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

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Institution Title Type Date Author(s) Abstract Link
HKUST Study on Legal Aspects of BIM Projects Report 06/2020 Ka Cheong TANG
Tsz Yin CHOW
Building Information Modeling (BIM) is an emerging technology applied in Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry. With the increase in the BIM application, some legal uncertainties have appeared and led to a high risk in legal aspects when adopting BIM in design and construction projects. It is vital that BIM users should be aware of the potential legal issues and develop suitable legal documents and contracts to prevent these issues from occurring. Within this context, a critical review on different cases associated with BIM is carried out in order to provide an overview of potential legal issues. Model copyright, right of BIM common data environment control and responsible control were discussed. Furthermore, three protocols and guidelines commissioned by the United Kingdom, the United States and Singapore are compared and analyzed. BIM Protocol published by Construction Industry Council of the United Kingdom is suggested as the most comprehensive and structured protocol in the analysis. Recommendations on the aspects of BIM cyber security, practical completion and contractors’ perspective are made to Hong Kong AEC professional institutes to commission a suitable and comprehensive protocol for the local industry. N.A.
HKUST Study on BIM Project Execution Plan and BIM Uses in Comparison with PMBOK Report 06/2020 Ka Wing Ngan
HUANG Li
Project successful strongly relies on PMBOK. Besides that, BIM is important because it is a powerful tool in delivery of BIM-based project. To implement BIM, BIM uses are defined based on project goals. To effective implement BIM as planned, BIM project execution plan (PXP) is necessary to control BIM. In the first section, this paper compares supporting infrastructure from BIM project execution plan (PXP) to PMBOK to find out the relationship. The categories of supporting infrastructure are BIM PXP overview, project information, key project contacts, project goals / BIM uses, organizational roles / staffing, BIM process design, BIM information exchanges, BIM and facility data requirement, collaboration procedures, quality control, technological infrastructure needs, model structure, project deliverables and delivery strategy / contract whereas PMBOK are integration, scope, time, cost, quality, human resources, communication, risk, procurement and stakeholder management. From the investigation, it is found that risk and cost management is not obviously applied from the categories of supporting infrastructure. In the second section, this paper investigate the relationship of various BIM uses in terms of PMBOK. The considerable BIM uses are design authoring, design review, 3D coordination, cost estimation, phase planning (4D Modelling), digital fabrication and site utilization planning. It is also found that scope, communication and human resources management is not obviously applied from the selected BIM uses. In the third section, we recommend that for BIM PXP additional section including project cost management and BIM risk management should be included; and for BIM uses attention should be paid in drafting BIM PXP to support BIM uses and other BIM uses maybe considered. Manager may benefit from the relationship developed and recommendation in BIM implementation. N.A.
HKUST Social BIMCloud: A distributed cloud-based BIM platform for object-based lifecycle information exchange Journal 03/2015 Das, M., Cheng, J.C.P., and Kumar, S. Background
The architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry lacks a framework for capturing, managing, and exchanging project, product, and social information over the lifecycle of a building. The current tools have various limitations, such as lack of interoperability, slow to transfer huge building model files, and possibility of data inconsistency.

Methods
In this paper, we present a cloud-based BIM server framework namely Social BIMCloud that facilitates BIM information exchange through dynamic merging and splitting of building models. The data model of Social BIMCloud is based on but not limited to IFC. The data model of Social BIMCloud was further extended to accommodate social interactions, by studying the formal modes of communication in the AEC industry. An object-based approach to capture and manage social interactions in AEC projects through a BIM-based visual user interface was also developed and demonstrated.

Results
Social BIMCloud addresses the issues of inefficient data transfer speed and data inconsistency in a distributed environment by facilitating the storage and partial exchange of integrated nD BIM models. Data interoperability is facilitated through open BIM standards such as IFC and direct integration with construction software. High performance, scalability, fault tolerance, and cost effectiveness are facilitated through data partitioning, data replication strategies, multi-node structures, and pay-per-use tariff systems, respectively, through a cloud-based NoSQL database.

