Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Digital Construction Annual Survey 2022 Report, Davitt Lamon, Ted Mckenna

Reports

The Annual Survey 2022 was conducted to assess the state of digital transformation in the Irish construction and built environment sector. This report presents the analysis of survey data, with a focus on implications for the Build Digital project and Build Digital’s five pillars: Digital Leadership & Cultural Change, Digital Standards, Digital Education & Training, Digital Procurement, and Sustainability & Circular Economy. Key findings from the survey indicated that a significant number of organisations have started their digital transformation journey, with many identifying themselves as proactive and possessing a clear business-focused strategy. However, a considerable cohort of respondents are keen …

Information Management And Bim Standards And Supports Inventory, Ryan Dempsey, Barry Mcauley, David Burke

Tools

The Digital Standards pillar consists of industry experts who champion the benefits of common rules, guidelines, and workflows that facilitate the improvement of information flow and information management across asset life cycles. Digital standards provide a common language that can be translated to technical specifications enabling clients, designers, contractors, and facilities managers, irrespective of their preferred tools, to communicate efficiently and reduce cost, rework, and disputes. Working closely with the Digital Procurement and Digital Education and Training pillars, this pillar is developing and delivering Irish Information Management/BIM (Digital Construction) guidelines for the sector.

This report summarises existing digital construction standards, …

International Information Management And Bim Best Practice Report, Ted Mckenna, Davitt Lamon

Reports

In order to inform the Digital Leadership and Cultural Change pillar of the Build Digital, a study of international best practice in digital adoption within the built environment sector globally was undertaken and is presented here-in. In order to identify key learnings for Ireland in the context of digital transformation, eight countries were included in this study, namely, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Germany, United Kingdom (UK), New Zealand, Australia and Singapore. These countries were selected for various reasons, including the level of digital maturity, the scale of the built environment sector and geographic spread. Key data for each country is included …

Sustainability And Circular Economy Horizon Scan And Needs Analysis, Sadaf Dalirazar, Mark Kelly, Derek Sinnott, James O'Donnell

Reports

The construction industry plays a crucial role in addressing the climate crisis as it is the largest global consumer of raw materials and contributes significantly to global energy consumption and emissions. Considering the world’s continuous population growth and the imperative to address infrastructure and housing demands the construction sector needs to adopt further sustainable strategies in its activities to reduce the pressure on natural resources. In addition, the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) sector is responsible for generating substantial amount of waste known as Construction and Demolition Waste (CDW), which is projected to increase due to the future construction developments. …

Augmenting External Surface Pressures’ Predictions On Isolated Low-Rise Buildings Using Cfd Simulations, Md Faiaz Khaled, Aly Mousaad Aly

Faculty Publications

The aim of this paper is to enhance the accuracy of predicting time-averaged external surface pressures on low-rise buildings by utilizing Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations. To achieve this, benchmark studies of the Silsoe cube and the Texas Tech University (TTU) experimental building are employed for comparison with simulation results. The paper is structured into three main sections. In the initial part, an appropriate domain size is selected based on the precision of mean pressure coefficients on the windward face of the cube, utilizing Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) turbulence models. Subsequently, recommendations regarding the optimal computational domain size for an …

Using Bim To Increase The Efficiency Of Energy-Driven Retrofitting Projects, Anne Grego, Shannon Chance, Barry Mcauley

Conference Papers

The building sector is responsible for nearly 40% of global energy consumption. Many existing buildings have poor thermal insulation and low energy performance, hindering sustainability goals. Energy-driven building retrofitting could address this issue and implementing Building Information Modelling (BIM) in retrofitting can reduce process time, costs, and waste associated with such undertakings. Yet, there is a lack of research and insufficient guidance for implementing BIM in energy-driven retrofitting. A BIM framework is presented to enhance decision-making processes during retrofitting. The aims of this study were to (1) identify BIM technologies and methodologies that could address existing barriers and improve efficiency …

