Computing Building Resiliency

Goals

Not Accepting New Students

The “Computing Building Resiliency” VIP project focuses on computing, modeling and simulating methods to support the design decisions for sustainable, resilient, and healthy environments to enhance occupant’s safety and well-being.
This course explores the intersection of advanced Building Information Modeling (BIM), systems modeling, spatial analysis, dynamic modeling and simulations, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), and sensors data.

Issues Involved or Addressed

Based on the ARPA-H BREATHE program for “Building Resilient Environments for Air and Total Health”, this VIP case studies focuses on modeling the risk of infection indoors.
“The quality of indoor spaces plays a critical role in shaping human safety, well-being, health, productivity and learning. Respiratory infections such as COVID-19 created critical scenarios for human health, globally.” During the pandemic, this VIP explored a dynamic, spatiotemporal modeling framework, studying the integration of spatial models, computational fluid dynamics, agent-based simulation of human activities and organizational processes to understand the risk of infection indoors. Today, we expand these studies towards building resiliency and safety in buildings or the built environment.
On the one hand, current spatial analytics focuses on the static aspects of a building. On the other hand, dynamic variables such as a virus spread or human behavior focus on the mathematical models or algorithms. Spatiotemporal modeling integrates the dynamic variables inside spaces, focusing on analyzing human-centered outcomes, such as performance, health, and social interactions.
This year’s specific goal is to implement the integration of a pilot study tailored for the ARPA-H BREATHE program, focusing on the three ways of transmission, with building resiliency and the validation through environmental sensors. Case studies from a renowned architecture firm include hospitals, workplaces, and schools, and implementations of systems in collaboration with AWS are the key aspects of the project.
We will work on the integration of several modeling approaches: 3D modeling, BIM, spatial analytics, agent-based simulations (ABS), process simulations, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for airflow simulations, and mathematical models of the virus spread, utilizing ML to better understand the patterns of risk and resiliency indoors.

Partners/Sponsors

GTRI, Perkins and Will