Claudio Martani

The rise of low-cost sensing for managing air pollution in cities.

Ever growing populations in cities are associated with a major increase in road vehicles and air pollution. The overall high levels of urban air pollution have been shown to be of a significant risk to city dwellers. However, the impacts of very high but temporally and spatially restricted pollution, and thus exposure, are still poorly understood. Conventional approaches to air quality monitoring are based on networks of static and sparse measurement stations. However, these are prohibitively expensive to capture tempo-spatial heterogeneity and identify pollution hotspots, which is required for the development of robust real-time strategies for exposure control. Current progress in developing low-cost micro-scale sensing technology is radically changing the conventional approach to allow real-time information in a capillary form. But the question remains whether there is value in the less accurate data they generate. This article illustrates the drivers behind current rises in the use of low-cost sensors for air pollution management in cities, while addressing the major challenges for their effective implementation.

Design with Uncertainty: The Role of Future Options for Infrastructure Integration

All authors wish to acknowledge the funding support of the EPSRC Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction at Cambridge University (EPSRC reference EP/K000314/1). Ying Jin would also like to acknowledge the funding support received from the Tsinghua–Cambridge–MIT Low-carbon University Alliance and the China Ministry of Education Key Lab of Eco-Planning & Green Building at Tsinghua University.

Pedestrian monitoring techniques for crowd-flow prediction

The high concentration and flow rate of people in train stations during rush hours can pose a prominent risk to passenger safety and comfort. In situ counting systems are a critical element for predicting pedestrian flows in real time, and their capabilities must be rigorously tested in live environments. The focus of this paper is on evaluating the reliability of two alternative counting systems, the first using an array of infrared depth sensors and the second a visible light (RGB) camera. Both proposed systems were installed at a busy walkway in London Bridge station. The data were collected over a period of 2 months, after which, portions of the data set were labelled for quantitative evaluation against ground truth. In this paper, the implementation of the two different counting technologies is described, and the accuracy and limitations of both approaches under different conditions are discussed. The results show that the developed RGB-based system performs reliably across a wide range of conditions, while the depth-based approach proves to be a useful complement in conditions without significant ambient sunlight, such as underground passageways.

The Risks of Decisions with Long-Term Impacts Within the Building Process. The Uncertainty in Design Over a Set of Objectives for the Operation and Maintenance Phase

The aim of this chapter is to underline the opportunity to control the uncertainty over important long-term objectives in architectural design by adopting risk management methods and techniques. Satisfaction with long-term objectives for buildings largely depends on the possibility to carry out due maintenance and the building process is characterized by a sequence of phases where decisions that strongly define adequacy of buildings to be properly maintained are taken at the early stages. Despite the key role of the brief and the design phases in defining building quality over time, the current practice of architectural design is characterized by a large uncertainty around the propensity of designed buildings to meet long-term objectives. This uncertainty is due to a difficulty in linking design features to the needs of use and maintenance. The operation and management phase is, then, the time after the design from which consequences of decision taken upstream appear. At this stage quality of buildings is visible and measurable and, therefore, feedback can help to track the origin of problems. This process of learning from past experiences is called learning by using. With reference to the set of problems that can arise from design the risk management process and techniques can support clients and designers by helping during both the design phase (in analysing the context, simulating events, anticipating possible scenarios) and the operation and management phase (in monitoring the performance of buildings in use in order to instruct actions to manage risks over time).

Application of the Dashboard for Risk Management: The Case Study of Two Buildings of Worship

The aim of this chapter is to test on real world case studies the set of tools and methods to create a dashboard that has been proposed in the previous chapters. Tests were run on two buildings of worship. To this purpose a degree of importance was assigned to a set of requirements, both user and technological, that represent the needs of the Italian Council of Bishops (CEI) with reference to the phase of use of churches. Then a degree of importance was estimated for all requirements by using spreadsheets and Monte Carlo simulations. Results show that the two churches generally have a low level of risk related to the use and maintenance, but that some particular elements, such as windows and roofs, can bring serious problems over time, with reference to the requirements of “control of roughness” of “control of ventilations”. Main results are presented and commented upon.