Columbus, Nebraska: Southern Housing Development Design Proposal, Ryan Weyers, Caiden Dynek, Alex Papa, Brexton Robertson, Kaden Perala

Honors Theses

The following paper proposes the design and creation of a new housing development in the city of Columbus, Nebraska in a lot to the south of the city and directly north of the Columbus wastewater treatment plant. The goal of this proposal is to provide readers with confidence that our company is the most qualified to complete the project and will create the safest, most comfortable, most efficient, and most cost-effective final design. This proposal seeks to offer a solution to the lack of affordable housing for the growing workforce in Columbus. In order to arrive at this solution, each …

Hdd Dataset: Optimising Retrofitted Insulation For Irish Residential Building Walls, Rakshit D. Muddu, Aimee Byrne, Anthony James Robinson

Datasets

In this study, a thermal-economic analysis was conducted to determine the optimum insulation thickness of retrofitted insulation walls in different regions in Ireland. This was based on the Heating Degree Day method (HDD). This dataset contains optimum insulation thickness, payback period, cost savings and carbon emission for all 25 counties in the Republic of Ireland

Survey Data: Optimising Retrofitted Insulation For Irish Residential Building Walls, Rakshit D. Muddu, Aimee Byrne, Anthony Robinson Dr.

Datasets

A survey was conducted to determine the preferred set point temperature and heating pattern among Irish households. The survey was sent to 237 people living across Ireland, out of which 32 respondents skipped the survey and 9 surveys were found to be incomplete. Amongst the counties in Ireland 71.1% respondents were from Dublin, 6.34% from Kildare, 5% from Meath, 5% from Wicklow and in all the remaining counties response rate was below 2%. Part 1: This section of the survey recorded information regarding characteristics of the building such as house type, wall type, insulation type, period the house was built. …

Thermal Efficacy Of Green Walls In Building Structures In The Northeast United States, Nathaniel Wright

Student Showcase

Climate change is one of the most threatening issues that humankind faces in the 21st century and there is indisputable evidence that our planet is experiencing global temperature rise, shrinking of ice sheets and sea level rise, warming oceans, and extreme weather events at an alarming rate. Urbanization drives these changes and creates the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. One method to mitigate this issue is urban greening, specifically the construction of green walls which take advantage of unused vertical exteriors of buildings. Despite existing literature on green walls especially in Europe and Asia, green walls must be researched more …

Design, Concept, And Visualization Of Urban Multi-Level Growing Table Systems In Hyper Urban Areas, Aaryan Manoj Nair, Shaheed Mohammed, Omar Rahama

Publications and Research

As of a 2019 study conducted by the National Urban Gardening Program (National Urban Gardening Program), urban farming accounts for approximately 19% of the total national farming output and is expected to triple to almost 45% by 2025. There is intensive research being conducted on aspects of reduced recidivism, communal health benefits, natural carbon capture systems, improved urban ecology and the necessity for reducing the carbon footprint of food, (informally dubbed “food miles”) there is little substantive research on optimisation, and maximation of crop productivity in hyper-urban areas.

The purpose of this report is to understand the functionalities of urban …

Investigation Of Mechanical Properties Of Recycled Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Composites Reinforcing Cement, Caleb Mull, Fnu Archie, Harry Lee, Guyuan Zhang

Discovery Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Research Internship

The usage of fiber-reinforced polymer composites in various fields has increased significantly due to their advantageous physical and mechanical properties. However, the sustainability of composite parts has not been fully solved for a long time. Most end-of-life (EOL) composite parts have been landfilled without recycling due to the recycling cost and lack of application of recycled composites. Mechanical composite recycling that shred the EOL composite part and reuse it for downgraded applications is one of the most commonly used recycling processes for the EOL composite part. In this research, mechanical composite recycling process was demonstrated for the construction application. The …

The Living Breakwaters Pdr Efforts: Conceptual Scheduling, Calvin O. Walters Jr.

