People, Environments and Performance

Current PEP research May 2016

Professor Steve Fotios

Lighting Research: current activity

Lighting for pedestrians

• 4 EPSRC awards, incl. MERLIN 2011-2015 and

MERLIN-2 2015-2018.

• Current light levels have little or no empirical basis.

• Field studies and laboratory experiments carried out

to measure the effects of changes in lighting.

Detecting trip

hazards

Approach / avoid

other people?

Lighting for drivers

• Highways England project

to study effects of fog and

sudden light change.

New guidance published:

the colour of lighting

New guidance in progress:

the amount of light

Lighting Research: current activity

Lighting for cyclists and wheelchair users

• Similar vision to pedestrians but different

visual needs and different vulnerabilities

Lighting for classroomsDaylight and behaviour

LumeNet: PhD

research workshops2011 Lausanne

2012 Sheffield

2013 Copenhagen

2014 Berlin

2015 London

2016 Ghent

2018 Copenhagen

2018 CIE

research

methods

symposium

Lighting Research: Future plans

Scott Fox

Is driving affected by fog and by the

rapid change from lit to unlit sections

of a motorway?

Driving and hazard detection

New apparatus constructed: this simulates

the field of view of a motorway driver.

Detection tasks: (1) detection of a car

moving into the lane ahead, (2) sudden

appearance of a static obstacle.

Lighting conditions:

• 2 types of lamp (according to S/P ratio)

• 3 luminances (0.1, 1.0 and 2.0 cd/m2)

• 3 fog conditions (none, thin, thick).

Driving and hazard detection

Dr Jim Uttley

Current activity – eye-tracking analysis

Need to see 10+ mm obstacle at 3.4 m.

Requires approx. 0.2 – 0.9 lux to see this depending on spectrum and age of observer.

Paper submitted.

We first look at other pedestrians 14 m away, for 500 ms, on average.

Implications for lighting –TBC.

Paper in preparation.

Current activity – effects of ambient

light on active travel27 March – Clocks went forward 1 hour

14 – 18 March

18:30-19:30 - DARK

4 – 8 April

18:30-19:30 - DAYLIGHT

General increase in pedestrians and cyclists during daylight week.

Paper in preparation.

Count of pedestrians & cyclists during dark and daylight weeks

Future plans – lighting and perceived safety

Two approaches:

1. Field experimentSURVEY

Daylight &

dark

SKIN

RESPONSE

Daylight &

dark

2. Police incident

data

Spatial mapping of incident

data with street lighting

location data

Prof Fionn Stevenson

Building Performance Evaluation

• BuPESA EU Marie Curie 2012-2015

• Impact development continuing

• BPE UK/Poland summit 5-6th May

2016 in Wroclaw – Key delegations

from industry, policy and academia

• Mexico UNAM GLOSS BPE following

• 4 journal articles, 2 book chapters,

7 international conference papers

to date

Resilience

• Steering Group member for

‘Architecture and Resilience at

the Human Scale’ at SSoA

• Impact = Co-editing Special Issue

in BRI with 8 research papers

from international conference

• Santander funding for Brazil/UK

housing resilience project 2016

with Fed. Uni of Uberlandia

Sustainable Housing

• ESRC ‘Collaborative Housing

& Resilient Communities’

network with 6 UK Universities.

6 seminars and publications.

• Organised Sheffield Seminar

January 2016, 45 attendees.

Visits to 3 case study developments

• UK Parliamentary Launch June 2016

with key stakeholders and MPs

Dr Ranald Lawrence

Refurbishment of the Glasgow School of Art

The Historic Environment

Perceptions of comfort and control

Understanding the ‘Performance Gap’There is a lack of comprehensive understanding of energy use during building operation and how it influences user comfort

- Comfort and energy efficiency should not be seen as mutually exclusive

- Field surveys outline the impact of user control on perceptions of comfort

- Perceptions of comfort can be improved by increasing the degree of environmental control occupants have without necessarily increasing energy consumption

Impact of climate change in SA

RESILIENT South Africa(Recovering Space, Infrastructure and Livelihoods – Enabling Urban Transformation)

1) Identify socio-economic responses to climate change that are taking place in South Africa

2) Identify priority areas for future research (what do we need to understand better to enable sustainable transformation?)

3) Explore how an improved understanding of the processes of change (e.g. climate data, key performance indicators) can inform the spatial adaptation of the urban environment

Dr Mark Meagher

Mark Meagher: current activity

My research involves applications of building data, open source tools

and bespoke software development for:

• Knowledge capture in design briefing

• Energy simulation in early design

• Visualization of building data for participatory design and analysis

• Structured building data drops are required on public sector projects starting at RIBA

stage 1.

• BIM authoring environments are rarely used and ill-adapted to use at this stage of design.

• Bespoke web-based software for viewing and editing parametric and topological models

provides a link between the largely unstructured early design process (human readable

sketch) and structured data (machine readable BIM model).

Mark Meagher: current activity

Application: TopoBIM: Web Based Tools for Early Stage Design In Healthcare (with Phil Langley)

• Topological representation can be used to capture design constraints and other

information relevant to the design brief as graphs.

• Software was developed with funding from an IIKE collaborative R&D grant (£25K from

University of Sheffield, £12K from industry partner Bryden Wood Limited).

• Use cases are in progress with clients of Bryden Wood Limited.

