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The article examines the main problems and obstacles to the functioning of the economy of Ukraine in the conditions of martial law. An analysis and assessment of the amount of damage caused to business and the civilian population during hostilities was carried out. The growth of negative trends in the environment of the functioning of enterprises was revealed, in particular, we are talking about breaks in logistics chains and risks of business reorganization. It has been proven that the war created a high level of uncertainty in Ukrainian business, as a result of which we observe the appearance of more and more new enterprises that stop their economic activity. The influence of the war on the export and agricultural potential of Ukraine is studied. It has been found that the war increases the risks of a global food crisis every day. It has been proven that the agricultural sector of Ukraine needs significant help and support. The set of main factors that help support the agricultural market of Ukraine was considered, and the latest state programs for supporting and stimulating the agricultural sector of Ukraine, as one of the most strategically important sectors of the economy, were evaluated. An analysis and assessment of the current state of business and its sectoral transformation in war conditions has been carried out. The main problems that prevent business from recovering and functioning effectively in war conditions are identified, and potential sources of assistance for Ukrainian business are identified. The peculiarities of state policy in the conditions of martial law are considered and the main directions of business development of Ukraine in the conditions of war are highlighted. Attention is paid to the state program of business relocation, as an effective tool for protecting enterprises and ensuring their functioning in critical conditions of war. Considerable attention is paid to the policy of state crediting, in particular to the program of concessional crediting «5–7–9%», as an effective tool that helps to support and activate business activities in the conditions of war and to provide effective support to agricultural producers who currently work in extreme conditions. The effectiveness of the introduction of a zero lending rate and the abolition of the excise tax on the import of gasoline and diesel fuel into Ukraine has been proven. It is worth noting that our economy is currently operating in extremely difficult and extreme conditions, and our research proves Ukraine's urgent need for effectiv e economic solutions, which, in particular, the government implements through measures of state support and stimulation of business development in our country in these difficult times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The characteristics of large logistics buildings are their long spans and the ability to take heavy loads. Usually, PC components are used for their frames to ensure quick construction. However, the erection of most pin jointed PC structures increases the time and the cost incurred for ensuring structural stability and construction safety. To solve this problem, "smart" frames have been developed, which have tapered steel joints at both ends of the PC components. A smart frame with the moment frame concept not only assures structural stability and construction safety, but it also simplifies and quickens the erection because of its tapered joint detail. The purpose of this study is to compare the erection time and cost effects of the steel connected PC components for heavily loaded long-span logistics buildings with the existing PC frames. For this study, we selected a logistics building constructed with PC components and redesigned it as the smart frame, and the erection simulations were performed. We analyzed the time reduction effects of the smart frame. Our results confirmed that the use of the smart frame reduced the erection time and cost practically. Our investigations will help develop the erection simulation algorithms for smart frames. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graphical abstract Highlights • Three fundamental load shape (FLS) profiles exist for building energy use. • FLS profiles are characterized by morning, mid-day and evening peaks of energy use. • Benchmarking using FLS profiles results in homogenous groups regardless of type. • Results based on large and diverse dataset: 3829 buildings and 75 use programs. • Case study shows application of FLS for building portfolio management. Abstract Buildings are responsible for 30–40% of the anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption worldwide. Thus, reducing the overall energy use and associated emissions in buildings is crucial for meeting sustainability goals for the future. In recent years, smart energy meters have been deployed to enable monitoring of energy use data with hourly or sub-hourly temporal resolution. The concurrent rise of information technologies and data analytics enabled the development of novel applications such as customer segmentation, load profiling, demand response, energy forecasting and anomaly detection. In this paper, we address load profiling and benchmarking, i.e., determining peer groups for buildings. Traditionally, static characteristics, e.g., primary space use (PSU) together with the annual energy-use-intensity (EUI) have been used to compare the performance of buildings. Data-driven benchmarking approaches have begun to also consider the shape of the load profiles as a means for comparison. In this work, we identify three fundamental load shape profiles that characterize the temporal energy use in any building. We obtain this result by collecting a dataset of unprecedented variety in size (3829 buildings) and primary use (75 programs), and applying a rigorous clustering analysis followed by entropy calculation for each building. The existence of fundamental load shape profiles challenges the man-made, artificial classification of buildings. We demonstrate in a benchmarking application that the resulting data-driven groups are more homogeneous, and therefore more suitable for comparisons between buildings. Our findings have potential implications for portfolio management, building and urban energy simulations, demand response and renewable energy integration in buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • We present a new 3-step method for handling demand uncertainty in district energy optimisation. • Temporally autocorrelated demand scenarios are generated using real metered demand. • We apply the 3-step methodology to two case study districts: Bangalore, India and Cambridge, UK. • Cost optimal districts favour building-scale technologies to centralised energy generation. • Unmet demand in out-of-sample scenarios is reduced 25 to 50 times when using scenario optimisation. Abstract Current district energy optimisation depends on perfect foresight. However, we rarely know how the future will transpire when undertaking infrastructure planning. A key uncertainty that has yet to be studied in this context is building-level energy demand. Energy demand varies stochastically on a daily basis, owing to activities and weather. Yet, most current district optimisation models consider only the average demand. Studies that incorporate demand uncertainty ignore the temporal autocorrelation of energy demand, or require a detailed engineering model for which there is no validation against real consumption data. In this paper, we propose a new 3-step methodology for handling demand uncertainty in mixed integer linear programming models of district energy systems. The three steps are: scenario generation, scenario reduction, and scenario optimisation. Our proposed framework is data-centric, based on sampling of historic demand data using multidimensional search spaces. 