Publications and Research

On October 29, 2012, Superstorm Sandy caused nearly $19 billion in damages in New York City including 69,000 residential units across the five boroughs. This disaster precipitated a post-disaster-rebuilding (PDR) project including roughly $4.2 billion in a Community Development Block Grant allocated towards PDR projects. A portion of the grant was used to construct a living breakwater in Tottenville, Staten Island, consisting of a resiliency approach to risk reduction through erosion prevention, wave energy attenuation, and enhancement of ecosystems and social resiliency to improve resistance to storms for the community of Tottenville. The ridges of each breakwater are designed with …

Influence Of Foundation Damping On Offshore Wind Turbine Monopile Design Loads, Wystan Carswell, Sanjay R. Arwade, Jörgen Johansson, Don J. Degroot

Publications

The dynamic behavior of offshore wind turbines (OWTs) must be designed considering stochastic load amplitudes and frequencies from waves and mechanical loads associated with the spinning rotor during power production. The proximity of the OWT natural frequency to excitation frequencies combined with low damping necessitates a thorough analysis of sources of damping; of these sources of damping, least is known about the contributions of damping from soil-structure interaction (foundation damping). This paper studies the influence of foundation damping on cyclic load demand for monopile-supported OWTs considering the design situations of power production, emergency shutdown, and parked conditions. The NREL 5 …

North 14th Street Corridor Improvements Project, Ashley Nguyen, Samantha Corey, Maricela Paramo Reyes, Pooja Rajeev

Honors Theses

The following project report was a study of the North 14^th Street corridor ranging from Adams Street to Virginia Street conducted by University of Nebraska-Lincoln students for a senior design capstone project. Main focuses of the project were the intersection of Adams and 14^th Street and the 14^th Street bridges over Cornhusker Highway and Oak Creek. Study of this area included work in transportation, traffic, structural, geotechnical, water resources, and environmental engineering. However, this report done by students should not take the place of work done by licensed professional engineers.

This project was done in collaboration with …

Mrda-Mgfsnet: Network Based On A Multi-Rate Dilated Attention Mechanism And Multi-Granularity Feature Sharer For Image-Based Butterflies Fine-Grained Classification, Maopeng Li, Guoxiong Zhou, Weiwei Cai, Jiayong Li, Mingxuan Li, Mingfang He, Yahui Hu, Liujun Li

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Aiming at solving the problems of high background complexity of some butterfly images and the difficulty in identifying them caused by their small inter-class variance, we propose a new fine-grained butterfly classification architecture, called Network based on Multi-rate Dilated Attention Mechanism and Multi-granularity Feature Sharer (MRDA-MGFSNet). First, in this network, in order to effectively identify similar patterns between butterflies and suppress the information that is similar to the butterfly's features in the background but is invalid, a Multi-rate Dilated Attention Mechanism (MRDA) with a symmetrical structure which assigns different weights to channel and spatial features is designed. Second, fusing the …

On The Computational Efficiency Of Les And Hybrid Rans-Les Models In Building Aerodynamics, Aly Mousaad Aly, Faiaz Khaled

Faculty Publications

Large-eddy simulation (LES) has proven to offer superior accuracy in regards to predicting surface pressures compared to the Reynolds-averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) models. However, the primary impediment is the high computational cost associated with LES. The authors attempt to investigate the computational cost and accuracy by employing different sub-grid scale (SGS) models in LES and hybrid RANS-LES models. One of the prerequisites of accurate pressure estimations is to ensure a horizontally homogeneous empty computational domain. This study aims to compare the computational competence qualitatively and quantitatively using an empty domain in regards to the ability to maintain horizontal homogeneity. The …

On The Computational Efficiency Of Les And Hybrid Rans-Les Models In Building Aerodynamics, Faiaz Khaled, Aly Mousaad Aly

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Critical Examination Of Visual Programming And Generative Design For The Compliance Checking Of Open Plan Office Layouts Against Hse Guidelines Post Covid-19., Bim Tudublin, Ronan Byrne

