Estimation of the dynamic characteristics of buildings is a key issue in seismic design technology. Since 1957, the Building Research Institute (BRI), Japan, has been operating a network to monitor strong motion in buildings. In this study, dynamic characteristics of 25 actual buildings in the BRI network were estimated by using strong motion records. Acceleration records from two sensors respe...

We introduce a construction turning some Coxeter and Davis realizations of buildings into systolic complexes. Consequently groups acting geometrically on buildings of triangle types distinct from (2, 4, 4), (2, 4, 5), (2, 5, 5), and various rank 4 types are systolic.

The emergence of intelligent buildings is founded on the rapid development of microcomputer and internet technology as well as the advance of information and communication technology. With the help of these technologies, office affairs have shifted from the traditional pattern of labor intense and large volume to the flexible, diverse, efficient, user-friendly, and highly reliable operations. M...

This paper studies the impact of surrounding buildings on path loss and multipath delay spread for Personal Communication Services (PCS) operating inside of buildings. Measurements conducted inside three large office buildings in the San Francisco Bay area provide an extensive database for propagation models at 915 MHz and 1900 Wlz, and show variability in path loss and delay spread caused by m...

The more technology advances, the more there seems to be a basic human yearning to return to nature. This is reflected in a growing number of designers, architects, and artists who are turning to nature’s example to model uses of new technology. San Francisco architect Charles Lee does just that. Lee is a designer, artist, and researcher with the group Bios Design Collective, a group that works...

Occupant satisfaction with indoor environmental quality (IEQ) in office buildings has been positively correlated to self-estimated job performance and, potentially, to overall company productivity. LEED is a voluntary, consensus-based, market-driven program that provides third-party certification of green buildings, contributing to promote sustainability into the mainstream of building design a...

With increasing use and integration of renewable energies, power imbalance between supply and demand sides has become one of the most critical issues in developing smart grid. As the major power consumers at demand side, buildings can actually perform as distributed thermal storages to help relieving power imbalance of a grid. However, power demand alteration potentials of buildings and energy ...

This paper describes the potential of Radarsat-1 fine beam intensity SAR images in urban mapping and change detection. The main objective was to determine the possibility of building detection e.g. as a function of height, orientation, roof material and roof type in the Helsinki metropolitan region. Altogether 22235 buildings were used to estimate the effect of height, and then 14270 buildings ...

Sensorized commercial buildings are a rich target for building a new class of applications that improve operational and energy efficiency of building operations that take into account human activities. Such applications, however, rarely experience widespread adoption due to the lack of a common descriptive schema that would enable porting these applications and systems to different buildings. O...

The percent of energy consumed by plug load equipment in commercial buildings is on the rise. Research conducted in the past has included surveying plug load equipment, measuring plug load electricity consumption and equipment operating patterns, and studying plug load reduction solutions in office buildings, but plug load energy use across other building types is poorly understood. A universit...