Journal of Architectural Engineering

The cost and process when financing manufactured homes (MHs) are the greatest barriers to owning them. MHs are considered personal properties and do not qualify for conventional real estate loans with lower interest rates than personal (chattel) loans. The resulting higher financing costs present a major obstacle to the lower-income demographic, who are the predominant purchasers of MHs. Recently, strategies have been implemented to permit MHs to be considered real property; therefore, making them eligible for a conventional mortgage. However, most MHs do not qualify for conventional loans and must apply for higher-interest chattel loans. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this area has not been investigated by academia or industry. Therefore, there is a gap in the literature on financing an MH. This study reviewed various methods for financing MHs and their corresponding loan terms, interest rates, down payments, and advantages or disadvantages. This study included Federal Housing Administration (FHA), chattel, and conventional loans. The aim was to identify the best approaches to reduce the cost of financing an MH that was based on specific conditions, such as the land ownership of the property and the type of foundation. Strategies, such as providing land lease communities for MHs to qualify them as real properties, were discussed. Recommendations were made to reduce ownership costs for manufactured houses to benefit the homeowners, MH industry, and mortgage companies.

Despite the calls to transform construction and the potential of modern methods of construction (MMC) to address traditional construction concerns, the global construction industry is yet to embrace the benefits. The purpose of this review is to theoretically explain the low uptake of MMC in the public sector by exploring the relative pressure points that are contributing to clients’ indecision. The study argues the five functional constructs of the diffusion of innovation theory against MMC attributes. A systematic review of 67 articles through a preferred reporting item for systematic review and meta-analysis (PRISMA) led to key arguments that explain the lesser drive for MMC adoption. Results reveal that previous literature plurally discards the dynamics between supply and demand, decision-making, and supply's business models. An improved understanding of these dynamics would, therefore, support research efforts in disclosing the necessary considerations to promote clients’ favorable innovation decisions. This study echoes previous calls and acts as a departure point for future research to assess MMC beyond its technical attributes from a theoretical lens to better understand how construction innovations flow in the public construction sector.

The building sector is material-intensive and is responsible for consuming large quantities of local and international resources. In extreme climates, the consumption of these resources increases manifold to ensure comfortable indoors. Contemporary buildings have predominantly used energy efficiency as the main criterion to define sustainability, which has led to the consumption of more abiotic materials. In contrast, indigenous buildings are based on local context and are guided by geographical, environmental, and economic constraints. This work aims to critically review indigenous architectural practices across four climatic zones, focusing on their resource efficiency, and identify practices that can be reintroduced in contemporary construction in extremely cold climates. To achieve this objective, literature from 1960 to 2022 was comprehensively reviewed. In addition, contemporary building construction and codes in cold climatic regions were analyzed to assess the current state of practices. Specific case studies from each climatic region were evaluated to assess applicability in residential buildings in cold climates. The main findings from this review and analysis indicate that indigenous practices have the potential to optimize the use of natural resources to create more sustainable climate-resilient buildings. In addition, more empirical studies are needed to tailor these practices and quantitatively assess resource efficiency for large-scale implementation.

Despite the importance of life cycle assessment (LCA) in inspecting environmental impacts, its execution through manual methods affects the quality of the results, besides consuming the time and effort of decision-makers in the construction industry, such as designers, implementers, facility managers, and consultants. When LCA relies on building information modeling (BIM), it encounters many difficulties and obstacles, such as human intervention, conflicts among platforms and environmental databases, and no coordination to integrate or manage information. Thus, the research aims to support LCA through automatized integration with BIM depending on BIM’s role in information management, promoting decisions, and activating BIM implementation success factors to make the BIM model qualified for the LCA. Then, the BIM and LCA overlap methods were analyzed and exemplified. Also, the requirements of their integration strategies were identified for LCA to become automated from now. Accordingly, the process map that supports and coordinates the automatized integration of LCA and BIM, overcomes integration difficulties, and conducts LCA through automated methods was deduced and structured. The analytical hierarchy process was applied through the survey using questionnaires and interviews to validate this map. The survey affirmed that the BIM model acquired new characteristics and will play an essential role in the LCA’s accuracy, reliability, and comprehensiveness. This map supports the standardization and alternative strategies of the workflow. Furthermore, the interconnected stages of this map as a scenario can conduct an LCA within any project’s life stage and guarantee its quality.