500 scenarios are generated from the historical demand of multiple buildings, requiring historical data to be nonparametrically sampled whilst maintaining interdependence of hourly demand in a day. Using scenario reduction, we are able to select a subset of scenarios that best represent the probability distribution of our large number of initial scenarios. The scenario optimisation step constitutes minimising the cost of technology investment and operation, where all realisations of demand from the reduced scenarios are probabilistically weighted in the objective function. We applied these three steps to a real district development in Cambridge, UK, and an illustrative district in Bangalore, India. Our results show that the technology investment portfolios derived from our 3-step methodology are more robust in meeting large possible variations in demand than any model optimised independently with a single demand scenario. This increased robustness comes at a higher monetary cost of investment. However, the high investment cost is lower than the highest possible cost when each of the initial 500 scenarios is optimised independently. In both our case studies, building level energy systems are always more robust than district level ones, a result which disagrees with many existing studies. The outcomes enable better examination of district energy systems. In addition, our methodology is compiled as an open-source code that can be applied to optimise existing and future energy masterplans of districts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay aims to encourage researchers to use visuals related to organizational life as an empirical material per se. Through an overview of visual analysis in management research, we underline methodological stakes to show how they matter in the main current theoretical frameworks. Without being exhaustive, we encourage researchers to develop visual analyses as they provide significant knowledge on multiple phenomena at the individual, organizational and, more globally, macro levels. Furthermore, we consider that with the rise of digital technologies the analysis and publication of this type of empirical research has become more achievable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Although green building technologies (GBTs) have been advocated to address sustainability issues, their transfer from academic research institutions to building enterprises is still plagued with barriers. For reducing transfer barriers between suppliers and users of GBTs, a practical matching method of the key issues influencing its progress is crucial. While numerous studies have examined the issues influencing GBTs transfer in general, few have been specifically conducted on matching methods for matching supply and demand of GBTs. This study aims to propose an efficient and practical matching decision making method for matching management of GBTs supply and demand based on intuitionistic fuzzy sets (IFS) and considering interactions among aspiration criteria. First, a framework for two-sided matching of GBTs exchange is established. In the framework, IFS theory is used to express the matching aspiration of suppliers and users of GBTs. Moreover, numerous aspirations are transformed into integrated aspirations by intuitionistic fuzzy geometric weighted Heronian mean (IFGWHM) operator considering interactions among aspiration criteria. Furthermore, a two-sided matching model is proposed based on the score matrices calculated using the integrated aspirations. And then the model is converted into a single-objective optimization model by a linear weighted method. Finally, a case study demonstrates that the proposed approach can be applied to real-world GBTs trading and yields matching results that are more consistent with the reality. This study adds to the green building literature by analyzing matching management of supply and demand of GBTs, which could help policy makers take suitable matching measures to improve the success rate of GBTs matching and thereby promote the GBTs transfer from academic research institutes to building enterprises. This research also improves and extends the applications of the two-sided matching theory in the technology transfer paradigm. Highlights • A novel model is proposed for matching management of green building technologies (GBTs) supply and demand. • Transferring GBTs from academic research institutes to building enterprises. • Intuitionistic fuzzy sets theory and interactions among aspiration criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industries have to adapt to changes in external environment. This adaption includes the development of new professional roles that challenge established structures, roles and communities of practice. In order to better understand the unfolding of construction project practice in an increasingly changeful world new professional roles are explored as liminal roles. The studied professional roles are partnering manager, building logistic specialist and BIM coordinator. Liminality is used as framework to understand descriptions of liminal experiences when negotiating boundary interfaces in construction project practice. Findings are both theoretical and practical and suggest that new professional roles practice multi-liminal work and acknowledge tensions that pose challenges for liminal roles to act as change agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates automatic prediction of seismic building structural types described by the Global Earthquake Model (GEM) taxonomy, by combining remote sensing, cadastral and inspection data in a supervised machine learning approach. Our focus lies on the extraction of detailed geometric information from a point cloud gained by aerial laser scanning. To describe the geometric shape of a building we apply Shape-DNA, a spectral shape descriptor based on the eigenvalues of the Laplace-Beltrami operator. In a first experiment on synthetically generated building stock we succeed in predicting the roof type of different buildings with accuracies above 80%, only relying on the Shape-DNA. The roof type of a building thereby serves as an example of a relevant feature for predicting GEM attributes, which cannot easily be identified and described by using traditional methods for shape analysis of buildings. Further research is necessary in order to explore the usability of Shape-DNA on real building data. In a second experiment we use real-world data of buildings located in the Groningen region in the Netherlands. Here we can automatically predict six GEM attributes, such as the type of lateral load resisting system, with accuracies above 75% only by taking a buildings footprint area and year of construction into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various methods and variations of methods used in designing and building capital projects in the U.S. It also states a fast tracking method that is a way of scheduling other methods for capital building. Topics discussed methods including design-bid build method, Construction Manger methods and Design-Build method.

