Engineering Commons^™

Building Services Engineering July/August 2026

Building Services Engineering

This issue of Building Services Engineering features heat pumps, propane usage, solar power, and ventilation for indoor air quality. Features include district heating, HVACR optimisation, lift retrofitting, EU water policy, and an interview with WiBSE Ireland Chair Heather Holt.

Optimizing Few-Shot Learning In Pruned Large Language Models With Task-Specific Prompts, Danyal Aftab

Dissertations

Few-shot learning enables large language models to efficiently perform tasks given only a limited number of labeled examples. However, training these models entirely from scratch requires substantial computational resources, making it challenging for many organizations to fully leverage their potential. This thesis explores how structured pruning, task-specific prompting, and parameter-efficient fine-tuning can be combined to preserve few-shot learning capabilities in compressed LLMs, while also extending their utility to real-world recommendation systems.

In this research, we propose the Tailored LLM framework, which first reduces model size through structured pruning and then enhances few-shot learning performance using carefully designed prompts. We experiment …

Adaptive Solar Energy Collection Fenestration Systems; Measured Performance On Test Cell Under Real Weather Conditions., Noel O’Neill

Doctoral

Buildings account for a significant share of global energy use, and improving façade performance is critical to achieving nearly zero-energy building targets. This research addresses the challenge of integrating multiple adaptive functions into a single façade system to reduce heat loss, harness solar energy, and provide dynamic environmental control. The aim was to design, construct, and evaluate an adaptive Multi-Functional Façade (MFF) that integrates vacuum glazing, switchable opacity glazing, and a ventilated cavity with active airflow control to provide façade insulation, heated fresh air, recirculated air, or exhaust ventilation.

A Solar Thermal Test Cell (STTC) designed to Passive House standard, …

Monitoring And Short-Term Forecasting Of Atmospheric Air Pollutants Using Deep Neural Networks, Prasanjit Dey

Dissertations

Accurate forecasting of near-surface atmospheric air pollutants such as PM2.5, NO2, SO2, CO, and O3 remains a critical scientific and societal challenge. This difficulty arises from several factors, including nonlinear pollutant dynamics, sparse ground monitoring net works, heterogeneous satellite observations, and strong cross-pollutant interdependencies. Substantial advances have been achieved in temporal deep learning, probabilistic modeling, satellite-based estimation, physics-informed methods, and foundation models. However, these paradigms have largely evolved in isolation. As a result, existing systems are often station-dependent or pollutant-specific and optimized for a single forecasting task. This limits their robustness and generalizability across regions and heterogeneous data regimes.

This …

Building Services Engineering May/June 2026

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Build Digital Annual Survey 2025 And Trends & Comparisons 2022 - 2025, Clare Eriksson, Robert Moore, Bilal Succar

Reports

The Build Digital Annual Survey 2025 provides an overview of digital transformation across Ireland’s construction and built environment sector, drawing on responses from 205 participants across industry, government, and academia. The findings show continued sector engagement with digital transformation, driven by government mandates, project benefits, and partner expectations. Common digital deliverables, such as model-based design, documentation, coordination, and clash detection, are now widely used, while more advanced uses linked to operations, sustainability, interoperability, and AI remain less mature. The report also highlights ongoing challenges, including skills gaps, uneven training provision, limited OpenBIM adoption, and inconsistent implementation of ISO 19650 and …

Building Services Engineering March/April 2026

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Active Listening And Reassurance In Text-Based Virtual Health Coaches, Ghulam Hussain

Dissertations

Conversational agents (CAs) have strong potential to support health and physical wellbeing through text-based coaching, but they remain limited in their ability to demonstrate supportive social behaviours that are important in human coaching interactions. In particular, relatively little is known about how Active Listening and Reassurance are perceived, modelled, and evaluated in text-based virtual healthcare coaching, or how such behaviours should be adapted to individual users.

This dissertation investigates how supportive interaction behaviours can enhance text based virtual health coaching, with an initial focus on Active Listening and Reassurance and a later theoretical emphasis on Active Listening. Across five unique …

Virtual Humans In Virtual Reality: A Scoping Review On Sociability, Fidelity, And Expression, J K Sangeeth Chandran, Marisa Llorens Salvador, Cathy Ennis

Articles

Introduction:

Virtual reality (VR) systems have evolved significantly over the past decade, enabling immersive experiences with enhanced realism and interactivity. This has motivated an interest in socially oriented applications. As user proxies, Virtual Humans (VHs) play essential roles in such applications. However, despite technological advancements, achieving realistic, expressive, and socially responsive VHs continues to present design and implementation challenges. In this scoping review, we present the state-of-the-art of VR VHs, examining the impact of VHs on the user experience.