While the built environment negatively contributes to resource use, waste generation, and climate change, this same sector has the potential to provide innovative solutions to these complex global challenges. Circular economy (CE) strategies have the potential to provide these solutions, yet systems and incentives related to CE and the built environment are disparate and at varying stages of development. Green building rating systems, such as the Living Building Challenge, have the potential to change the market and drive innovation, but these systems need to evolve and change in alignment with the emergence of new and promising strategies, such as CE. The objective of this study was to elucidate whether implementing CE practices could help further reduce embodied carbon and life cycle carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂-eq.) emissions in buildings that are already environmentally conscious to further drive market innovation. This study analyzed the potential reduction in the embodied carbon of an existing Living Building, the Frick Environmental Center, by applying various CE strategies and using life cycle assessment. The investigated strategies include (1) using materials that are biodegradable and have lower embodied carbon, (2) using salvaged alternatives for embodied carbon-intensive building products, (3) extending the lifespan of selected building materials, and (4) carbon sequestration. Given that the case study building is already LEED Platinum and Living Building certified, the results elucidated the extent of potential environmental impact savings in buildings that are already certified due to having lower environmental impacts than the industry average. The CE strategies resulted in a 30% reduction in the building’s embodied carbon (excluding end-of-life) compared with the base case. Results exemplify whether a significant decrease in the buildings’ embodied carbon/life cycle CO₂-eq. emissions can be achieved as a result of implementing modest changes in design.

Maintaining a satisfactory indoor environmental quality (IEQ) is an integral element of improving occupant health and well-being. In particular, IEQ is an essential factor in some facilities, such as school buildings, to improve student academic performance. This study employed an objective and subjective measurement approach to assess IEQ in a government high school (GHS) and a private high school (PHS) located in Oman, which is characterized by its extreme hot climate. A total of 212 high school students were surveyed during the summer season across 10 different classrooms to ascertain their perception of IEQ situations. The results suggested that most of the observed IEQ factors, including air temperature, relative humidity, and lighting levels across the classrooms in GHS and PHS, satisfied the ASHRAE standard, except the indoor air temperature, which was slightly above the maximum threshold of the European Standard (EN). The average indoor sound levels (>60 dB) exceeded critical limits of 35 dB for school buildings, which may pose the risk of high annoyance (HA) to 30% of students. Satisfactory predicted mean vote (PMV) and predicted percentage of dissatisfied (PPD) scores were obtained from both schools when they were evaluated against the ASHRAE standard compared with the EN standard. The maximum proportion of the students reported their classroom’s air temperature (33%), relative humidity (25%), and air movement (47%) levels as not acceptable, and thermal comfort (33%), visual comfort (22%), and air quality (41%) as bad (P < 0.001). Multiple regression analysis revealed a strong linear relationship between indoor air temperature (R² = 0.89) and other IEQ parameters, while PPD (R² = 0.45) and PMV (R² = 0.17) showed a weak relationship with outdoor environmental factors. Outdoor air temperature and humidity levels accounted for greater changes in indoor air temperature levels in the PHS than in the GHS. Providing increased urban vegetation, green façade, and retrofitting and the utilization of passive cooling could help improve IEQ in Oman schools.

Patterned acid-etched glasses are frequently used in horizontal glass surfaces that may be walked on, such as floors and staircase treads. These glasses provide useful antislip properties, but the foot traffic cause contact stresses and ageing mechanisms that are poorly understood and can affect the strength of the acid-etched glass. This study explores these strength-reducing effects by undertaking nondestructive and destructive evaluations of two acid-etched glasses with geometrically different surface patterns and comparing their mechanical performance to unetched float glass. In particular, residual surface stress, Hertzian fracture resistance, and fractographic characteristics are determined for each glass type. The surface tensile strength of the glasses is also evaluated by means of destructive flexural tests before and after artificial ageing. The flexural tests reveal that the ridge areas of the acid-etched surface patterns are more susceptible to the formation of digs and deeper surface flaws and are therefore weaker than both the valley areas of the acid-etched pattern and the surface of the unetched float glass. Correspondingly, the acid-etched glass with the highest proportion of ridges was more susceptible to ageing-induced flaws and had the lowest surface tensile strength. The contact (Hertzian) fracture resistance was also significantly affected by the presence of a surface pattern in the acid-etched glass; specifically, the lowest contact strengths were recorded for hard body contact on the ridges of the pattern. The fracture phenomena and new data presented in this paper provide useful insights on the long-term performance of etched patterned glass. The findings can provide the bases for real-world design decisions and for glass forensics.