Mark Meagher: current activity

Application:

Parametric models for energy analysis (with Julien Nembrini)

• Using scripting it is possible to evaluate the sensitivity of building thermal performance to

specific design parameters

• The scripts used to perform this analysis are themselves a valuable record of intention in

the design process

• Visualization and sharing of simulation results provides a better understanding of a

design process informed by simulation

Mark Meagher: Future plans

• Use of topological representation in early stage design:

• Energy and process simulation are both based on a topological

abstraction of the building.

• TopoBIM could provide a basis for early design discussion and

analysis of design options and simulation outcomes, improving

the effectiveness and accuracy of early design simulation.

• Applications in architecture of design methods from open

source software development:

• version control using GIT offers a greater level of control and

transparency in a collaborative environment than currently

available architectural (BIM) version control.

• GIT supports a workflow

Dr Tsung-Hsien Wang

Augmenting BIM for Urban Energy Modelling and AnalysisARUP Global Research Award, 2015-2016

Building Information Modelling and Evaluation: current activity – Urban Energy Modelling

• Integrated Urban Energy Modelling and Simulation- Integrating Building Business Types and Usage Profiles for Consumption Estimation

- Energy Generation and Integration through Existing Electricity Infrastructure

[Status] Sheffield Energy Modelling

carried out to investigate optimal urban

neighbourhood (re)clustering strategies- Sustainable Energy, e.g. solar energy

- Improvements in Resilience

- Trends in behaviours and Technology developmentOptimal building clusters to provide resilient local

generation for essential services, e.g. Fire Station,

NHS Centre, CCTV Control Centre?

Tsung-Hsien Wang, PhD

Building Information Modelling and Evaluation: current activity – Automating Lighting Simulation for Daylight

Glare Index (DGI) Evaluation in China

• DGIChina Software Development - BIM-based approach

- Automatic DGI calculation

DGIChina Challenge

- Modified glare source definition to include the entire window

- Different acceptable threshold values

• DGIChina Protocol Analysis- Glare positions evaluation

- Analysis of stipulated DGIChina thresholds

Clustering by viewing positions

Sky Type Impacts on DGIChina

432 Glare indexes

Spatial Attributes and Optimisation opportunities

Industrial Research Collaborationwith Dr Yichun Huang, Technical Director, EMSI, Shanghai, 2015~ Tsung-Hsien Wang, PhD

Building Information Modelling and Evaluation: Future Plans

Data integration and interoperation

Shape Optimisation for Digital Fabrication

Augmenting BIM for IEQ

Data Acquisition, Integration, Visualisation and Analysis

Scalability - Urban Energy Modelling and Analysis

Visualisation – Full three-dimensional Temporal

Information-rich Building Information Models

Applicability – Code Checking and Validation

Topological Sortable BIM

Sustainability Evaluation and Certification

Automating Lighting Simulation and Analysis

for Sustainability Evaluation Protocols Development

Tsung-Hsien Wang, PhD

Professor Jian Kang

Dr Francesco Aletta

Efstathios Margaritis

Acoustics Research: current

activity

People:~15

Output:~80 publications/year

Network chair:UK NoiseFuture

EU COSTWUN Acoustics

Proposed Impact study

Sound source recognition techniques and the

application in construction and transportation industry

This research can help solve the existing noise problems where the conventional noise control method is not efficient and adequate, such as in the large construction project of London Bridge Station (LBS) redevelopment project. The external partner, Costain, will become an exemplar in utilising the innovative sound source recognition technique in noise management. The results will be disseminated to a wide extent through the LBS project and national conference to both academic and industrial audience (also include local authorities). It is expected that the technique of automatic recognition of environmental sounds would further benefit general areas in noise mapping/control, and have more applications in construction sectors and beyond.

Yang, M., De Coensel, B. and Kang, J. (2015) Presence of 1/f noise in the temporal structure of

psychoacoustic parameters of natural and urban sounds. J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 138(2), 916-927.

Yang, M. and Kang, J. (2015) Automatic recognition technique for construction noise sources. Acoustics in

Practice: European journal of current topics in applied acoustics, Issue 5, 5-10.

Yang, M. and Kang, J. (2013) Psychoacoustic evaluation of natural sounds in soundscapes. J. Acoust. Soc.

Am, 134(1), 840-851. [Invited paper]

- URBAN SOUND PLANNER (SONORUS) [2012-2016] -EU project

- SOUNDSCAPE INDICATORS AND SOUND SOURCE RECOGNITION AND PROPAGATION TECHNIQUE FOR

FREIGHT TRANSPORTATION AND DELIVERY NOISE - EPSRC IIKE 2015

Soundscape descriptors and indicators

Soundscape ≠ Acoustic Environment

(ISO, 2014)

Acoustic Environment PERCEPTION Soundscape

Soundscape mapping

From Noise Maps… …to Sound Maps … …and Soundscape Maps

Road traffic noise Water features Calmness

Soundscape design

Developing a framework for soundscape design

Workshop with students at SoA

Francesco’s Research IMPACT: Outreach

All mentioned articles from Architecture research staff

Green spaces in the urban

context: Their effect on traffic

noise distribution

Noise pollution in European

cities

Are greener cities also quieter?

How do we measure it? Can green spaces help?

Current activity

Radial and linear cities

Urban

activities and

noise levels

in the city

Outputs and future plans

Test site analysis: The effect of green space parameters

on noise levels in the parks.

Final Symposium on

Urban Sound

Planning

September 2016

People, Environments and Performance

Contact: steve.fotios@Sheffield.ac.uk