Adélio Rodrigues Gaspar

Eugénio Rodrigues, Luísa Dias Pereira, Adélio Rodrigues Gaspar et al.

This paper presents a multi-layer perceptron model for the estimation of classrooms number of occupants from sensed indoor environmental data-relative humidity, air temperature, and carbon dioxide concentration. The modelling datasets were collected from two classrooms in the Secondary School of Pombal, Portugal. The number of occupants and occupation periods were obtained from class attendance reports. However, post-class occupancy was unknown and the developed model is used to reconstruct the classrooms occupancy by filling the unreported periods. Different model structure and environment variables combination were tested. The model with best accuracy had as input vector 10 variables of five averaged time intervals of relative humidity and carbon dioxide concentration. The model presented a mean square error of 1.99, coefficient of determination of 0.96 with a significance of p-value < 0.001, and a mean absolute error of 1 occupant. These results show promising estimation capabilities in uncertain indoor environment conditions.

David Sousa-Rodrigues, Mafalda Teixeira de Sampayo, Eugénio Rodrigues et al.

The aim of this study is to understand what are the collective actions of architecture practitioners when grouping floor plan designs. The understanding of how professionals and students solve this complex problem may help to develop specific programmes for the teaching of architecture. In addition, the findings of this study can help in the development of query mechanisms for database retrieval of floor plans and the implementation of clustering mechanisms to aggregate floor plans resulting from generative design methods. The study aims to capture how practitioners define similarity between floor plans from a pool of available designs. A hybrid evolutionary strategy is used, which takes into account the building's functional program to generate alternative floor plan designs. The first step of this methodology consisted in an online survey to gather information on how the respondents would perform a clustering task. Online surveys have been used in several applications and are a method of data collection that conveys several advantages. When properly developed and implemented, a survey portrays the characteristics of large groups of respondents on a specific topic and allows assessing its representation. Several types of surveys are available; e.g. questionnaire and interview formats, phone survey, and online surveys, which can be coupled with inference engines that act and direct the survey according to respondents' answers. In the present study, the survey was posed as an online exercise in which respondents had to perform a pre-defined task, which makes it similar to running an experiment in an online environment. The experiment aimed to understand the perception and criteria of the target population to perform the clustering task by comparing the results with the respondents' answers to a questionnaire presented at the end of the exercise.

Eugénio Rodrigues, Ana Rita Amaral, Adélio Rodrigues Gaspar et al.

Building practitioners (architects, engineers, energy managers) are showing a growing interest in the design of more energy efficient and livable buildings. The best way to predict how a building will behave regarding energy consumption and thermal comfort is to use a dynamic simulation tool. However, the use of this kind of tools is difficult on a daily basis practice due to the heuristic and exploratory nature of the architectural design process. To deal with this difficulty, the University of Coimbra and three companies have been working on the development of a prototype design aiding tool, specifically devoted to the space planning phase of building design, under the project GerAPlanO (Automatic Generation of Architecture Floor plans with Energy Optimization). This project aims to combine the capabilities of design generation techniques, thermal assessment programs, and design optimization methods to provide assistance to decision makers. This paper presents the overall concept, as well as the current status of development of this tool.

Eugénio Rodrigues, Adélio Rodrigues Gaspar, Álvaro Gomes

A prototype tool to assist architects during the early design stage of floor plans has been developed, consisting of an Evolutionary Program for the Space Allocation Problem (EPSAP), which generates sets of floor plan alternatives according to the architect's preferences; and a Floor Plan Performance Optimization Program (FPOP), which optimizes the selected solutions according to thermal performance criteria. The design variables subject to optimization are window position and size, overhangs, fins, wall positioning, and building orientation. A procedure using a transformation operator with gradient descent, such as behavior, coupled with a dynamic simulation engine was developed for the thermal evaluation and optimization process. However, the need to evaluate all possible alternatives regarding designing variables being used during the optimization process leads to an intensive use of thermal simulation, which dramatically increases the simulation time, rendering it unpractical. An alternative approach is a smart optimization approach, which utilizes an oriented and adaptive search technique to efficiently find the near optimum solution. This paper presents the search methodology for the building orientation of floor plan designs, and the corresponding efficiency and effectiveness indicators. The calculations are based on 100 floor plan designs generated by EPSAP. All floor plans have the same design program, location, and weather data, changing only their geometry. Dynamic simulation of buildings was effectively used together with the optimization procedure in this approach to significantly improve the designs. The use of the orientation variable has been included in the algorithm.