Despite its significance, the Indonesian construction industry has poor safety performance. Improving the safety climate has been seen as a way to improve safety in the industry. Research on safety climate in this context has identified a range of safety climate factors that require improvements. However, construction organizations face difficulties in implementing improvement recommendations due to resource constraints. In order to help construction organizations in their efforts to improve the safety climate, this research demonstrates the use of supervised classification approaches to identify specific safety climate factors that construction organizations should focus on. Data were collected from 311 construction practitioners in Indonesia using a 22-item safety climate survey. Supervised classification methods, comprising ensemble methods, Support Vector Machine, Naïve Bayes, and Nearest Neighbor, were used. The analysis identified 14 safety climate items that can represent the original dataset with high accuracy (93%). These 14 items can be considered crucial items that should be prioritized in the Indonesian construction industry. These items revealed that, due to the high power distance culture in Indonesia, top-down approaches, such as giving clear instructions, providing training, and reminding people often about safety, are effective for engaging employees to focus on and participate in safety. The findings also suggest that understanding cultural context is important to determine effective strategies to improve safety. This research has also demonstrated the potential application of supervised classification approaches to help decision makers improve safety by focusing on crucial factors within a context.

Compared with well-studied techniques for reducing operational carbon in the building industry, studies on strategies for reducing embodied carbon, as well as their effectiveness, are limited. Therefore, this article aims to address this gap by conducting a systematic review, bibliometric analysis, and meta-analysis of the available evidence to answer the following research questions: What tested and validated mitigation strategies and techniques exist? What are their effectiveness and suitable application? Initially, 410 publications were found, and 21 articles were reviewed systematically in the fields of embodied carbon mitigation and reduction. In total, 19 mitigation strategies in four categories were identified from the existing literature, which were discussed through a meta-analysis on the available data. The four categories are design optimization, material optimization, construction optimization, and infrastructure optimization. The results revealed that no single mitigation strategy alone can tackle the problem; rather, an integrated and combined approach is necessary. The meta-analysis indicated that the most effective techniques are within the design optimization (an average 37% reduction) and material optimization categories (an average 37% reduction). The review also revealed the incomplete nature of the reduction assessment from a life cycle perspective. Most studies assess only the material and manufacturing stages, often completely overlooking embodied emissions occurring during the construction, use stage, and end-of-life stage; therefore, the accuracy and comprehensiveness of such study results are questionable.

Abstract

Freeform structures are appealing in architecture owing to their ability to combine pleasing aesthetics and functionality. Regarding architectural functionality, freeform structures have the potential to meet desired acoustic requirements in indoor architecture through the proper design of materials and geometries. Kerfing is one of the practical methods to generate reconfigurable freeform structures from rigid planar construction materials. This study aims to explore tunable room acoustic characteristics through the use of kerf structures. In this study, we investigate acoustic responses of kerf structures made out of a medium density fiber board having a hexagon spiral kerf pattern with varying cut densities. Experiments are conducted to measure the acoustic properties (e.g., absorption coefficient) of the kerf unit cells with different cut densities. We then design kerf patterns using the parametric design method and explore the flexibility of kerf structures with different kerf cut densities. We model the kerf structures of varying kerf cut density and shape reconfigurations and use a ray-tracing simulation to study their impacts on the acoustic performance, i.e., reverberation times, of a small office space. Overall, this study leverages the unique attributes of kerf structures such as different cut densities and shape reconfigurations to tune the room acoustics in addition to their usage in indoor architectures due to their pleasing aesthetics.

Practical Applications

In modern society, people spend 90% of their time indoors. The indoor acoustic characteristics can greatly affect the occupants’ productivity, well-being, and health. Kerf structures present an opportunity to achieve both aesthetically pleasing characteristics and desired acoustic performance of regularly used indoor spaces, such as offices. The reconfigurable kerf structures can create an acoustic-comfort environment that can lower the ambient noise and tune the reverberation time. Kerf structures can be easily assembled by fabricating modular units to satisfy different aesthetic and functional demands.

