sem7 IT in the Building Process
The Virtual Building, sem7 2002

[home] [education] Last update 2003.01.08 (2003.01.08) [2002.08.24]


IT i Civilingeniørspeciale i Byggeledelse/IT in Building Management.

Virtual Buildings.


Goal: The goal of the 'IT in the Building Process - The Virtual Building' course is to mediate knowledge about fundamental concepts, technologies and methods to analyse and develop models which describes a building, the building process and the digital infrastructures from design to application as well as mediation of knowledge about how the future services, systems, and infrastructures for knowledge management can be built and integrated.
Volume/
Placement:
This 2 modules course is one of 4 with emphasis on IT during the semester 7 Master of IT in Building Management education (calender).
Content:

Explaining Knowledge Management. Knowledge Management tools. Principles for meta-structuring in web based structures. Project webs. Properties of the next generation Semantic Web. (XML, RDF).Knowledge representations in practice.
Web database integration.
Existing classification systems and meta classification methodologies.
Conceptual and data modelling techniques.
Acquisition and storage of building process data. Design and development of services for knowledge transfer and knowledge management.
Introduction to conceptual modelling methods and languages.
Building Product Models in perspective.
Cad system properties.
Building applications supported by product models.
Building 3D models for the Web (Virtual reality mark-up language - VRML, and Cult3D).
Future structures of virtual building models.
International Foundation Classes, IFC.
IT infra structures and intelligent buildings
References. Further reading under each lecture.

Examination: Oral test based on 1-3 hour discussions a group on a mini project or exercises collection. Assessed with the grade "passed" or "failed" with internal censor participation.
Examination will take place at Fib. 14/58, 8 January, 2003, at 09:00 (Group 2.126), 10.00 (Group 2.121) and 11.00 (Group 2.124) . Censors are Per Christiansson, Kjeld Svidt and external Henrik Brohus.

The miniproject or presentations made at examonation are be presented here

Participants: The students come from semester 6 of the civil engineering program. You can also get access to previous student projects works via the 1999 to 2001 sem7 Virtual Building courses (education). During the course exercises and a miniproject are carried through.

The teachers are:
Prof. Per Christiansson [PC]
Ass. Prof. Kjeld Svidt [KS]








1. SETTING THE SCENE

Friday September 17, 2002.
Lecture/discussions 08.15 - 12.00.
Sohngaardsholmsvej 57, Room A:217, Aalborg University. [PC].
http://it.civil.auc.dk/it/medialab/index.html

This lecture explains and comments the introduction of IT in the building process during the latest decades.

Digital models, standards and systems have been developed to support for example engineering calculations, stability analyses, simulations, graphic presentations, time planing, resource management, and documentaion.

Building product and process models are explained and exemplified as well as relevant knowledge management issues.








2. CONCEPTUAL MODELLING

Tuesday September 24, 2002.
Lecture 08.15-10.00. Exercises 10.00 - 12.00.
Sohngaardsholmsvej 57, Room A:217, Aalborg University. [PC].
http://it.civil.auc.dk/it/medialab/index.html

Up until now we have mostly discussed how different pieces of the building process may be represented for later implementation in computers. Before we arrive to the actual implementation of our data models in computer systems we must make so called conceptual models.

A conceptual model is a high level description of parts and the whole process we are considering for computer application. It will help us to understand and describe the world we are dealing with (even if we do not intend to make a computer implementation). There are different conceptual modelling methods which are suited for different or similar application areas.

We will look at conceptual modelling of the building product and it's time dependent properties (process models) during specification, design, contruction, use, and demoltion/recycling of the building product.

We will in more detail study the so called Contectual Design method for capture of user requirements and user enviroenment design in connection with system development.

User cognitive models and human computer interface models will be treated in greater detail in the semeter 8 IT course 'IT IN THE BUILDING PROCESS I - IT TOOLS'.





3. CAD AND VIRTUAL BUILDING MODELS

Tuesday October 1, 2002.
Lecture 08.15-10.00. Exercises 10.00 - 12.00.
Fibigerstræde 16, Room 1.211, Aalborg University. [KS]
http://it.civil.auc.dk/it/medialab/index.html

Building products and processes must be described in formalised data models before than can be implemented in computer systems.

An overview of attempts to make digital building models is given and commented on. The first models were made during the 1960'ies in key system fashion. We will look at the properties of the latest three decade building models and what we can expect in the future.