Summary: A new seismic design manner, namely building mass damper (BMD), which is inspired from a combination of mid‐story isolation and tuned mass damper design concepts, recently attracts immense attention. It is mainly because that the use of partial structural mass of the building as an energy absorber in the BMD design can overcome the drawback of limited response reduction due to insufficient added tuned mass in the conventional tuned mass damper design. In this study, an optimum BMD (OBMD) design approach, namely optimum dynamic characteristic control approach, based on a simplified 3‐lumped‐mass structure model is proposed to seismically protect both the superstructure (or tuned mass) and the substructure (or primary structure), respectively, above and below the control layer. A series of sensitivity analyses and experimental studies on different parameters, including mass, frequency, and damping ratios, of a building model designed with a BMD system were conducted. The test results verify the practical feasibility of the BMD concept as well as the effectiveness of the proposed OBMD design. Furthermore, by comparing with the numerical results of a mid‐story isolated counterpart, it is demonstrated that the proposed OBMD design can have a comparable and even better control performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter describes key ingredients that contribute to a successful accreditation site visit. The authors describe the site-visit process as it currently exists for organizations seeking accreditation from the Council on Accreditation (COA). The chapter focuses on the logistical aspects of a successful site visit rather than the results of the site visit itself. Based on their experience, the authors share key ingredients needed to ensure quality accreditation site visits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a method for extracting buildings from LiDAR point cloud data by combining point-based and grid-based features. To accurately discriminate buildings from vegetation, a point feature based on the variance of normal vectors is proposed. For a robust building extraction, a graph cuts algorithm is employed to combine the used features and consider the neighbor contexture information. As grid feature computing and a graph cuts algorithm are performed on a grid structure, a feature-retained DSM interpolation method is proposed in this paper. The proposed method is validated by the benchmark ISPRS Test Project on Urban Classification and 3D Building Reconstruction and compared to the state-art-of-the methods. The evaluation shows that the proposed method can obtain a promising result both at area-level and at object-level. The method is further applied to the entire ISPRS dataset and to a real dataset of the Wuhan City. The results show a completeness of 94.9% and a correctness of 92.2% at the per-area level for the former dataset and a completeness of 94.4% and a correctness of 95.8% for the latter one. The proposed method has a good potential for large-size LiDAR data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction of the market-oriented ecological compensation mechanism in China is complicated system engineering China's ecological compensation funds are mainly derived from the public finance, lacking market-oriented operation. That not only increases the financial burden of the government, but also leads to the incomprehensive compensation scope. Moreover, China's ecological compensation lacks market mechanism so that it is difficult to set compensation standards and calculate offsets. This paper takes Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture as an example to analyze the market-oriented ecological compensation system of ethnic minority areas from the perspective of market economy, so as to provide a theoretical basis and a reference point for the establishment of efficient and reasonable ecological compensation mechanism and policies in ethnic minority areas and provide environmental protection for the sustainable development of economy and society of ethnic minority areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The life-cyde eco-footprint computing model of building projects was established in the study. It contained the eco-footprint in 4 aspects during the lifecycle: consumed energy, consumed resource, emitted carbon dioxide and produced solid waste. Space efficiency of life-cyde eco-footprint index was proposed and used to assess the eco-sustainability of building projects. Then, the eco-footprint and ecosustainability of 4 different structure types (brick-concrete bungalow, multi-storey brick-concrete, multistorey sted-concrete, high-rise sted-concrete) for residential building in severdy cold areas were investigated. The results indicated that: 1) Compared with bungalow, high-rise building with relatively smaller shape coeffident and window-wall ratio had higher eco-sustainability, 2) For the buildings with the same storey, shape coeffident and window-wall ratio, steel-concrete building had higher eco-sustainability than brickconcrete building 3) High-rise sted-concrete structure had the greatest eco-sustainability during the 4 different bui lding structures, so it was more suitable to promote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, the increasing concern about the environmental quality of human settlements makes people realize that the attractive environment given by natural ecology also deficiently needs the feedback and protection of nature in some forms so that the natural ecology can be endlessly cycled on its own. Taking the project of German Enterprise Center in Qingdao Sino-German Ecopark as an example, this paper discussed construction of outdoor environment water circulation system using the landscape building method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The correct and safe design of structures subjected to the wind actions requires a realistic estimate of the wind effects on their resisting systems. In this context, the present paper proposes a complete numerical study that, starting from Large Eddy Simulation of the turbulent flow around a low-rise building, arrives to the assessment of the wind loading effects, that is the evaluation of design forces in all structural elements. Since it is well known that a realistic representation of the turbulent features found in the lower part of the atmospheric boundary layer is required in order to obtain accurate predictions of the structural response, firstly, the incoming flow turbulence is synthetically generated by means of the Modified Discretizing and Synthesizing Random Flow Generator technique. Then, the obtained synthetic fluctuation field is used as inflow condition for the subsequent Large Eddy Simulations taking into consideration different angles of attack. Results in terms of pressure distributions statistics are analyzed and systematically compared to experimental data. Finally, starting from both simulated and experimental pressure fields, dynamic structural analyses are performed and results directly compared in terms of design forces in the structural elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In