Capstone Reports

The purpose of this study is to explore the feasibility of Visual Programming (VP) and Generative Design (GD) in assisting employers review open plan office layouts against Ireland’s HSE guidelines implemented in May 2020 in response to Covid-19. The pandemic has affected all areas of life with workplace standards requiring a complete overhaul. This study will attempt to ascertain compliance with natural ventilation and social distancing requirements through the completion of an experimental research study, utilising Computational Design (CD) tools. A GD study will be undertaken to provide the designer with numerous office layout design solutions to evaluate and evolve. …

Opportunities In The Irish Reinforced Concrete Industry For Lean And Bim Adoption, Bim Tudublin, Kieran Mcconnell

Capstone Reports

The Irish Reinforced Concrete (RC) sector has yet to realise the full potential of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Lean construction. The positive impacts and benefits of both BIM and Lean in the wider Architecture, Engineering and Construction sector are widely recognised; many of these are transferable to the RC sector, but there is limited research and knowledge on practical transference, uses and advantages. This research aims to fill some of the existing knowledge gaps by examining BIM and Lean adoption and awareness in the Irish RC sector across sub-sectors, professions, and organisational levels, and by exploring opportunities for increasing …

To What Extent Can Lean Construction Processes And Principles Be Utilised In The Design Stage Of A Bim Project In The Irish Design And Construction Industry, Bim Tudublin, Barry Sheramn

Capstone Reports

Although different in many ways, Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Lean Construction are two processes that are having a significant impact on the Design & Construction Industry. In recent years, the Irish AECO industry has seen a tenfold increase across numerous construction disciplines with the adoption of new workflows and processes centred around both BIM and Lean methodologies. Existing literature identifies a strong synergistic relationship between the two processes and highlights the opportunity for Lean processes and principles to be implemented into the design stage workflow. This paper investigated existing literature relating to several lean processes currently implemented in the …

Should Acoustic Simulation Technology Be Utilised In Architectural Practice? Does It Have The Potential For Bim Integration?, Bim Tudublin, Keith Harvey

Capstone Reports

The research presented in this paper, firstly, aims to convey the importance of our acoustic environment through focusing on the effects of undesirable acoustic conditions on cognitive abilities in spaces where cognitive performance is of the utmost concern, our learning environments. Secondly, it aims to investigate current state-of-the-art acoustic simulation methods, available platforms, and their levels of interoperability with architectural BIM authoring software. Structured interviews were carried out with 7 Irish architects and architectural technologists to determine if a disconnection between architectural design and acoustic performance exists and to identify the advantages and disadvantages of current workflows for acoustic performance …

Optimisation Of Retrofit Wall Insulation: An Irish Case Study, Rakshit D. Muddu, D M. Gowda, Anthony James Robinson, Aimee Byrne

Articles

Ireland has one of the highest rates of emissions per capita in the world and its residential sector is responsible for approximately 10% of total national CO2 emissions. Therefore, reducing the CO2 emissions in this sector will play a decisive role in achieving EU targets of reducing emissions by 40% by 2030. To better inform decisions regarding retrofit of the existing building stock, this study proposes Optimum Insulation Thicknesses (OIT) for typical walls in 25 regions in Ireland. The calculation of OIT includes annual heat energy expenditure, CO2 emissions, and material payback period. The approach taken is based on Heating …

A Comparative Study Of Cadworx Plant 2018 And Revit 2020 With Ez-Iso Add-In, For The Production Of Piping Isometrics, Bim Tudublin, Killian Lynch

Capstone Reports

BIM software evaluation and selection is a complex process. In this paper, a comparative study of Revit 2020 with Ez-ISO add-in, and CADWorx Plant 2018, was carried out. The aim of this study was to determine if a MEP contractor could consolidate software usage into one package, thereby reducing costs for pipework modelling and isometric production. A comprehensive evaluation was developed based on a literature review. A multicriteria decision-making method was used in conjunction with the software evaluation to ensure sound choices were made. An online survey of senior BIM professionals was conducted to validate the analysis and findings. The …