Horizontal wood diaphragm systems, whether decked with conventional or mass timber panels, transfer wind and seismic loads to vertical elements of a lateral force-resisting system (LFRS), in flexible, rigid, or semirigid fashion. Characterizing and calculating the resulting diaphragm deflections determines the distribution of forces to critically loaded components and a significant portion of lateral building translations and rotations. Deflection equations for sheathed wood structural panel (WSP) diaphragms are well established in US design standards in a four-term expression that models flexural, shear, and fastener-slip deformations, and its full derivation using principles of mechanics is provided herein. Derivations of similar equations for cross-laminated timber (CLT) diaphragms have yet to unfold, despite growing industry consensus that CLT panels make efficient slabs and decks. In this first of two companion papers, the corrected full derivation of the current four-term WSP diaphragm deflection expression is provided and assessed, and two ways to quantify the cumulative contribution of fastener slip are presented to expand its usage to a wider variety of WSP and CLT configurations in current use. Building on this generalized mechanics-based derivation, the authors are able to propose and assess in the companion paper a unified diaphragm deflection model to compute both WSP and CLT diaphragm deflections as implemented under current practice and guide further development.

Abstract

Horizontal wood diaphragm systems, whether decked with conventional or mass timber panels, transfer wind and seismic loads to vertical elements of the lateral force-resisting system, in flexible, rigid, or semirigid ways. Characterizing and calculating the resulting diaphragm deflections will help determine the distribution of forces to critically loaded components and a significant portion of lateral building translations and rotations. Deflection equations for sheathed wood structural panel (WSP) diaphragms are well established in US design standards in a four-term expression that models flexural, shear, and fastener-slip deformations, but similar equations for cross-laminated timber (CLT) diaphragms have yet to unfold, despite growing industry consensus that CLT panels make efficient slabs and decks. Building code standards require CLT diaphragm deflections be computed using the principles of engineering mechanics. The current three-term and four-term deflection equations for WSP diaphragms are based on various assumptions that are often outpaced by current design practices. This is the second of two companion papers, in which the first paper provides the full generalized derivation of the current four-term WSP diaphragm deflection expression with a mechanics-based expansion to unify both potential WSP and CLT applications. This second paper builds on the first paper by expanding the generalized equation with implementation insights unique to WSP and CLT diaphragms. The various challenges of calculating diaphragm deflections associated with the current design practices are discussed with suggestions to assist in implementation.

Practical Applications

In general, the computation of diaphragm deflections has become increasingly important ever since equations were first developed for WSP systems around 70 years ago. Deflections are routinely computed to evaluate building separations, property line setbacks, P-delta instability, and evaluation of nonstructural damage from interstory drift. Additionally, appropriate engineering modeling requires accurate diaphragm stiffness values to characterize diaphragms as rigid, semirigid, or flexible. The mechanics-based equations in this paper are presented in a form that will be useful to today’s practitioners to produce more rational building designs.

This study developed novel metrics and utilized content analysis in terms of keywords selected, scholarly publications, and social media posts to identify trends and industry involvement. A data set of publications was created based on collected materials from Scopus and social media and analyzed using statistical tests, rigorous content analysis, and network analysis. The data set was used to develop a framework for assessing the maturity of research topics and a classification system for labeling publications. The framework includes some indicators, such as total publications and a variety of applications, which are assessed based on a scale of 4. The classification system suggests four components: (1) product, (2) construction and demolition waste, (3) additives, and (4) experiments to be considered by authors. The framework and the categorization system may assist academics and practitioners in predicting topic trends and offer a set of indicators for conducting systematic reviews to identify gaps in the literature. Also, total publications as one of the framework indicators reveals that 46% of Canadian publications and 20.7% of US publications exhibited industry involvement compared with 15% of Australian publications and 15% of UK publications. The analysis shows that the top-occurring keyword in the data set is recycled asphalt pavement, which is linked to 22.2% of the data set, followed by recycled concrete and recycled aggregate concrete appearing in 12%. Aside from keywords related to materials, two of the most commonly occurring techniques in the data set of keywords are building information modeling and life cycle assessment, which still need further investigation along with GIS for waste minimization.