the seismic design and assessment of acceleration-sensitive equipment installed in buildings, floor acceleration spectra, which are based on an uncoupled analysis of the structure and the equipment, are usually used. However, in order to obtain an 'accurate' determination of floor spectra, a complex and quite demanding dynamic response-history analysis is needed. Recently a method for the direct generation of floor acceleration spectra from ground motion spectra, taking into account the dynamic properties of the structure, has been developed and validated. It is based on the theory of structural dynamics, in combination with empirically determined values for the amplification factors in the resonance region. The method can be used for both elastic and inelastic multi-degree-of-freedom structures and equipment modelled as an elastic or inelastic single-degree-of-freedom oscillator. In the case of inelastic primary structures, the method is coupled with the pushover-based N2 method. The variant of the method which is presented in this note is intended for practical applications, e.g. for implementation in guidelines and codes, and it represents a simplified version of the original method. In addition to some simplifications, the option of taking into account the inelastic response of the equipment was added. In the note, the method is summarized, and all the formulae needed for the calculation of floor acceleration spectra are provided. A description of all steps of the analysis, together with all the relevant numerical data, is presented in a test example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using green façades in large cities with hot climates has been introduced in the search for more sustainable solutions for urban development. This paper presents the data collected in situ and quantifies the thermal external behaviour of a green wall and a bare one in the same surrounding environment in the city centre of Madrid, Spain. The methodological approach helps to assess the impacts of both walls on the variation of the urban temperature range at the microclimate scale in accordance with environmental physical data at different seasons and times of the day. In the summer campaign, the maximum values of air temperature reduction as measured in situ range between 2.5 °C and 2.9 °C which confirmed the values of various other studies using similar measurements. In the autumn campaign, the maximum values were half of the ones obtained for the summer, not exceeding 1.5 °C. However, these values increased after calculating similar conditions of sunlight in both façades. This comparative analysis of the experimental results on a green wall and a bare wall demonstrates that green façades can have a significant temperature reduction potential in the surrounding microclimate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate assessments of construction materials stocked in the built environment have received increased attention in the Industrial Ecology literature over the past few years. Many recent models that estimate building material inflows, stock accumulation and end-of-life waste, however, rely on simplistic assumptions about the lifespan of built infrastructure. While several probability distributions have been proposed (normal, Weibull, log-normal, and so on) there is no agreement on which model is best suited for modelling the accumulation of building material stock at urban and national levels. In this study we introduce an analysis of the hazard rate of buildings and discuss alternative distribution functions to model lifespan, testing the fit of five commonly used distributions to real data from the cities of Nagoya (Japan), Wakayama (Japan), and Salford (UK). The results highlight how cities with fast replacement rates are overall best modelled by right-skewed distributions, but single cohort levels express independent behaviours based on their characteristics. We investigate the sensitivity of a top-down stock accumulation model to the choice of different distributions and input parameters uncertainties. The results show that different lifespan distribution functions result in very similar overall stock accumulation at the national level, but have large impacts on calculated demolition waste flows. Differences are more pronounced for cities and the choice of a certain distribution will significantly affect the calculation of the average lifetime. Our results suggest that top-down national material stock accounts have high reliability, and are only weakly affected by the choice of one distribution over another. For cities, it is beneficial to use a distribution based on the characteristics of the buildings analysed, with regard to density and building characteristics. Stock accumulation research would profit from future bottom-up research into building lifespans to validate top-down estimation procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The modern automotive industry is looking for more efficient and environmentally friendly power sources for vehicles heading toward electric drives. The article presents the prototype of a small electric vehicle, which was developed in the Department of Vehicles and Fundamentals of Machine Building at Lodz University of Technology. This vehicle is equipped with an electric drive system by replacing the manufacturing combustion engine (SI), asynchronous electric motor with an electronic power converter. It describes the process of creating a mathematical model, numerical modeling and its solving. The results of tests carried out on the real vehicle and numerical research obtained from the numerical model were analyzed. Based on that there were presented conclusions of the numerical model and further working on the project and development of a prototype of the vehicle. The possibility of wireless power electricity of vehicle was considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BIPV (Building Integrated Photovoltaics) integration in urban spaces requires, not only careful technical, but also aesthetic considerations as its visual impact is seen as a kind of environmental effect. To manage this effect, different methods were developed to measure it; however, most existing evaluation methods are either based on subjective speculations and have no continuous criteria standards, or they do not show much relevance to neuropsychological findings. This paper presents an alternative and complementary method for evaluating the BIPV visual impact using the saliency method with an objective, quantitative and neuropsychological-based approach. The application of the method was tested and is discussed in the context of an example case study in Switzerland. Several different BIPV designs were developed for the case study, purposely in ways that made it difficult to rank their visual impacts with one’s subjective instinct. Using the proposed saliency method; however, the differences in BIPV visual impact across all designs could be identified, demonstrated and calculated sensitively. Potential applications of this proposed method include being a helping tool in deciding which BIPV design causes the least or most visual impact among others. Additionally, when combined with solar cadaster, the method enables a comprehensive estimation of BIPV potential in urban areas from both technical and societal aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Thiel-Zsutty (TZ) model predicts mean and the probability distribution function for earthquake damageability of building as a function of peak ground acceleration. ATC-13-1 provides an alternate damageability model based on modified Mercalli intensity characterization of ground motion and a beta distribution function for selected building types. This paper provides a reconciliation of the TZ and Applied Technology Council (ATC) methods. It is shown that the beta distribution can provide a continuous representation of the step-wise TZ Markov distribution function. When the TZ model uses a compression factor for the standard deviation to represent the degree of uncertainty in the parameters, then the TZ results are found to be consistent with the ATC-13-1 distribution function for a specific compression factor of 0.40. This paper provides a new, simply applicable method to determine the damage distribution function for a given site, building type, and site conditions; using a beta distribution and allowing inclusion of the degree of confidence the assessor has in the determination of the parameters. New equations are provided to estimate the mean, standard deviation, and upper confidence limit of the damage ratio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context • More than 20 years ago Varela initiated a research program to advance in the scientific study of consciousness, neurophenomenology. Problem • Has Varela's neurophenomenology, the solution to the "hard problem," been successful? Which issues remain unresolved, and why? Method • This introduction sketches the progress that has been made since then and links it to the contributions to this special issue. Results • Instead of a unified research field, today we find a variety of different interpretations and implementations of neurophenomenology. We argue that neurophenomenology needs to give additional attention to its experiential dimension by addressing first-person methods' specific challenges and by rethinking the relationship between the frameworks of the first- and third-person approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linkages between complex adaptive systems (CAS) thinking and efficiency analysis are in their infancy. This paper associates the basic building blocks of the CAS 'flocking' metaphor with the essential building blocks of the data envelopment analysis (DEA) form of productive efficiency analysis. The linkage between these paradigms is made within an agent-based modeling framework we have named the complex adaptive productive efficiency model. Within this framework DEA 'decision-making units' (DMUs) representing business units within a management system, are modeled as agents and are therefore known as agent DMU's (ADMUs). Guided by the three fundamental rules inherent in the flocking metaphor, ADMUs 'align' with other ADMUs to achieve mutual protection and reduce risks. They 'cohere' with the most efficient ADMUs among them to achieve the greatest possible efficiency in the least possible time. And they 'separate' themselves for one another just enough to maintain diversity of operations and avoid unnecessary competition among business units of the management system. Analysis of the resulting patterns of ADMU behavior over time enable policy insights measured against benchmarks of productive efficiency that are both intuitive and evidence-based. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When deciding on the best historic building retrofit, energy savings and thermal comfort can be quantitatively evaluated using an energy model, whereas conservation compatibility is intrinsically qualitative and reflects the perspective of the local heritage authority. We present a methodology that permits finding and comparing optimal retrofits for historic buildings in a multi-perspective and quantitative way. We use an analytic hierarchy process to quantify conservation compatibility by distilling a conservation score from the opinions of 10 experts in the field. This score, along with energy needs for heating and cooling and thermal comfort, are the three targets of a multi-objective optimization aimed at identifying optimal retrofits for a medieval building in the north of Italy, destined to become a museum. Retrofit measures considered were different kinds of external and internal envelope insulation, improvement of airtightness, replacement of windows, and ventilative cooling. The result is a portfolio of optimal retrofits that cover the whole range of conservation compatibility. We show that in the analyzed case heritage preservation is compatible with a four-fold reduction in energy needs at a high thermal comfort level. Even higher energy savings are only achievable at the cost of heritage degradation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The environmental profile of a dielectric-based 3D Building-Integrated Concentrating Photovoltaic (BICPV) device is investigated. Several scenarios and life-cycle impact assessment methods are adopted, including the newly-developed method ReCiPe. Multiple environmental indicators are evaluated for different cities: Barcelona, Seville, Paris, Marseille, London and Aberdeen. The results from the material manufacturing phase demonstrate that the PV cells and the concentrator are the components with the highest contribution to the total impact of the BICPV, based on ReCiPe, Eco-indicator 99, USEtox, CED (cumulative energy demand), GWP (global warming potential) according to different time horizons (20a, 100a, 500a) and Ecological footprint. Among the studied cities, Barcelona, Marseille and Seville present the lowest GWP and CED: less than 142 g CO 2.eq /kWh and less than 2.9 MJ prim /kWh, based on all the studied scenarios. Moreover, by considering 30-years lifespan, Barcelona, Marseille and Seville show 0.0107–0.0111 ReCiPe Pts/kWh while London, Paris and Aberdeen present 0.0161-0.0173 ReCiPe Pts/kWh. Results about greenhouse-gas-, energy-, ReCiPe-payback times and energy-return-on-investment are also presented and critically discussed. In addition, comparisons with the literature and issues for the improvement of the environmental profile of the proposed system are included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Embedded systems are growing more and more complex because of the increasing chip integration density, larger number of chips in distributed applications, and demanding application fields (e.g., in cars and in households). Bio-inspired techniques like self-organization are a key feature to handle this complexity. However, self-organization needs a guideline for setting up and managing the system. In biology the structure and organization of a system is coded in its DNA. In this paper we present an approach to use an artificial DNA for that purpose. Since many embedded systems can be composed from a limited number of basic elements, the structure and parameters of such systems can be stored in a compact way representing an artificial DNA deposited in each processor core. This leads to a self-describing system. Based on the DNA, the self-organization mechanisms can build the system autonomously providing a self-building system. System repair and optimization at runtime are also possible, leading to higher robustness, dependability, and flexibility. We present a prototypic implementation and conduct a real-time evaluation using a flexible robot vehicle. Depending on the DNA, this vehicle acts as a self-balancing vehicle, an autonomous guided vehicle, a follower, or a combination of these. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental risk management consists of making decisions on human activities or construction designs that are affected by the environment and/or have consequences or impacts on it. In these cases, decisions are made such that risk is minimized. In this regard, the forthcoming paper develops a close form that relates risk with cost, hazard, and vulnerability; and then focuses on vulnerability. The vulnerability of a system under an external action can be described by the conditional probability of the degrees of damage after an event. This vulnerability model can be obtained by a simplicial regression of those outputs, as a response variable, on explanatory variables. After a theoretical explanation, the authors present the case study of a nuclear power plant containment building. Once a given overpressure is registered inside the containment building, three possible outputs are to be considered: serviceability, breakdown, and collapse. The study consists of three steps: (a) modelling the containment building using the finite element method; (b) given an overpressure, simulating uncertain parameters related to material constitutive equations in order to obtain the corresponding proportions; (c) performing a simplicial regression to obtain a meaningful vulnerability model. The simulation provides normalized-to-unity outputs under the overpressure conditions. The obtained vulnerability model is in definite correspondence with previous results in nuclear power plant safety analysis reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Herein, we present the synthesis and characterization of four conjugated polymers containing a novel chromophore for organic electronics based on an indigoid structure. These polymers exhibit extremely small band gaps of ~1.2 eV, impressive crystallinity, and extremely high n-type mobility exceeding 3 cm² V s-1. The n-type charge carrier mobility can be correlated with the remarkably high crystallinity along the polymer backbone having a correlation length in excess of 20 nm. Theoretical analysis reveals that the novel polymers have highly rigid nonplanar geometries demonstrating that backbone planarity is not a prerequisite for either narrow band gap materials or ultrahigh mobilities. Furthermore, the variation in backbone crystallinity is dependent on the choice of comonomer. OPV device efficiencies up to 4.1% and charge photogeneration up to 1000 nm are demonstrated, highlighting the potential of this novel chromophore class in high-performance organic electronics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A gyro-mass damper (GMD) is an inertia-based passive control device. It has a gear assembly that amplifies the rotational inertias developed in the gears and generates a resultant resisting force that is proportional to the relative acceleration at the end terminals of the GMD. The amplification provided by the gear assembly can be adjusted by changing the gear masses or the gear ratios of the compound gears. Although similar inertia-based devices have been successfully used for vibration mitigation of motor vehicles and optical tables, there are only a few studies that investigated their application in building structures. This number is even lower for the particular type of inertial damper that has been considered in this study, i.e., GMD. Unlike other types of inertial dampers, the supplemental energy dissipation component of GMDs is not built-in to the device and can be independently attached as an external component. This allows the design engineers to use this cost-effective device and select any available energy dissipation device to use in parallel. In this study, using a small-scale GMD, by considering the rotational inertias of the intermediate gears, characteristic equation which describes the relationship between the applied relative acceleration and the resulting resisting force is derived and experimentally verified. For the introduction of GMDs into building structures, three different configurations are evaluated: (i) stand-alone GMD, (ii) GMD-brace system, and (iii) GMD–Viscous damper–Brace (GVB) system. The structure-GMD interaction, considering these three configurations, is investigated in frequency domain and in time domain through energy balance equations and time history analyses. It is shown that by selecting the system parameters properly, GVB systems with nonlinear viscous dampers can effectively improve the seismic behaviour of the structure. This is discussed in more detail when the effects of the damper nonlinearities, as well as the various GMD equivalent mass, brace stiffness, damping values and selected ground motions are investigated. The key findings related to the design, implementation and performance considerations of these systems are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Project stakeholders in the building sector adopt different approaches to sustainability, based on diverse definitions and perceptions of what is to be considered “sustainable” and the means to achieve it. These differences create tensions, which in some cases lead to better interventions and, in other cases, to conflicts. It is therefore crucial to understand these differences and examine both their theoretical and practical implications. Nonetheless, while attempting to do so, two problems often arise. First, scholars tend to classify stakeholders in groups, labelling them and oversimplifying their differences in power and the dynamic character of their approaches. Second, insufficient knowledge still exists on whether and how differences between stakeholders' approaches to sustainability influence building projects. The longitudinal and detailed analysis of the evolution of stakeholder decisions and tensions in a building project in Canada overcomes these two limitations. The study includes a comprehensive stakeholder analysis during early project phases, and the mapping and examination of the evolution of sustainability approaches. Results illustrate how differences in sustainability approaches influence the project process and its final outcome. They show that sustainability approaches are dynamic and create tensions that significantly impact the initial project goals and the planning and design phases. From a theoretical perspective, these results suggest a method to map the dynamic character of sustainability approaches. From a practical perspective, these findings can help clients, project managers and design professionals anticipate possible tensions and make informed choices, ultimately creating projects that better respect the environment and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To quantify the environmental impacts of building construction, many environmental assessment methods for measuring building performance have been proposed worldwide, such as BREEAM (UK), LEED (US) and Green Star (AU). However, much debate exists about the efficacy of these international assessment tools in measuring building performance outside their country of origin, due to global variations in climate, geography, economics and culture. To address this debate, this study proposes a framework for