The Quick Urban and Industrial Complex (QUIC) plume modeling system is used to explore how the transport and dispersion of vehicle emissions in cities are impacted by the presence of buildings. Using downtown Philadelphia as a test case, notional vehicle emissions of gases and particles are specified as line source releases on a subset of the east-west and north-south streets. Cases were run in...

In the recent years, there has been an increasing academic and industrial interest for analyzing the electrical consumption of commercial buildings. Whilst having similarities with the Non Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM) tasks for residential buildings, the nature of the signals that are collected from large commercial buildings introduces additional difficulties to the NILM research causing e...

This paper is a prospective study which looks at the possibility of configuring high performance renovation of apartment buildings by the use of constraint satisfaction problem (CSP). This study is one part of a project called CRIBA which aims to industrialize high performance thermal renovation of mid-rise (up to seven stories) apartment buildings. The renovation is based on external rectangul...

The performance of hospital buildings depends to a large degree on the efficiency of maintenance execution. The research objectives were to examine the efficiency of maintenance under alternative maintenance policies and alternative sources of labour (outsourcing vs. in-house). The research focused on main-tenance of hospital buildings as a model for multi-system buildings operating in dynamic ...

Existing detailed simulation methods generally address the energy use of individual buildings, through the specification of its fabric, ventilation, fuelled services and occupancy patterns. Current concerns in developing sustainable built environments however often focus on groups or communities of buildings. In the Virtual Village (VIRVIL) project, means of extending detailed simulation method...

Disastrous accidents (fire, chemical releases, earthquake, terrorist attacks, etc) in large public and residential buildings (discotheques, cafes, trade and industrial buildings) usually result in tragic consequences for people and environments. Such accidents have clearly showed that need for reliable systems supporting rescue operations is urgently appealing. Amongst all, giving appropriate i...

Subslab or shallow soil-gas data are often compared with indoor air concentration data in vapor intrusion (VI) evaluations. If no indoor air data are available or confounding sources are present, or if future scenarios are considered, the soilgas data may be used to estimate the indoor air concentrations due to VI. The typical approach in risk assessments is to use the 95th percentile values fr...

When catastrophic earthquakes happen and affect cities and settlements, immediate and efficient actions are required which ensure the minimization of the damage and loss of human lives. Responding local and national authorities should be provided in advance with information and maps where the highest damages due to unfavourable, local site conditions and earthquake related secondary effects suc...

Fifth Light Technology Ltd., based in Oakville, Ontario, Canada, develops centrally controlled, dimmable lighting systems for office, industrial and public buildings. The company’s approach consists of providing the desired lighting level in the right place at the right time while at the same time taking into account the light conditions in the surroundings, the respective energy costs and the ...