This paper presents results of a study on distributed, or parallel, evolutionary computation in the topological design of steel structural systems in tall buildings. It describes results of extensive experimental research on various parallel evolutionary architectures applied to a complex structural design problem. The experiments were conducted using Inventor 2003, a networkbased evolutionary ...

The diagrid structural system has been widely used for recent tall buildings due to the structural efficiency and aesthetic potential provided by the unique geometric configuration of the system. This paper presents a stiffness-based design methodology for determining preliminary member sizes of steel diagrid structures for tall buildings. The methodology is applied to diagrids of various heigh...

We attempt to compute the dynamic wind loads on tall buildings in close proximity with large-eddy simulation. Computation is attempted on two building geometries on which strong interference effects have been reported in previous wind tunnel studies. The computation uses a commercial code and a simple model of turbulence characteristics of the incident wind flow. The computed along-wind and acr...

Micro-geographic data capturing the spatial distribution of economic activity within cities in history are difficult to access. This paper discusses how tall and durable buildings can be exploited as a source “big data” trace structure cities. To this end, we provide stylized evidence on building heights correlate with land values over space time cities, review related nascent literature, sugge...

The purpose of this paper is to solve the simple sentence puzzle about proper names. (1) Superman leaps more tall buildings than Clark Kent. (2) Superman = Clark Kent. (3) Superman leaps more tall buildings than Superman. Even when (1) and (2) are true, (3) is false. It will be shown that this is not a real puzzle, because (i) (1) and (3) do not express singular propositions, and (ii) the ident...

This paper describes a new design paradigm, evolutionary structural design, that involves the entire design process, including conceptual and detailed design stages. In this paper, first a brief overview of the fundamentals of evolutionary computation is provided. Next, the concept of evolutionary structural design and its principia are discussed. Inventor 2001 is described in the following sec...

George, a 23-year-old Greek student, was referred by a psychiatrist for treatment to a University Counseling Centre in Athens. He was diagnosed with social anxiety disorder and specific phobia situational type. He was complaining of panic attacks and severe symptoms of anxiety. These symptoms were triggered when in certain social situations and also when travelling by plane, driving a car and v...

In cities with tall buildings, emergency responders need an accurate floor level location to find 911 callers quickly. We introduce a system to estimate a victim’s floor level via their mobile device’s sensor data in a two-step process. First, we train a neural network to determine when a smartphone enters or exits a building via GPS signal changes. Second, we use a barometer equipped smartphon...