FYPs/Thesis/Journal from Higher Education Institutions in Hong Kong

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Institution Title Type Date Author(s) Abstract Link
HKUST An integrated underground utility management and decision support based on BIM and GIS Journal 08/2019 Wang, M., Deng, Y., Won, J., and Cheng, J.C.P. This study aims to improve the underground utility management efficiency from the perspective of utility component and urban utility network, as well as to facilitate the decision-making for utility maintenance work. The main reasons for the inefficient information sharing, poor utility management and reactive decision-making are investigated, after which potential solutions are explored. An integrated utility management framework is proposed based on the integration of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Geographic Information System (GIS), for which a common utility data model representing utility information in five aspects is developed to facilitate the mapping of Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) and City Geography Markup Language (CityGML). The verification of the proposed framework indicates that the developed data model can represent utility information comprehensively, based on which functions of the integrated BIM-GIS platform are developed to support underground utility management in terms of individual utility components and the utility spatial networks. With the proposed utility management framework, the information sharing process, utility management efficiency and decision-making can be improved and facilitated. In the future, more functions of the framework will be developed according to practical requirements and more maintenance data will be utilized to validate and enhance the framework. Link
HKUST A BIM-based location aware AR collaborative framework for facility maintenance management Journal 07/2019 Chen, K., Chen, W., Li, C.T., and Cheng, J.C.P. Facility maintenance management (FMM) accounts for a large amount of the total cost of facilities’ lifecycle, illustrating the importance of improving FMM efficiency. Many mechanical facilities, like ventilation ducts above ceilings, are normally hidden, indicating the necessity of applying certain technology that can enable users to visualize and update the information of hidden facilities. Real-time location information is also needed so
that users can be aware of their current location and the surrounding facility can be displayed accordingly. Therefore, this paper aims to develop location aware augmented reality (AR) framework for FMM, with building information modeling (BIM) as the data source, AR for the interaction between users and facilities, and Wi-Fi fingerprinting for providing real-time location information. The developed framework has the following features: (1) a proposed softmax-based weighted K nearest neighbour (S-WKNN) algorithm is used for Wi-Fi fingerprinting to obtain the current location of users; (2) a room identification method, based on BIM, the obtained location, and ray casting algorithm, is proposed to identify which room the user is currently in; (3) according to the obtained location and the identified room, users can visualize and interact with their surrounding facilities through the AR devices; and (4) users in a remote location can visualize site situation and interact with site facilities in real time through video streaming and the shared database. At the end of the paper, an experiment was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the developed system. As shown by the experiment, the developed AR collaborative system can reduce the completion time of the designed task by around 65% compared with traditional 2D drawing-based method, and can provide a localization accuracy of around 1m
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HKUST Automatic generation of fabrication drawings for facade mullions and transoms through BIM models Journal 07/2019 Deng, M., Gan, V.J.L., Singh, J., Joneja, A., and Cheng, J.C.P. Fabrication drawings are essential for manufacturing, design evaluation and inspection of building components, especially for building façade structural components. In order to clearly represent the physical characteristics of the façade structural components, a large number of section views need to be produced, which is very time-consuming and labor intensive. Therefore, automatic generation of fabrication drawings for building façade components (such as mullions and transoms) is of paramount importance. In this paper, attempts have been made to develop an efficient framework in order to automatically generate fabrication drawings for building façade structural components, including mullions and transoms. To represent the complex physical characteristics (such as holes and notches) on mullions and transoms using minimum number of drawing views, a computational algorithm based on graph theory is developed to eliminate duplicated section views. Another methodology regarding the generation of breaks for top views is also proposed to further improve the quality of drawing layouts. The obtained drawing views are then automatically arranged using a developed approach. In addition, primary dimensions of the drawing views focusing on the physical features are also generated. Furthermore, in order to maintain the consistency of drawing formats across multiple drawings, a methodology is proposed to determine the scaling factors of the drawings by using clustering technique. In an illustrative example, the proposed framework is used to generate the fabrication drawings for a typical BIM model containing façade structural components, and saving in time is observed. Link
