Sara Shirowzhan

By Sara Shirowzhan, Laurence Kimmel, Mohammad Mojtahedi, Samad Sepasgozar and Jack Peacock

The architecture of educational buildings is required to meet the contemporary needs and follow regulations concerning safety issues in an intelligent, resilient, and systematic manner. However, the current literature generally neglects to identify geo-referenced risks within GIS environment based on the users’ perceptions of educational environments. This research aims to present a newly formulated risk evaluation criteria for assessing the spaces within and outside educational buildings. This chapter investigates students’ experience of using different micro-spaces, architects’ predesign assumptions and expectations of the spaces, and post-design assessment of the spaces. Two case studies of educational spaces within University of New South Wales campus in Kensington, Sydney was selected, and the questionnaire method was employed to collect data from students, who routinely use the selected areas. By comparing the results of the two buildings and mapping them in GIS, it is suggested that feelings of safety and security can be increased via improving the building features and enhancing the building control and security control, for example, installing CCTV and other security infrastructure. Data-driven findings mapped into GIS create a prototype for the identification of problematic areas on a map. The results help decision-makers to understand risks and strengthen risk reduction strategies. This work is also a step towards smarter buildings and enhanced preparedness for an effective response to a security threat, both minimal and extreme.

Part of the book: Smart Cities and Construction Technologies

By Sara Shirowzhan, John Trinder and Paul Osmond

Monitoring sustainability of urban form as a 3D phenomenon over time is crucial in the era of smart cities for better planning of the future, and for such a monitoring system, appropriate tools, metrics, methodologies and time series 3D data are required. While accurate time series 3D data are becoming available, a lack of 3D sustainable urban form (3D SUF) metrics, appropriate methodologies and technical problems of processing time series 3D data has resulted in few studies on the assessment of 3D SUF over time. In this chapter, we review volumetric building metrics currently under development and demonstrate the technical problems associated with their validation based on time series airborne lidar data. We propose new metrics for application in spatial and temporal 3D SUF assessment. We also suggest a new approach in processing time series airborne lidar to detect three-dimensional changes of urban form. Using this approach and the developed metrics, we detected a decreased volume of vegetation and new areas prepared for the construction of taller buildings. These 3D changes and the proposed metrics can be used to numerically measure and compare urban areas in terms of trends against or in favor of sustainability goals for caring for the environment.

Part of the book: Sustainability in Urban Planning and Design

By Anqi Shi, Sara Shirowzhan, Samad M.E. Sepasgozar and Alireza Kaboli

Digital construction is increasingly introduced to the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. The fifth dimension of Building Information Modeling (5D BIM) has a significant contribution to the AEC industry, such as managing time and costs and resources management. However, 5D BIM has not fulfilled its promise completely. The major challenge of implementing the 5D BIM technology and applications is the interoperability between technologies and the low accuracy of measurement estimations. Dynamo is adopted in this chapter for detailed quantity measurement. Three-dimensional printing (3DP) is one of the additive manufacturing technologies which is recommended to be used in construction. 3DP is aiming to create complex and customized geometries. This chapter demonstrates how to apply the Dynamo scripts of detailed quantity take-off for estimating the volume of elements created by 3DP. Dynamo as a quantity take-off Add-in in Revit is always used for detailed quantity take-off or precise model created. After the detailed quantity take-off from Revit, the data can be exported into Excel extension, which allows the quantity surveyors to insert the price per unit to the file and to generate a Bill of Quantity (BOQ). This chapter will offer a procedure for applying Dynamo through two selected case studies.

Part of the book: Smart Cities and Construction Technologies