An overview is given over efforts and results in the area of (de facto) standards development for formalised descriptions which can be used in building product models, building process models, EDI - Electronic Data Exchange, vendor building components models, and knowledge managements models.

Special emphasis is on the the development of standardised International Foudation Classes (IFC) to describe building objects.






4. CAD AND VIRTUAL BUILDING MODELS (CONT!)

Tuesday October 8, 2002.
Lecture 08.15 - 10.00. Exercises 10.00 -12.00.
Fibigerstræde 16, Room 1.211, Aalborg University. [KS].

We will study different Cad systems and their ability to handle standardised information. AutoCad, ArchCad, Revit and the DIVERCITY framework (EU project 2000-2001).







5-6. WEB AND DATABASES

Wednesday October 23, 2002.
Lecture 08.15 - 10.00. Exercises 10.00 -12.00.
Fibigerstræde 16, Room 1.211, Aalborg University. [PC].

Wednesday October 30, 2002.
Lecture 08.15 - 10.00. Exercises 10.00 -12.00.
Fibigerstræde 16, Room 1.211, Aalborg University. [PC].

Relational databases is and will be an very important information container for building process and product information.

We will repeat some database basics from semester 6 (normalisation, SQL calls to databases).

We will also learn about the principles and methods behind connecting databases to web browsers.






7. KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATIONS (XML,HTML)

Wednesday November 4, 2002.
Lecture 12.30 - 14.15. Exercises 14.30 -16.30.
Fibigerstræde 16, Room 1.211, Aalborg University. [PC,KS].

Computers can be used to store information which will mimic or support our own knowledge stored in hour brains. There is a spectrum of different computer software which can be used to represent different knowledge handling routines and knowledge domains. For example in connetion with decision support, information retrieval and storage, experience capture, collaboration, and design syntheses.

We will look at the following computer stored knowledge representations - hypertext, relational databases,

We will focus on relational databses (see 5-6. Web and Databases) and hypertext representations supported by HTML (with recap of HTML basics) and the new ways we have to separate content and access of web based hypertext information (XML, XSL).

You will also get a short insight into other representation forms such as production systems, predicate logig based systems, artificial neural networks, induction systems, and analogue representations (Object representations are covered in another course and will only be touched upon here). We will also in this connection comment on knowledge acquisition methods.





8. KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATIONS (CONT!)

Wednesday November 6, 2002.
Lecture 08.15 - 10.00. Exercises 10.00 -12.00.
Fibigerstræde 16, Room 1.211, Aalborg University. [PC,KS].

We will dive deeper into the principles for meta-structuring of web based information containers (URIs) in web based environments. Project webs and properties of the next generation Semantic Web (XML, RDF) and how applications can use XML as a transport format will be described. The relational database example will be used (XSQL).






9. THE DIGITAL CITY AND SOCIETY.
THE INTELLIGENT BUILDING

Friday November 29 , 2002.
Lecture 08.15 - 10.00. Exercises 10.00 -12.00.
Fibigerstræde 16, Room 1.201, Aalborg University. [KS,PC].

Information technology,IT, will cause a paradigm shift in our society from the art of writing, printing to the art of communication. In the same way as the car highly influenced the physical design of our society IT will higly influence the forming of the global villages.

New services will be designed and implemented in the citizen nets to support the village inhabitants - access to services and facts bases, and possibilities for active participation in the (democratic) decision process. We will study and analyse ongoing efforts in the area.

The building product itself will contain or have attached to it IT-tools which will support it during it's life time. Information handling and communication support will be given for the building inhabitants, for the adminstration of the building and it's operation and maintenence (O&M). The IT support will be in the form of conventional computer systems and sophisticated input/output units as well as in the building and installations embedded computer systems.

We will investigate exisiting and expected infrastructures, systems, and services in the intelligent buildings and how they can be modelled.







10. SPECIAL ISSUES. SUMMING UP

Thursday December 5, 2002.
Lecture 08.15 - 10.00. Exercises 10.00 -12.00.
Fibigerstræde 16, Room 1.211, Aalborg University. [PC,KS].

We will go through the exercises and answer additional questions you may have.

There will also be time to present optional mini projects and further discuss certain issues at your wish.

We will also take the opportunity to show you some more tools to handle IFC based building models.



Per Christiansson