Methodology:

We reviewed 59 papers retrieved from five databases across three core themes: the implementation and impact of VH facial expressions, …

Information Manager (Bim) Role Profiles, Davitt Lamon, Robert Moore, Stephen Lynam

Reports

This document, Information Manager (BIM) Role Profiles, has been prepared in support of the Irish Government’s Building Information Modelling (BIM) Mandate. It is the result of a collaborative effort between Build Digital, the Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation (DPER), the Infrastructure Division, and the National Standards Authority of Ireland (NSAI). Its primary purpose is to define the competencies, responsibilities, and experience required for Information Management (BIM) roles to facilitate the successful digital delivery of public works projects. It is important to recognise that under the ISO 19650 series of standards, Information Management is defined as …

Sustainability Tool Inventory, Robert Moore, James O'Donnell

Tools

The purpose of this inventory is to inform Irish organisations, including the private sector, public agencies and semi-states, about Sustainability Tool

Building Services Engineering January/February 2026

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

The Ripple Effect: How The Hse Data Breach Shaped Public Opinion, Mugdha Srivastava, Abhishek Kaushik, Roisin Loughran, Fergal Mccaffery

Women+ in Early Career Research Symposium

The digital world is rapidly evolving, and healthcare systems now depend heavily on data-driven and connected technologies. While these tools bring many benefits, they also increase exposure to data breaches and cyberattacks, raising concerns about privacy, security, and trust. Although earlier research has focused on technical and policy solutions for data protection, less attention has been paid to how major cyber incidents influence public attitudes. This study addresses that gap by examining how a major cyberattack relates to people’s views on data security and trust in digital health. We surveyed individuals about their personal cybersecurity practices and their opinions on …

Beyond The Sayable: Wittgenstein, Theory Of Mind And Affective Simulation Of Llms, Haomiaomiao Wang, Lili Zhang, Tomás E. Ward

Women+ in Early Career Research Symposium

Wittgenstein’s distinction between what can be said and what can only be shown frames a limit of propositional language. Affect and aesthetic are not primarily matters of correct description but of how expressions function within shared forms of life. Large language models (LLMs), however, increasingly produce fluent language that resembles such understanding by reproducing the patterns through which people ordinarily talk about emotion and perspective.

This paper argues that apparent Theory of Mind (ToM) in LLMs is understood as competence in the publicly shared patterns of mental-state language, rather than as grounded understanding. Using abstract artworks, we show that LLMs …

Bridging Research And Practice: Your Guide To Implementing Evidence-Based Gender Equality Actions In Computing Education, Alina Berry

Women+ in Early Career Research Symposium

What if you could access proven strategies for promoting gender equality without spending months reviewing academic and grey literature? TechMate makes this possible. This free, open-access toolkit transforms scattered research into actionable guidance (actions) that anyone can use, whether you are a lecturer wanting to make your classroom more inclusive, a department head developing new policies, or a student advocate pushing for change. Actions are structured into four context-based categories and relevant subcategories. Each action comes with implementation instructions, where relevant, with ready-to-use templates, and links to the supporting evidence. While developed for computing higher education, TechMate’s research-driven approach is …

Engaging Older Adults Through Artefact-Driven Approaches For Ai Literacy Development: A Multi Stakeholder For Digital Inclusion, Paula Kelly, Mayank Parmar, Damon Berry, André Almo, Fatima Badmos, Peterson Jean

Women+ in Early Career Research Symposium

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes deeply integrated into modern ICT and e-Accessibility services, older adults face a growing "digital divide" often characterised by a lack of awareness regarding how automated AI systems frequently functioning as "black boxes" infiltrate and impact their daily lives. This paper presents a multimodal workshop model designed to foster critical AI literacy among older adults, transitioning them from passive recipients to active stakeholders. Utilising an Action Research framework, the study details the co-creation phase of a three-phase national Age- Friendly AI literacy initiative in Ireland. Central to the methodology is the use of tangible exhibits as …

Lidar Mirror Detection Model For Autonomous Robotics, Sofiia Sarana

Women+ in Early Career Research Symposium

LiDAR sensors are widely used in autonomous robots and vehicles for mapping, navigation, and obstacle avoidance. Because mapping is a foundational capability in nearly all robotic systems, it must be both accurate and reliable. However, LiDAR frequently fails in environments containing mirrors or highly reflective surfaces, where distorted returns corrupt maps and generate false obstacles. Current solutions typically rely on additional sensors and computationally expensive sensor-fusion pipelines, which is costly and difficult to scale for compact robots with limited onboard resources. This paper presents a machine-learning–based LiDAR mirror detection model that identifies reflective surfaces directly from LiDAR data, reducing the …

