1,720,958 research outputs found
Energy Performance Planning in Historical City Centers: GeoCluster Approach
No full textThe theme of energy performance planning in historical city centers is discussed, starting with an innovative vision that requires coordination and an interdisciplinary approach in order to organize and correlate existing knowledge and new information. The research aims to apply the concept of “geocluster”, which includes a group of buildings, sufficiently homogeneous to be treated like a system; the studied buildings are associated through a series of indicators and parameters. The final goal is the development of a tool for managing the energy and environmental performance of the buildings/monumental heritage through computational analysis, with measurement campaigns and simulations to help understand the energy requirements of the context analyzed, thus allowing to identify the best strategies and management actions
EXTREME CLIMATE EVENTS: the tomographic environmental section for environmental mitigation devices
No full textPLEA is an autonomous, non-profit, network of individuals sharing expertise in the arts, sciences, planning and design of the built environment. Founded in 1981, PLEA organises international conferences and workshops; expert group meetings and consultancies; scientific and technical publications; architectural competitions and exhibitions.
Since 1982 PLEA has organised international conferences and events across the globe.
PLEA annual conferences are highly ranked conference attracting academia and practicing architects in equal numbers.
Past conferences have taken place in United States, Europe, South America, Asia, Africa and Australia
Evaluation of building comfort in developing countries through CFD analysis and TENS method.
Full text linkBuilding designers must consider relationships between air-flow patterns and building structure in order to achieve thermal comfort and avoid extreme air movements. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) can simultaneously predict air flow, heat transfer, and contaminant transportation in and around buildings. The role of CFD in designing buildings for developing countries is demonstrated by creating a thermally comfortable, healthy, energy-efficient building in developing countries (i.e Buéa, Cameroon and Mkuru, Tanzania). Natural ventilation and other passive strategies were analyzed, as this is the main way to achieve better thermal comfort and reduce energy usage in buildings in tropical climate conditions. The Tomographic ENvironmental Sections (TENS) is a method of exploring a phenomenon through a large number of perspectives. Such methodology does not necessarily imply additional costs in the building’s realization, an important aspect for developing countries. A building design method that supports optimization in the early design stages in countries with severe climate conditions was developed.
Keywords: Africa, developing countries, computational fluid dynamics, environmental comfort, predicted mean vote, sustainable architecture environmental thomography, comfort, PMV, sustainable architecture
Method to define a solar energy platform for historical city centers and identification of new scenarios for sustainability
No full textSustainable energy is no longer a technological challenge, as many of its aspects have now been analyzed and solved. However, this is not true when looking for sustainable systems that are technologically compatible with the characteristics of the historical city. The research first investigated a specific case study: the historical center of Ascoli Piceno in the Marche Region. The analysis began by estimating the solar radiation and evaluating useful parameters such as the sky view factor and shadows. In order to provide useful services to citizens dealing with the environment and to reduce energy consumption, a web application was developed to identify renewable energy systems that have already been constructed in the municipal area and to assess the benefit of installing pv devices on the roof
B.E.S.T.: Building Elements Smart Technology
No full textAbstract
Scientific studies have long proven that buildings are responsible for about 40% of world energy consumption, and the percentage is even higher in Italy. In recent years, parameters for new buildings have been established to reduce energy consumption; this did not happen for existing buildings, however, in which the requirements are waived due to their historical features. The proposed research addresses the issue of energy efficiency when upgrading existing buildings, with particular focus on actions related to vertical transparent building elements. These elements were analyzed through solid and thermo-fluid dynamics simulations, through the CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) software, in order to evaluate their thermal and environmental performance. The analysis led to identification of the most important energetic shortcomings in the vertical transparent building elements most commonly used in old buildings. We studied a highly efficient and smart transparent closure module that integrates the use of materials, innovative technological systems and as small approach the home automation applications based on the Micro- Electrical-Mechanical-System (MEMS). This module interacts with existing elements in order to correct weaknesses. The system developed, which serves as a first experimental prototype, allows the thermal performance of existing vertical transparent elements to be improved. These will not be replaced, but rather integrated with the module studied. Moreover, the system significantly improves indoor comfort through the use and integration of micro-systems to mechanically control natural ventilation, shading systems and the possible integration of minimal-sized elements for air-conditioning
The tomographic environmental sections for environmental mitigation devices in historical centers
No full textThe growing trend in the annual global temperature makes clear that only the reduction of carbon emissions can be the basis for a meaningful policy to counteract climate change. These considerations explain the importance of urban/architectural resilience and the need to reduce energy consumption to restrict global warming. Therefore the design of urban spaces acts as 'thermodynamic mediation' between the constructed object, the human body, and space (environment), between meteorology and physiology (meteorological architecture). One of the key aspects of this approach is design based on meteorological conditions, weather, climate forcing, and thermodynamic demands to obtain architectural and urban shapes that are no longer conceived in a 'structural' sense, but rather 'climatologically oriented.' Investigating the built environment through tomographic sections processed with CFD software (tomographic environmental section, TENS), it is possible to evaluate the effects of an extreme event on an indoor/outdoor space in order to design appropriate (adaptive) climate mitigation devices, focusing on historical centers where energy retrofitting is always a delicate matter. By 'slicing' the environment and studying the initial and boundary conditions, building and environmental performance simulations for outdoor spaces are analyzed in order to test extreme events (heat waves) using climate data series
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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