Conclusion
The Social BIMCloud framework helps to develop and exchange BIM models, which are rich in project information such as social interactions, cost, and energy analyses. This framework improves the communication efficiency between project participants, leading to better designs and less rework. The information captured by this framework could also be useful to determine important metrics such as industry trends, relationships among project participants, and user requirements.
Link
HKUST Social BIMCloud – A Distributed Cloud-based BIM Framework for Object-based Lifecycle Information Exchange and Supply Chain Integration Thesis 08/2015 Moumita DAS Due to its fragmented and multi-domain architecture, the AEC (architecture, engineering, and construction) industry faces the issues of data transfer efficiency and data consistency while exchanging large BIM files. In this thesis, a cloud based BIM framework, called Social BIMCloud is presented for building design and management of lifecycle activities. Social BIMCloud addresses the issue of data transfer efficiency by reducing the size of the BIM files being exchanged through dynamic splitting and merging mechanisms. Data consistency is also improved by hosting a common integrated BIM model which is updated partially instead of generating a new BIM file for every new change, which usually leads to data duplicity. This collaborative framework, Social BIMCloud is termed “Social” in particular, as it captures and manages the formal and informal social interactions that take place in a construction project. The methodology for capturing and managing social interactions through Social BIMCloud has been demonstrated in this thesis by integrating it with popular BIM software, Autodesk Revit.

Social BIMCloud provides the scope for extending and integrating it with external planning and analysis applications in a plug-and-play manner for lifecycle integration. In this thesis, methodologies and demonstrations have been presented for extending and integrating Social BIMCloud for – (1) construction supply chain (CSC), (2) green building design, and (3) construction site layout planning. For CSC integration, an ontology based web service framework is presented. Ontologies incorporate data semantics in the information exchanged. Therefore, the information exchanging parties, i.e. software applications in the case of automatic information exchange, comprehend the meaning of the information and therefore facilitate smooth flow of heterogeneous information. Two example ontologies have developed by studying the CSC and those ontologies have been used to enrich the data model of Social BIMCloud for accommodating and supporting CSC integration.

Popular energy simulation software were studied to design and extend the schema of Social BIMCloud in order to integrate it with standard simulation and analysis engines through a web service based framework. Social BIMCloud has also been extended for managing construction logistics by integrating it with a construction site layout planning (CSLP) engine. For this integration, the data model of Social BIMCloud has been extended for construction schedule information like activity start date, end date and the relation of each activity with one or more building elements and the vice versa. Finally this thesis discusses the scope of future extensions and improvements on Social BIMCloud for facilitating smooth flow of information in the construction industry.
N.A.
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 Semi-automatic Generation of BIM models from Point Cloud Data for Facility Management Report 06/2018 Duan Feiran
Siyu SHEN
Nowadays, BIM has transformed architecture, engineering and construction. However, the great potential of BIM is to provide accurate, timely, and relevant information not just during design and construction for a single building, but also throughout the lifecycle of an entire portfolio of facilities, such as the facility management. It has many competencies and plays an important role in the total life cycle of the building. The process of facility management need the support of lots of information which could then be provided by BIM model. Therefore, BIM model plays an important role in facility management.

BIM models are usually created from designed information which is called as-designed BIM model. However, there are lots of existing buildings do not have BIM model when they are built. For new buildings, there are also many changes may occur during construction, and the as-designed models could not present the real conditions. Therefore, an as-build BIM model may be needed to help the visualize and renovation of the project. What’s more, the current method for creating BIM models are mainly concentrated on regular buildings. However, more and more architect would like to design building with irregular buildings. Therefore, a new method should be used to create BIM model for irregular buildings.

This project aims to find a semi-automatic method to create BIM models for irregular building which could be applied for facility management. It takes a real project in industry as example and try to build the BIM model for a sky light bridge located in Hong Kong Airport by a combination of different software. This method firstly extracts the geometry information for each member from the point cloud data that gain from laser scanning. Then, it convert those conditions into BIM model with the help of Dynamo and Revit.
N.A.