This research aims to investigate the thermal conductivity of interlocking compressed-earth bricks (ICEBs) and the influence of nongrouted, grouted, and grouted with reinforcement on the thermal conductivity value of ICEBs. The centered hot plate approach in a steady-state regime is applied to calculate the thermal conductivity. The results are analyzed, and experiments on full and half bricks reveal that the thermal conductivity values for the ICEB for all conditions range from 0.335 to 0.359 W/m K (whether nongrouted, grouted, or grouted with reinforcement). Nongrouted ICEB has the lowest thermal conductivity value and is the best heat conductor when compared with grouted ICEB and grouted-with-reinforcement ICEB. The thermal conductivity value is the highest when the ICEB is grouted with reinforcement. This demonstrates that the ICEB’s construction conditions (nongrouted, grouted, and grouted with reinforcement) have a significant influence on its thermal conductivity value.

As educators in Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) domains seek to better prepare graduates for industry, providing authentic, hands-on design and construction experiences has been found to be one of the most effective ways of achieving the goal of educators. However, providing access to these experiences is costly, time-consuming, and resource-intensive, which limit access for most students. To explore a cost-effective alternative to hands-on AEC learning, augmented reality (AR) is considered as a simulation of authentic learning in these domains. In this study, a full-scale building redesign and construction experience is presented, in which students virtually perform design analysis, planning, and construction of renovations to an existing structure in an AR environment. As students participate in the simulation, they reflect on their process and the realism of the experience. Student behaviors and perceptions are analyzed to determine where the experience showed evidence of authentic learning characteristics and where the experience differs from traditional authentic learning. Ultimately, the results indicate strong evidence that this AR-enabled design and construction experience promotes higher-level thinking, with mixed results on which components of the experience felt realistic or unrealistic. These findings suggest that, with informed and intentional use, AR has a high potential to simulate authentic learning and achieve high-value, evidence-based learning outcomes. Educators may find these results useful in adopting AR as a tool for simulating authentic learning in AEC or other fields in which true authentic environments are not readily available.

Abstract

Population growth and building mechanical devices to achieve thermal comfort have increased energy consumption. The hot and humid climates account for high energy consumption in the building sector. Meanwhile, for centuries, vernacular houses in this climate complied with their environment. This paper examined the vernacular architectural elements of two southern cities of Iran with hot and humid climate conditions on the coast of Makran. However, a comprehensive study of these elements and their role in indoor air quality and the creation of thermal comfort has yet to be discovered. This study incorporated climatic information into a computational fluid dynamics simulation to analyze vernacular architectural elements in the study area. By combining the architectural elements of Bushehr and Chabahar vernacular houses, 13 building models were created, with a component of each element to be investigated. Results showed which elements boost the incoming flow and which models become more effective in developing an enhanced model in terms of ventilation. However, a wind exchanger (Dudkesh) works better than a wind catcher and Taremeh in terms of airflow velocity across the buildings. Additionally, models could establish about $38\text{\%}$ comfortable hours during the year with natural ventilation and sun shading in Bushehr.

Practical Applications

Before HVAC systems and the emergence of technology, people in different cities discovered different ways of ventilating and cooling their homes. Among these strategies was the use of architectural elements in their vernacular dwellings. A tall wind catcher or a central courtyard could change the air condition and was not solely intended for aesthetic purposes. Many of Iran’s ancient cities have architectural elements unique to their old vernacular architecture. According to their location, these elements differed in size and shape based on the climate. Chabahar and Bushehr are located near the Persian Gulf and Oman Sea in southern Iran. Although both are located in hot and humid areas, the architectural elements used in their vernacular architecture differ. In this study, we tried to examine their function individually or by combining them to see whether they could work if installed in another environment.