When Irl Is Not An Option: Social Media Bans And The Exclusion Of Autistic Youth, Melanie Gruben, Ashley Sheil, Anne Ryan Duffy, Jacob Camillleri, Michelle O'Keeffe, Hazel Murray

Women+ in Early Career Research Symposium

After the roll-out of the social media ban in Australia in 2025, policy makers are considering psychosocial benefits and logistical implications. However, the needs of autistic people, who may rely more on the Internet for social connection earlier in life, should be taken into account. This white paper proposes a responsibility to support alternative means of social connection for autistic young people where bans are considered, as IRL (in real life) socialising is not always accessible.

A Human-Centred View Of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships Operations Using The Shell Model, Natasya Habibah, Paul Hegarty, Breda Kenny

Women+ in Early Career Research Symposium

The concept of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) has existed for decades and is advancing rapidly as a result of developments in artificial intelligence. Despite these technological advancements, human involvement remains essential to ensure safety and reliability. This study applies the Software, Hardware, Environment, and Liveware (SHELL) model to develop a human-centric framework for examining the integration of human elements with intelligent and automated technologies in MASS. The framework considers software, with particular attention to regulatory aspects; hardware, including general system and sub-system architecture; environmental factors, including both natural and artificial, as well as dynamic and static elements; and liveware, …

Comparative Time Series Forecasting Of Pedestrian Footfall In Dublin City Centre, Mercy Koech

Women+ in Early Career Research Symposium

Research on urban populations has turned out to be a significant field of study for a long duration.Forecasting pedestrian footfall is important for urban management,retail planning,crime analysis and evaluating the influence of public gatherings.With the rise of smart cities and the proliferation of sensor technologies there now exists a rich supply of data that offers unprecedented insight into the behaviour of pedestrain traffic.This study undertakes a comprehensive analysis of timeseries forecasting methods to predict pedestrian footfall trends in Dublin City Centre a key urban area with diverse spatial characteristics and high foot traffic variability.Using data collected via PYRO-BOX Counters sensors …

Selfhealth: Continuous Semantic Intelligence For Privacy-Aware Lifelogging, Allie Tran

Women+ in Early Career Research Symposium

Lifelogging — the continuous digital recording of everyday experience through wearable cameras and sensors — has long promised benefits for memory augmentation, health monitoring, and lifestyle analysis. However, current systems follow a capture–store–retrieve model that delays analysis until after data collection, limiting their practical usefulness and creating significant privacy risks through prolonged retention of sensitive raw data. This paper argues that lifelogging should instead analyse data at the moment of capture, enabling timely, context-sensitive support and safer handling of personal information through privacy-by-design. We demonstrate the feasibility of this approach through SelfHealth, an early prototype system built on a custom …

Feedback In Digital Game-Based Learning: A Taxonomy And The Design And Empirical Evaluation Of A Feedback System In A Mathematics Serious Game, André Almo

Dissertations

Digital Game-Based Learning (DGBL) is an active, student-centred pedagogical approach in which feedback plays a central role by informing learners’ actions, guiding decision-making and shaping motivation and engagement. Despite its importance, feedback in serious games is often described inconsistently and insufficiently in research, limiting comparability across studies and the accumulation of design knowledge, particularly for children. This thesis addresses these gaps through two complementary contributions: the development of a taxonomy for feedback design in digital serious games and the empirical evaluation of a taxonomy-informed feedback system in a mathematics game for primary school students. First, this work introduces the Taxonomy …

A Holistic Modelling Framework For Functionally Safe Software Architectures In Embedded Control Systems, Thomas Barth

Doctoral

Embedded control systems are integral to most modern electrified products and an essential backbone of ongoing digitalisation [1]. In this context, these systems increasingly perform safety-critical functions where failures can lead to severe personal injury, environmental damage, or significant economic loss [2]. Consequently, they fall more often within the scope of regulation such as IEC 61508 and its derivatives [3]. At the same time, driven by hardware evolution and market demands, embedded control systems continue to grow in both integration density and functional complexity [4]. These demands necessitate structured development methods that balance compliance with cost-efficiency and development agility. A …

Optical Fiber Sensors Using Vernier Effect In Cascaded Fiber Interferometers, Zhouchen Wang

Dissertations

The optical Vernier effect has emerged as a powerful tool to enhance the sensitivity of optical fiber interferometer-based sensors, opening new opportunities for developing highly sensitive fiber sensing systems. Optical fiber interferometric sensors based on the Vernier effect are widely used for various applications due to their ultra-compact size, high sensitivity, immunity to electromagnetic interference, electrical isolation, resistance to harsh environments, flexibility, multiplexing capability, and remote operation. The aim of this doctoral thesis was to gain a deeper fundamental understanding of the Vernier effect in optical fiber structures and to develop and investigate a series of novel Vernier effect optical …