A Critical Examination Of The Use Of Business Intelligence (Bi) In The Optioneering Of Generative Design Models: A Case Study., Bim Tudublin, Davitt Lamon

Capstone Reports

This research outlines the development of a generative des ign workflow for the architectural space planning of a 1,200 sq.m office located in Dublin, Ireland, and the application of statistical analysis and data visualisation for the optioneering of gen erated models. First, the paper defines a computational desig n model with the potential to generate a variety of office layouts, including circulation routes and desk locations. It then identifies three unique performance metrics that evaluate each design option. Finally, the study applies a multi objective genetic algorithm (MOGA) to explore the high dimensional design space of all potential options and …

Thermal Analysis And Post Construction Verification, Cormac Flood, Lloyd Scott

Articles

Purpose – The residential sector in Ireland accounted for 25 per cent of energy related CO2 emissions in 2016 through burning fossil fuels, a major contributor to climate change. In support of Ireland’s CO2 reduction targets, the existing housing stock could contribute greatly to the reduction of space-heating energy demand through retrofit. Approximately 50 per cent of Ireland’s 2m dwellings pre-date building regulations and are predominantly of cavity and solid wall construction, the performance of which has not been extensively investigated at present. Although commitment to thermal upgrade/retrofit of existing buildings may increase under future government policies, the poor characterisation …

Improving The Sustainability Of The Built Environment By Training Its Workforce In More Efficient And Greener Ways Of Designing And Constructing Through The Horizon2020 Bimcert Project, Barry Mcauley, Avril Behan

Conference papers

The construction industry consumes up to 50% of mineral resources excavated from nature, generates about 33% of CO2 present in the atmosphere and is responsible for 40% of total global energy through both construction and operation of buildings. The realisation that current pervasive construction practices now face globalization, sustainability, and environmental concerns, as well as ever-changing legislation requirements and new skills needed for the information age has resulted in technologies such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) becoming a key enabler in navigating these barriers. To assist in overcoming these barriers, a number of funding initiatives have been put in place …

Centres Of Excellence And Roadmaps For Digital Transition: Lessons For Ireland’S Construction Industry, Barry Mcauley, Alan Hore, Roger West

Conference papers

Like most sectors in today’s working world, construction businesses are challenged to work in an increasingly digitised world with sophisticated demands from intelligent clients. So much has been written about the inefficiencies of the construction industry, its fragmentation, lack of collaboration, low margins, adversarial pricing, poor productivity, financial fragility, lack of research and development, poor industry image and relatively weak use of digital solutions. The Irish government recognises the importance of digital innovation to address many of the challenges the construction industry faces. With recent high profile reports of escalating spend on signature public sector projects and weak productivity performance …

From Roadmap To Implementation: Lessons For Ireland’S Digital Construction Programme, Barry Mcauley, Alan Hore, Roger West

Conference papers

As part of their Future of Construction initiative in 2018 the World Economic Forum published an action plan to accelerate Building Information Modelling adoption. The WEF report highlighted actions that companies, industry organisations and governments are advised to implement to accelerate BIM adoption and better capitalise on delivering better project outcomes. According the authors of the report BIM is seen as the centrepiece of the construction industry’s digital transformation, however they acknowledged that BIM adoption globally remain slow. Anecdotal experience would suggest that BIM usage in Ireland is also very low and that a similar initiative or an adaptation of …

Urban Underground Infrastructure Monitoring Iot: The Path Loss Analysis, Abdul Salam, Syed Shah

Faculty Publications

The extra quantities of wastewater entering the pipes can cause backups that result in sanitary sewer overflows. Urban underground infrastructure monitoring is important for controlling the flow of extraneous water into the pipelines. By combining the wireless underground communications and sensor solutions, the urban underground IoT applications such as real time wastewater and storm water overflow monitoring can be developed. In this paper, the path loss analysis of wireless underground communications in urban underground IoT for wastewater monitoring has been presented. It has been shown that the communication range of up to 4 kilometers can be achieved from an underground …