developing domestic sustainable non-residential building assessment criteria for Saudi Arabia. To create this framework, five major building assessment methods were compared with respect to their application methods, major characteristics and categories. Surveys were conducted with a range of Saudi sustainable construction experts to gain their expertise in reflecting the local context of Saudi Arabian construction. The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method was applied to evaluate survey data. Nine criteria and 36 sub-criteria were defined in this study for inclusion as the most appropriate assessment criteria for sustainable non-residential construction in Saudi Arabia. These criteria include water efficiency and energy efficiency, indoor air quality, materials selection, effective management, land and waste, whole-life cost, quality of service and cultural aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Buildings encompass a significant share of overall energy consumption and new houses can promote a shift towards more sustainable societies. Current building regulations only focus on reducing operational energy; however, a life-cycle perspective is important to assess new houses and existing buildings under current (heating and cooling) operational habits. This article assesses the life-cycle non-renewable primary energy improvement potential of a new house compared to an equivalent existing (25-year old) house in the Portuguese context, analyzing alternative operational assumptions: four operation patterns, four heating systems, and two electricity generation mix scenarios. Results show that new houses can effectively reduce the primary energy of residential buildings, but attention should be paid to operational conditions. The new house embodied energy offset period of time is highly dependent on operational patterns. To reduce primary energy associated with new houses, attention should be paid to building material and components, in particular to heavy-weight construction elements, since embodied energy held the majority of the life-cycle impacts. Regarding operation, wood pellets boilers or heat pump systems can significantly reduce primary energy. We also recommend including future electricity generation mix trends in LC studies of houses, which is not common practice, but can influence life-cycle results significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose Several studies have documented that people's ability to correctly report details of witnessed events is enhanced when they merely close their eyes. Yet closing one's eyes in front of a stranger could sometimes create social discomfort, which other studies suggest can impair memory reports. This paper reports two experiments exploring the extent to which the memory benefits of eyeclosure are enhanced when efforts are taken to build interviewer/witness rapport, thus potentially reducing discomfort. Methods In both studies participants observed filmed events and, afterwards, half underwent a basic rapport-building exercise with an interviewer. All participants then answered closed questions about specific details of the event, and half were instructed to close their eyes throughout this questioning. We recorded the proportion of questions answered correctly, incorrectly, or with 'don't know' responses. Results Both eyeclosure and rapport-building separately enhanced correct responding. The data offer no evidence, though, that rapport-building moderated this eyeclosure benefit. This is despite the fact that rapport-building did appear to moderate the effect of eyeclosure on participants' self-reported comfort during the interviews. Conclusions These studies give us initial cause for doubt over a hypothesized - but heretofore untested - social psychological constraint on the benefits of eyeclosure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through-wall-radar imaging is of interest for mapping the wall layout of buildings and for the detection of stationary targets within buildings. In this paper, we present an easy single-side two-location spotlight imaging method for both wall layout mapping and stationary target detection by utilizing multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) through-wall-radar. Rather than imaging for building walls directly, the images of all building corners are generated to speculate wall layout indirectly by successively deploying the MIMO through-wall-radar at two appropriate locations on only one side of the building and then carrying out spotlight imaging with two different squint-views. In addition to the ease of implementation, the single-side two-location squint-view detection also has two other advantages for stationary target imaging. The first one is the fewer multi-path ghosts, and the second one is the smaller region of side-lobe interferences from the corner images in comparison to the wall images. Based on Computer Simulation Technology (CST) electromagnetic simulation software, we provide multiple sets of validation results where multiple binary panorama images with clear images of all corners and stationary targets are obtained by combining two single-location images with the use of incoherent additive fusion and two-dimensional cell-averaging constant-false-alarm-rate (2D CA-CFAR) detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Building a global Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) database from scratch with a harmonized method and wide process coverage would require significant resources. Therefore, it is worth examining to what extent existing LCI datasets can be adapted to form the basis of a more common database. This study examines the opportunities and challenges of transforming the existing US Life Cycle Inventory (US LCI) database to meet the intrinsic (e.g., assumptions, methods, completeness) and extrinsic (e.g., data format) requirements of ecoinvent 3. Methods: Nineteen US LCI datasets were selected for transformation. Datasets were first converted in batch from EcoSpold 1 to EcoSpold 2 format using an automated tool based on a Python script. Other changes necessary to conform to ecoinvent standards were made manually, such as changing activity and flow names, mapping dummy exchanges, and creating global reference datasets. To address data gaps and other data quality issues, each dataset was assessed against ecoinvent 3 data quality guidelines and missing information was noted. When available, public reports for the US LCI datasets were examined to fill in data gaps. Datasets were also compared against similar processes in ecoinvent to see if there were any significant flows omitted; missing flows were filled by using estimates for these exchanges from similar processes already within ecoinvent. Results and discussion: The automated tool for data exchange format conversion saved time and reduced the potential for error. Even so, a nontrivial amount of time and research was spent on the manual changes needed to conform to ecoinvent standards. Addressing data gaps and other data quality issues also required considerable effort. In general, US LCI datasets were missing the following data required by ecoinvent 3: land use, water, and infrastructure exchanges; production volumes; uncertainty and data quality information; and adequate documentation of system boundaries, methodology, and process technology. Much