgestellte SkiPo-Modell beschreibt die Interaktionen zwischen den Komponenten eines Systems basierend auf den zugehörigen Material-, Energie- und Signalflüssen. Ergänzt wird diese abstrakte Darstellung mit Skizzen, die wichtige Konstruktionsentscheidungen in einer strukturierten, semistandardisierten Weise dokumentieren. Das Ziel dieser hybriden Modellierung ist es, die unvermeidbaren Iterationen zwischen abstrakten und sehr detaillierten Betrachtungen von mechanischen und mechatronischen Systemen in der frühen Phase der Produktentstehung zu unterstützen. In Erprobungen mit Studentengruppen zeigte sich, dass dieser Modellierungsansatz das Verständnis und die Kommunikation im Team fördern kann.

The difficulties of system design are persistentlyincreasing due to the integration of more functionality on asystem, time-to-market pressure, productivity gap, andperformance requirements. To address the system designproblems, design methodologies build system models at higherabstraction level. However, the design task to map an abstractfunctional model on a system architecture is nontrivial becausethe architecture contains a wide variety of system componentsand interconnection topology, and a given functionality can berealized in various ways depending on cost-performancetradeoffs. Therefore, a system design methodology must provideadequate design steps to map the abstract functionality on adetailed architecture. MASIC—Maths to ASIC—is a system design methodologytargeting DSP applications. In MASIC, we begin with afunctional model of the system. Next, the architecturaldecisions are captured to map the functionality on the systemarchitecture. We present a systematic approach to classify thearchitectural decisions in two categories: system leveldecisions (SLDs) and implementation level decisions (ILDs). Asa result of this categorization, we only need to consider asubset of the decisions at once. To capture these decisions inan abstract way, we present three transaction level models(TLMs) in the context of DSP systems. These TLMs capture thedesign decisions using abstract transactions where timing ismodeled only to describe the major synchronization events. As aresult the functionality can be mapped to the systemarchitecture without meticulous details. Also, the artifacts ofthe design decisions in terms of delay can be simulatedquickly. Thus the MASIC approach saves both modeling andsimulation time. It also facilitates the reuse of predesignedhardware and software components. To capture and inject the architectural decisionsefficiently, we present the grammar based language of MASIC.This language effectively helps us to implement the stepspertaining to the methodology. A Petri net based simulationtechnique is developed, which avoids the need to compile theMASIC description to VHDL for the sake of simulation. We alsopresent a divide and conquer based approach to verify the MASICmodel of a system. Keywords:System design methodology, Signal processingsystems, Design decision, Communication, Computation, Modeldevelopment, Transaction level model, System design language,Grammar, MASIC.

Performance-based landfill design approach is a relatively new design approach adopted recently in solid waste management and applied in USA, European Union countries and some developing-economy countries like South Africa. This approach rejects the strict design criteria and accommodates a design that selects the most appropriate design components of a landfill (final cover, bottom liner, and leachate collection system) and their design details to result in the best overall performance with respect to performance criteria (groundwater contamination and stability) considering the system variables (climatic conditions of the site, site hydrogeology, and size of the landfill). These design components, performance criteria and design variables involved in decision process make performance-based landfill design a complex environmental problem. Decision support systems (DSS) are among the most promising approaches to confront this complexity. The fact that different tools can be integrated under different architectures confers DSSs ability to confront complex problems, and capability to support decision-making processes. In this thesis study, a DSS to aid in the selection of design components considering the design variables and performance criteria for performance-based landfill design was developed. System simulation models and calculation modules were integrated under a unique DSS architecture. A decision support framework composed of preliminary design and detailed design phases were developed. The decision of appropriate design components leading to desired performance was made based on stability issues and vulnerability of groundwater, using knowledge gathered from DSS. Capabilities and use of the developed DSS were demonstrated by one real and one hypothetical landfill case studies.