Smarter Systems
Utopia of Building Information Modeling and Sustainability in Urban Planning
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Maryam Karimi
In recent decades, cities are becoming more involved than ever in the ‘world city’ status competition. The path of this competitiveness is often paved by some common terms such as flexibility, efficiency, sustainability, and strategic partnerships with private sectors and industries. In the urban policy and practice realm, the rhetoric of urban development has lumbered through several stages, from focusing on economic growth and sustainable development, to concentrating on smart city development and information and communication technologies (ICTs) for development. To achieve more sustainable and smarter-built environment, ICT companies have asserted several claims such as using Building Information Modeling (BIM) that has been lately colonized not only the lexicon of architecture and building construction practices but also the realm of policy-making. Studying the politics of BIM and its policy mobility in a global perspective reveals that governments are keen in welcoming the utopian promotional promises of BIM implementations. Despite the future-oriented rhetoric of BIM, mandating the use of BIM at some certain levels of project development has been already placed by several states. This paper discusses the current BIM discourse relevant to sustainability and smart city development, while providing a close scrutiny of the disciplines of urban planning and urban policy which are both missing in the current literature and debate on BIM.
The Home Utility Management System : An Interactive, Renewable Water and Power Management System
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Brian Ancell
The utility infrastructure currently in place that supports global water and power usage presents several potentially serious issues. Surface and groundwater supplies can fall short of demand, a problem projected to become worse with projected climate variability and future population growth. Emissions from fossil fuel-based power generation and their increased atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations can lead to serious global consequences with regard to aspects well beyond the climate itself (e.g. agricultural food supply, or sea level). Even with the continued development of renewable energy systems that harvest wind and solar power, centralized utility systems leave large portions of society vulnerable to natural hazards and attacks. In turn, a critical need exists to create utility systems that can mitigate these potentially disastrous societal, economic, and environmental problems. We are developing and testing a home utility management system (or HUMS) that can potentially provide the solution. The HUMS is a decentralized utility model based on renewable resources that enables individual homes to produce a substantial portion of their own power (with solar panels, a wind turbine, and a residential battery) and water (through rain harvest and water storage). The utility system is integrated into a home computer that displays both current power and water storage levels and the expected future availability of water and power resources (through high quality probabilistic weather prediction data). Here we describe the current status of the development and evaluation of the HUMS system at Texas Tech University in the United States and the plans for production.
Modular Soil Sensor Networks for Green Roof Urban Agriculture
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kristiina Mai
Green roofs are becoming a standard requirement on buildings around the world as an important measure to counteract global warming. The inclusion of plant life in urban areas captures carbon, promotes biodiversity, reduces the urban heat island effect and absorbs storm water. Rooftop plants and soil also improve the energy efficiency of buildings. Rooftops are a relatively harsh environment for plants due to increased winds and reduced soil volume especially in container gardens. Therefore, continuous soil moisture monitoring is important to maintain the viability of the plant life. This study describes the development of a modular and expandable network architecture for soil moisture sensors, with a cloud-based interface for remote monitoring.