The Role Of Spatial Abilities In Stem Learning And The Influence Of Individual Differences, Styliani Malkogeorgou

Masters

Students’ decisions to pursue education and careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) are shaped by an interplay of cognitive, social, and motivational factors. Spatial ability is among the most reliable predictors of STEM success, yet less is known about how it relates to students’ STEM attitudes and aspirations, and whether visuospatial working memory (VSWM) explains this relationship. This study tested the hypotheses that (a) stronger spatial abilities and VSWM would be associated with more positive STEM attitudes and stronger STEM aspirations, and (b) VSWM would mediate the relationship between spatial abilities and STEM attitudes/aspirations, while examining the influence …

Efficient And Fair Resource Unit(Ru) Allocation Methods For The Ofdma Mechanism Under Ieee 802.11ax, Yang Yu

Doctoral

The IEEE 802.11ax standard was approved in February 2021. This standard allows users to access different channel bandwidths to transmit their packets under the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) mechanism. As the number of Internet users and the number of Internet applications increase, the allocation of channel resources has been a challenge in WLANs. Different types of applications, such as real-time video conferencing, online gaming and large-scale data transfers, generate different requirements in terms of throughput, latency and reliability. Consequently, the diversity in users’ channel bandwidth demands is increasing. Under the OFDMA mechanism, the packets can be allocated into …

Sharing Patient-Generated Health Data With Electronic Health Record: A Standardised Provenance And Context-Rich Information Model And Clinician Evaluation, Abdullahi Abubakar Kawu

Dissertations

With the advent of Patient-Generated Health Data (PGHD) through wearable, mobile, and home monitoring systems, there is immense potential for ongoing monitoring and patient engagement. But integrating PGHD with Electronic Health Record (EHR) is challenged by sub-optimal support for contextual metadata and its relevant elements, lack of semantic interoperability among disparate systems, poor knowledge regarding the factors that impact clinician acceptance, and absence of globally agreed standards for data exchange. This thesis explores how contextually relevant patient-generated health data can be shared with EHRs through a FAIR standardized information model that ensures semantic and syntactic interoperability.

The study addresses six …

Biomechanical Advancements In Hydroxyapatite, Magnesium-Substituted Hydroxyapatite, And Strontium-Substituted Hydroxyapatite In Clinical And Non-Clinical Studies For Maxillofacial Bone Tissue Engineering: A Review, Elham Zafarrazzaghnia, Stuart Hampshire, Aran Rafferty, Dermot Brabazon, Eamonn Debarra, Maura Kelleher

Articles

Hydroxyapatite (HA) is a bioceramic known for its bioactivity and osteoconductivity, which should make it an ideal candidate for maxillofacial bone regeneration. However, its brittleness limits its suitability for load-bearing applications. Over recent decades, substantial efforts have focused on enhancing its performance, particularly through ionic substitution, including magnesium-substituted HA (Mg-HA) and strontium-substituted HA (Sr-HA). This review summarises the available information on the structural, physical and mechanical properties of facial bones (maxilla, mandible, zygoma and frontal bone). The crystal structure, physical, and mechanical properties and in-vitro biological responses of dense and porous HA, Mg-HA and Sr-HA ceramics are described, with particular …

Skin Type Diversity In Image Datasets, Neda Alipour

Doctoral

Image-based AI systems that analyse human skin are increasingly used in healthcare and computer vision applications. However, many human skin-based image datasets do not provide reliable information about skin type, making it difficult to assess whether these systems perform consistently across the full spectrum of skin colour. The objective of this thesis is to examine how skin type diversity is represented and measured in image datasets, and to evaluate the reliability of image-based skin type measurement methods under different imaging conditions. Using publicly available skin lesion image datasets as a well-defined and widely used sub-class of skin image datasets, this …

Information Management / Bim Technology Evaluation Methodology, Robert Moore

Tools

This technology evaluation method provides a structured and transparent approach for assessing digital tools that support Information Management and Building Information Modelling (BIM). It establishes consistent criteria for evaluating functionality, interoperability, usability, compliance with standards such as ISO 19650, and alignment with organisational needs. The method supports objective comparison, informed decision-making, and proportionate investment, ensuring that technology acts as an enabler of defined processes rather than a driver in itself. Overall, it helps organisations select and implement technology solutions that are fit for purpose, scalable, and supportive of long-term Information Management / BIM adoption and continuous improvement.