of this missing data could be filled by examining available reports, using ecoinvent data as proxies, or conducting independent research. However, in some cases, such as for water data, adequate estimates could not be determined based on readily available materials. Conclusions: This case study showed that it is possible to incorporate existing regional datasets into ecoinvent version 3, but significant resources may be required to restructure the datasets and fill data gaps. While this study focused on the US LCI and ecoinvent databases, its lessons can be applied to any inter-database conversion. In particular, new national LCI database initiatives should consider compatibility with established databases such as ecoinvent when designing the database framework, standards and guidelines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this research is automatic generation of buildings in the interest areas. This research was developed by using high resolution vertical aerial photographs and the LIDAR point cloud through radiometric and geometric digital processes. The research methodology usesknown building heights and various segmentation algorithms and spectral band combination. The overall effectiveness of the algorithm is 97.2% with the test data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical building envelope is characterized by a large accumulation that impact is mainly by changing the inner surface temperature over time. The minimum value of the inner surface temperature is set Code requirements. In the case of thermal technology assessment of building envelope contemplates a steady state external temperature and internal environment, thereby neglecting the heat accumulation capacity of building envelopes. Monitoring surface temperature in real terms in situ shows the real behavior of the building envelope close to reality. The recorded data can be used to create a numerical model for the simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ideally, minimum outdoor air and building static pressures are controlled through feedback controllers with the use of airflow and pressure sensors in air-handling units (AHUs). Unfortunately, because these sensors are not always installed in AHUs, it is common to maintain the minimum outdoor airflow by fixing the AHU control dampers at minimum positions and maintain the building static pressure by tracking the return fan speed with the supply fan speed. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the system performance of these alternative controls. The outdoor airflow and building static pressure of an AHU is simulated using a nonlinear network solution. The simulation results show that the fixed damper position method can approximately maintain a constant outdoor airflow ratio with an appropriate damper connection if the building static pressure is perfectly controlled. The return fan speed linear tracking method along with the fixed damper position method shows performance in maintaining the minimum outdoor airflow ratio and positive building static pressure that is better than that with the return fan speed proportional or offset tracking method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of energy service performance contracts (ESPCs) has become a popular method for financing energy conservation upgrades. To date, the use of the stipulated savings approach, often expressed as tables and equations, has been a popular method for calculating energy savings in ESPCs. However, no studies to date have confirmed or denied the literature findings regarding the use and acceptance of this method in the current industry through a systematic investigation. Therefore, this research identified other practices by conducting an ethnographic study with subject-matter experts, by reviewing publicly available technical reference manuals, and by analyzing a typical utility assessment report from a recent ESPC. In particular, the methods for quantifying lighting and lighting control measures were explored in detail. The findings indicate that the current industry relies on a stipulated savings method as a foundation for determining the baseline and postretrofit savings. In addition, the current industry relies on experienced engineers and their valuable tactical and institutional knowledge to build upon the stipulated equations and tailor them to individual projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bayesian computation has received increasing attention in calibrating building energy models due to its flexibility and accuracy. However, there has been little research on how to determine informative energy data in Bayesian calibration in building energy models. Therefore, this study aims to determine and choose informative energy data using correlation analysis and hierarchical clustering method. A case study of retail building is used to demonstrate the proposed methods to infer four unknown input parameters using EnergyPlus program. The results indicate that the different combinations of energy data can provide various levels of accuracy in estimating unknown input variables in model calibration. This suggests that Bayesian computation is suitable for inferring the parameters when there are missing energy data that can be treated as uninformative output data. The proposed method can be also used to find the redundant information on energy data in order to improve computational efficiency in Bayesian calibration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Use of a ground-source heat pump (GSHP) system is becoming widespread in energy savings applications. A typical GSHP system is equipped with one of three ground heat exchanger (GHX) configurations: vertical, horizontal, or surface-water. Due to site characteristics/limitations, however, some residential/commercial buildings utilize a combination of different GHX configurations for their GSHP systems; in this research, we will refer to such a system as a custom-built GHX. A residential building utilizing a custom-built GHX combining two different GHX types (horizontal and surface-water) was selected to be the case study for this research. This research developed a custom-built GHX model to calculate the entering water temperatures (EWTs) circulated from the custom-built GHX to the GSHP system. In order to validate the developed model, the measured EWTs from the case-study house were referenced and compared to the calculated EWTs. The comparison showed that the average EWT differences resulted in about 1.2 °C (2.1 °F) and 1.6 °C (2.8 °F) for the full heating and cooling seasons, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, the Republic of Kazakhstan is dynamically forming up its transit policy, improving its directions and the development of new vectors. This article looks into the development of the transit and transport potential of the Republic of Kazakhstan. It presents the main conclusions on the development of a feasibility study for the construction of a logistics terminal in the seaport of Lianyungang (China) as one of the directions of building transit policy, improving its direction and the formation of new vectors. The urgency of building a logistics terminal is conditioned by the necessity for national interests and further expansion of political and economic advantages of Kazakhstan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]