Although the building industry has attempted to adopt the green construction paradigm worldwide, evidence shows that it has not been fully implemented. Consequently, an efficient preplanning tool is pressingly needed to motivate project teams to adopt the green construction concept to increase project success. Other research has focused on essential planning elements that enable projects to achieve green building certification. However, only a few attempts have emphasized cost and schedule performance. This paper developed an efficient-yet-simple predictive model for predicting the project performance (cost and time) of green building construction projects, associated with the effectiveness of preproject planning at the initial stage represented in terms of the Project Definition Rating Index (PDRI). The analysis was conducted in three steps: (1) identifying significant planning elements affecting cost and schedule performance using an independent t-test, (2) constructing predictive models by applying multiple linear regression, and (3) validating the constructed models using a paired sample t-test. Sample data from 17 certified green buildings were utilized. The results identified 10 planning elements that differed significantly between under- and overbudget projects, related to the project requirements, procurement strategy, schedule control, project design, and safety considerations. Similarly, six elements were identified for schedule performance that were classified under the business strategy, economic analysis, and values analysis. Then, predictive models were proposed with coefficients of determination of 0.94 for cost performance and 0.60 for schedule performance. The developed models not only contributed to the preliminary assessment of the possible cost and schedule performance for the current level of a project team’s preplanning efforts but also could be further adapted for exploratory evaluation of expected outcomes due to a certain level of improvement in preproject planning.

The wooden dome that covers the Hall of Ambassadors of the Alcazar of Seville (1427 AD) can be considered an exceptional architectural and constructive element in which visible ornamentation and underlying structure are inextricably linked. This article proposes a methodological approach integrating different disciplines (engineering, architecture, and history) to discern comprehensively the genesis and the in-depth constructive and structural performance of this outstanding architectural heritage. Thus, based on historical references on the construction of wooden domes together with the knowledge that the carpentry guild applied at that time, a detailed geometric and constructive analysis of the dome has enabled us to establish that its construction must have been carried out through the prefabrication of sectors. In addition, a structural model has been generated, with which, through various hypotheses, using a nonlinear finite-element analysis its mechanical behavior can be understood. The profusion of noggings, which follow the strict geometry derived from patterns of 10-point stars, plays a fundamental role in the stability and resistance of the set. Furthermore, it has been verified that an additional roof structure should always have been located over the dome and the tie rod bracing, made of steel nowadays, should always have existed and is located in its most optimal position.

Abstract

Building maintenance tasks to solve unpredictable faults typically start with written communications from end-users (e.g., emails). Technicians manually translate end-users’ requests in work-orders (WOs) assigning them a priority level and the needed staff typology. When the number of contemporary requests is too high, these actions can lead to the interruption of critical services and then possible safety issues. Machine Learning (ML) methods can be trained to automatize this process due to large databases of annotated requests. Nevertheless, natural language preprocessing is needed to apply ML methods because of the unstructured form of the requests. This work aims to verify how preprocessing impacts the ability of ML methods to properly assign priority to the requests. The research methodology combines four different text preprocessing approaches (e.g., symbols and numbers remotion, stop-words remotion, stemming, meaningful words selection) and five consolidated ML methods to classify WOs according to two different priority scales (binary, 4-classes). Accuracy, recall, precision, and F1 are calculated for each combination. Tests are performed on a database of about 12,000 end-users’ maintenance requests, generated for 34 months in 23 university buildings. Results show that strong preprocessing methods, usually performed to increase the effectiveness of ML, do not significantly improve the accuracy of the predictions. Moreover, they show that four of the five tested ML methods obtained a higher accuracy for binary classification and for high and mean priority classes of 4-classes classification. This means that ML methods are especially effective in a preliminary check of the most urgent requests. These results then encourage the use of ML methods in automatic priority assignment of building maintenance tasks, even if based on natural language unstructured requests. The ML can significantly speed up the interventions assignment process for the technical staff, thus improving the maintenance process especially in large and complex buildings organizations.

Practical Applications

Maintenance tasks imply significant effort, especially in large organizations and complex buildings, where several faults and contemporary end-users’ requests are managed by facility management (FM) technicians. Maintenance plans usually include procedures to prioritize corrective actions and establish the maximum intervention time, as economic penalties are due by FM contractors when delays occur with respect to the assigned priority. Most end-users’ requests are represented by unstructured textual messages stored in large databases, then relevant human and economic resources are provided to timely evaluate and assign priority to interventions, thus reducing the time needed to solve the issue and ensuring continuity of critical services. Automation approaches, based on machine learning (ML), can significantly improve the process, optimizing time and resources. Nevertheless, natural language preprocessing (NLP) is needed to apply ML, because of the unstructured form of requests. This work evaluates the influence of NLP on the ability of ML to automatically predict priority levels for corrective actions. Results demonstrate that ML is effective in detecting the most urgent requests, even without NLP (then directly applied to the unstructured requests). This encourages a wider use of ML in automatic priority assignment of building maintenance tasks to speed up the interventions assignment process for the FM technical staff.