HKUST Parametric modeling and evolutionary optimization for cost-optimal and low-carbon design of high-rise reinforced concrete buildings Journal 07/2019 Gan, V.J.L., Wong, C.L., Tse, K.T., Cheng, J.C.P., Lo, I.M.C., and Chan, C.M. Design optimization of reinforced concrete structures helps reducing the global carbon emissions and the construction cost in buildings. Previous studies mainly targeted at the optimization of individual structural elements in low-rise buildings. High-rise reinforced concrete buildings have complicated structural designs and consume tremendous amounts of resources, but the corresponding optimization techniques were not fully explored in literature. Furthermore, the relationship between the optimization of individual structural elements and the topological arrangement of the entire structure is highly interactive, which calls for new optimization methods. Therefore, this study aims to develop a novel optimization approach for cost-optimal and low-carbon design of high-rise reinforced concrete structures, considering both the structural topology and individual element optimizations. Parametric modelling is applied to define the relationship between individual structural members and the behavior of the entire building structure. A novel evolutionary optimization technique using the genetic algorithm is proposed to optimize concrete building structures, by first establishing the optimal structural topology and then optimizing individual member sizes. In an illustrative example, a high-rise reinforced concrete building is used to examine the proposed optimization approach, which can systematically explore alternative structural designs and identify the optimal solution. It is shown that the carbon emissions and material cost are both reduced by 18–24% after performing optimization. The proposed approach can be extended to optimize other types of buildings (such as steel framework) with a similar problem nature, thereby improving the cost efficiency and environmental sustainability of the built environment. Link
HKUST Simulation-based evolutionary optimization for energy-efficient layout plan design of high-rise residential buildings Journal -- Gan, V.J.L., Wong, H.K., Tse, K.T., Cheng, J.C.P., Lo, I.M.C., and Chan, C.M. Buildings consume 40% of global energy, in which residential buildings account for a significant proportion of the total energy used. Previous studies have attempted to optimize the layout plan of residential buildings for minimizing the total energy usage, mainly focusing on low-rise houses of a regular shape and having a limited number of design variables. However, layout design for high-rise residential buildings involves the complicated interaction among a large number of design variables (e.g., different types of flats with varying configurations) under practical design constraints. The number of possible solutions may increase exponentially which calls for new optimization strategies. Therefore, this study aims to develop an energy performance-based optimization approach to identify the most energy-efficient layout plan design for high-rise residential buildings. A simulation-based optimization method applying the evolutionary genetic algorithm (GA) is developed to systematically explore the best layout design for maximizing the building energy efficiency. In an illustrative example, the proposed optimization approach is applied to generate the layout plan for a 40-storey public housing in Hong Kong. The results indicate that GA attempts to maximize the use of natural-occurring energy sources (e.g., wind-driven natural ventilation and sunlight) for minimizing 30–40% of the total energy consumption associated with air-conditioning and lighting. The optimization approach provides a decision support basis for achieving substantial energy conservation in high-rise residential buildings, thereby contributing to a sustainable built environment. Link
HKUST Natural-language-based intelligent retrieval engine for BIM object database Journal 03/2019 Wu, S., Shen, Q., Deng, Y., and Cheng, J.C.P. Rapid growth of building components in the BIM object database increases the difficulty of the efficient query of components that users require. Retrieval technology such as Autodesk Seek in America and BIMobject in Europe, which are widely used in BIM databases, are unable to understand what the search field truly means, causing a lack of completion and a low accuracy rate for results incapable of meeting the demands of users. To tackle such a problem, this paper puts forward a natural-language-based intelligent retrieval engine for the BIM object database and Revit modeling. First, a domain ontology is constructed for semantic understanding, and the BIM object database framework is established for testing our search engine. Second, “target keyword” and “restriction sequence” proposed are extracted from the natural sentences of users. Then, a final query is formed, combining concepts of “keyword” and “restriction sequence”, and its concepts are expanded through the semantic relationship in ontology. Finally, the results are presented after mapping from the final query to the BIM object database and ranking of results. Compared with traditional keyword-based methods, the experimental results demonstrate that our method outperforms the traditional methods. Link