Risk Management Through Process Monitoring: Reducing Uncertainty and Improving Risk Assessment Effectiveness Through Knowledge Gathering Over Time

The aim of this chapter is to propose the use of process monitoring on buildings to gain continuous feedback from the use, for both monitoring risks and learning by use. During this phase the actual performance of what has been predicted is measured in order to check the quality of forecasts. Eventual differences between performance expected and these measured would call either for a review on previsions, or for an intervention on the object measured. For monitoring of building performance data and the possibility for more data abounds but currently only few are the organizations prepared to actually gather the available information and use it for building management. Moreover monitoring techniques on building are often techniques to punctually check the level of performances and not actual continuous monitoring of them. To establish a system of building continuous monitoring that allows ready response, the systems of monitoring of processes can be adopted. Three examples of real-time monitoring and responding system, based on a monitoring of process, are reported from projects of the MIT | Senseable City Laboratory.

Risks Over Objectiveness in Building Process

The aim of this chapter is to propose a set of tools and methods to manage the risks for a number of objectives along the building process. All technological elements or sets of technological element can be traced to different requirements, as well as to a list of possible interventions. Risks for all requirements, both technological and user requirements, of all elements, strongly rely on two aspects: the amount of intervention on which the elements involved depend on and their degree of maintainability. For this reason, in order to manage the risks over long-term objectives in architectural design a set of tools and methods have been created. The final outcome of the process is a dashboard in which a level of risk is reported for all requirements. In order to define a level of risk for all requirements a set of tools and methods are introduced with the aim of evaluating both the importance and the uncertainty over all requirements, by correlating the need for maintenance and the maintainability of all elements involved with each requirement.

A Dashboard for Design Risk Management. Proposal for a Risk-Based Design Support and Lifelong Feedback Gathering System

The aim of this chapter is to propose a process to manage, at the design stage, the risks in buildings use and maintenance. The proposed process for risk management in architectural design consists of two steps: risk assessment and treatment and risk monitoring and reviewing. The first part uses the set of tools and methods introduced in Sect. 4.2 to attribute a degree of importance to an objective, during the brief phase, and a degree of uncertainty to them during the design stage. The combination of the two degrees defines the level of risk for all requirements that fill the dashboard of risks. Risks evaluated in this manner are managed according to the techniques for risk treatment from literature. The second part of the proposed process consists of a procedure for using feedback performance monitored during the phase of operation and management to review databases and evaluations. In this phase a method is presented for process monitoring that allows for constantly checking the actual performance of buildings and to compare them with those expected. Eventual mismatches between expected and actual performances are used in real-time updating of databases and evaluations.

Uncertainty, Risk and Risk Management

The aim of this chapter is to present the risk management process as a method to control risks over building use and maintenance, by estimating the uncertainty over the most important objectives. Risk management deals with the issue of uncertainty. In particular it aims to reduce uncertainty by envisioning possible scenarios and making forecasts on the basis of what it is considered probable within a range of possibilities. For this reason in order to properly adapt the risk management process to the field of architectural design it is necessary to understand the meaning and the relationship between: uncertainty, probability, range of possibilities and foresight. Moreover, it is also necessary to make clear the state of the art with reference to risk management process, as regards: terms, definitions, steps and methods. The risk management process has been defined many times and many different versions have been given over the last decades. In the current context the voluntary standards have unified terms, definitions, frameworks and steps of the process of risk management. The framework offered by the International Standards is particularly important in order to systematize knowledge from literature from various fields and to create a common ground to deal without either misunderstanding or ambiguity. Finally, applications of the risk management process in various context are reported and is introduced the possibility of using such approach in architectural design to control risks over building use and maintenance is introduced.