Abstract

Architecture and architectural engineering (A/AE) education has always relied on traditional (face-to-face) delivery modality in a studio-based environment. However, COVID-19 impacted the field of education by effecting a transition to an Online Learning Environment (OLE), which relied on computer hardware and software for content delivery. This transition affected the A/AE faculty, which faced a new challenge in the form of online delivery of design studios. A survey was then carried out after closure of universities post-COVID-19 to assess the OLE experience of the A/AE faculty and examine the relationship between laptop requirements and faculty perceptions about online education. This study is comprised of online survey responses from 143 US A/AE educators. Respondents reflected on their experience before January 2020, during the time of COVID-19 impact or transition, and potential future impacts for the Spring of 2021. In this study, the impacts on faculty proficiency with online architecture instruction, existing technological infrastructure, and faculty communication with students were determined. Relationships were found between university or departmental laptop requirements and faculty experience with developing online coursework curriculum and delivering the curriculum only via online methods, like live streaming (synchronous), recorded lectures (asynchronous) or a blend of both. The research provides empirical evidence that depicts the impacts of COVID-19 during the transition period.

Practical Applications

Although this study does not find any causal relationships, it presents empirical evidence on the impacts of COVID-19 on Architecture and Architectural Engineering educators during the transition to online learning environment and offers several practical implications. To better prepare for similar future events and enhance resilience in architecture education, educational institutions should invest in faculty training for achieving technological proficiency, ensuring smoother transitions to digital learning and improved course quality. Additionally, as technology and online course offerings evolve, a periodic reevaluation of laptop requirements is necessary. Providing resources and support for faculty transitioning to online teaching can help ensure seamless transitions and enhance overall effectiveness. Lastly, institutions should encourage and support the adoption of online courses and initiate dialogs among stakeholders, including administrators, educators, students, industry partners, and others, to identify barriers to the success of online education and develop strategies to enhance resilience in the face of future events.

Masonry structures are deteriorating due to environmental and man-made factors, which cause damages such as cracks in the structures. Periodic inspection is required to determine if cracks have changed in appearance over time. In this paper, an image-based system is proposed to detect changes in cracks on the surface of a masonry structure. The system can detect changes in images taken from different viewpoints. In the proposed method, an image-based 3D modeling technique is applied to rectify images taken from different viewpoints via an image synthesis technique. The system deploys a drone to collect images to create a realistic 3D surface model and camera calibration to obtain a reference model. Queried images around the damaged regions are taken at a later time, in which a 3D model from this region is reconstructed and registered onto the reference 3D model. The queried and reference images are synthesized via a 3D model and compared by a threshold-based algorithm to detect changes between the images. Different methods of image synthesis were compared to find the most accurate change masks. It was shown that the proposed system can rectify and detect changes in images accurately, even though images are from different viewpoints and a complex surface.

Building simulation tools can empower architects to evaluate and optimize the performance of their designs. Therefore, it is essential to integrate building performance simulation modeling from an early design stage. A critical part of the simulated environment is the weather file. It is a compilation of 20–30 years of historical weather and hourly data on temperature, solar radiation, wind speed, and wind direction. The accuracy and contextual relevance of said data are of utmost importance to the integrity of the analysis. Current energy modeling weather files are unlikely to include any indication of risk from potential climate change. Hence, there is a need to incorporate climate change projections in energy simulations and prepare architects to understand better the evolution of design strategies echoing such climate change in different climate zones. This paper describes the process of using the CCWorldWeatherGen tool to morph Energy Plus Weather files of 17 North American cities in key climate zones into three simulated scenarios representing 2020, 2050, and 2080, corresponding to a 1.5°C global temperature rise. By simulating the impact of the morphed weather files on five commercial building models, this paper outlines a database echoing the projected climate change impacts within the selected locations and highlights the critical impact of passive design strategies in facilitating indoor thermal comfort while limiting energy consumption.