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The electricity use characteristics of 20 air conditioned office buildings in the public sector in subtropical Hong Kong were investigated. Monthly electricity consumption data were gathered and analysed. The annual electricity use per unit gross floor area ranged from 163 to 389 kW h/m2, with a mean of 270 kW h/m2. Detailed energy audits and site surveys were conducted to obtain a breakdown of the energy use. The percentage consumption for the four major electricity end users, namely heating, ventilation and air conditioning, lighting, electrical equipment and lifts and escalators were 47.5%, 27.4%, 21.8% and 3.3%, respectively. Regression techniques were used to correlate the monthly electricity use with the design and climatic variables. This paper presents the work and discusses the energy use implications.

Energy service companies (ESCOs) use the energy use index (EUI) as a tool to evaluate a building's potential for reduction in energy use. Select Energy Services, Inc. (SESI) has found that consideration of building geometry is useful in evaluating a building's potential for energy use reduction. Building load and energy-use simulations using Trace® and PowerDOE®, respectively, were conducted to gain insight into how building geometry impacts heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) sizing and energy use. The ratio of gross wall area to gross floor area, Awall/Afloor, has been found to be a useful factor to consider when making EUI comparisons. Simulations suggest that buildings with higher Awall/Afloor ratios require higher central plant capacities and use more energy per unit area to satisfy the heating and cooling loads. Taking a building's geometry (Awall/Afloor) into account while estimating savings potential may produce more accurate results.

Design-build (DB) and design-bid-build (DBB) are two principal project delivery systems used in many countries. This paper reports on models constructed to predict performance of DB and DBB projects on 11 areas, using project-specific data collected from 87 building projects. The study included collecting, checking, and validating industry data, and the statistical development of multivariate linear regression models for predicting project performance. Robust models are developed to predict construction and delivery speeds of DB and DBB projects. Gross floor area of the project is the most significant factor affecting speed. Besides this, for DBB projects, contractors’ design ability, and adequacy of plant and equipment would ensure speedy completion of the projects. For DB projects, if the contract period is allowed to vary during tender evaluation, this would slow down the project. Robust models to predict turnover and system quality of DB projects are also constructed. A DB contractor’s track record is...

This paper investigates the trend of redevelopment in Hong Kong by identifying and examining the factors affecting the decision to launch a redevelopment project. Empirical data from Western Hong Kong Island during 1980–2001 is used to identify the characteristics of past redevelopment projects. Such data also reveals that there is no obvious relationship between the fluctuations in the property price/rent and the rate of redevelopment. As a result, this paper will mainly focus on the supply side factors. We make use of a GFA ratio to decide the feasibility of a redevelopment project. We further analyse how the characteristics of the existing site affect in GFA ratio (or the profit level). This study provides insights for the government, as well as private developers that may help them consider redevelopment projects.

In this study, artificial neural networks have been developed to acquire construction knowledge from past projects to integrate buildability considerations into the preliminary structural design process. Four artificial neural network models are presented. These allow the generation of an expeditious solution for given sets of design and buildability constraints. Once information is entered into the models, a recommendation of which structural scheme to choose is generated instantaneously. Thus, valuable design time is released, allowing designers the opportunity to invest in other equally important design tasks. The information entered into the models consists of site‐related information including site access; availability of working space; and speed of erection, and conceptual design information including type of building; number of storeys and gross floor area. The results show that artificial neural networks can be successfully used for the implementation of buildability at the preliminary stage of design.

We present the electricity use in the commercial sector in subtropical Hong Kong during the 31 year period from 1970 to 2000. The average annual growth rate was 7.4% during the past three decades. Commercial buildings, especially shopping centres, are major electricity end uses. A survey of four fully air conditioned shopping centres built during the 1990s was conducted to establish some energy use characteristics pertinent to shopping centres in subtropical climates. It was found that air conditioning and electric lighting were the major electricity end uses, accounting for about 85% of the total building energy use. Electricity use per unit gross floor area ranged from 391 to 454 kW h/m 2 , with an average of 430 kW h/m 2 . Simple regression analysis also revealed that electricity use showed a strong correlation with the mean monthly outdoor dry bulb temperature. This paper presents the work and discusses the energy efficiency implications.

This paper estimates the quantity of pollutants produced by the hotel industry through its electricity consumption. A survey of 17 hotels in Hong Kong was carried out to collect 3 years of energy consumption data. Regression analysis indicated that gross floor area was a major and statistically accepted factor in explaining the electricity consumption in hotels. It was found that the average electricity consumption was about 342 kW h/m 2 /year. Then, based on some established pollutant emission factors of coal and natural gas, the amount of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxides, carbon dioxides and particulates created by the hotel industry's electricity usage during a 10-year period from 1988 to 1997 was estimated. The study further predicts the increase in these amounts in 1998–2003 accompanying the rise in the number of hotel properties. The findings indicate that the existing green measures and devices are inadequate to cope with the increase in pollution emission in the near future. We believe that the hotel industry should adopt a more proactive approach to reduce electricity usage and propose the inclusion of environmental reporting in trade journals.

A total of 20 fully air-conditioned office buildings with centralised HVAC systems in the public sector were selected for this study. Electricity use per unit gross floor area ranged from 163 to 416 kWh/m2, with an average of 270 kWh/m2. Monthly electricity consumption data over a five-year period from 1996 to 2000 were gathered and analysed. These data were correlated with the corresponding monthly ambient temperature and cooling degree-hours using simply linear regression technique. Regression analysis revealed that electricity use showed a strong correlation with both the mean monthly ambient temperature and cooling degree hours, though the latter performed slightly better than the former. The average coefficient of determination (R2) was 0.87 and 0.88 for ambient temperature and cooling degree-hours, respectively. This is only a first investigation examining the correlation between energy consumption and the corresponding outdoor temperatures, and thus has limitations. To have a better understanding o...

Customisation and open building system have been widely discussed in building technology in the Western discourses. These open building systems have been recommended in a built environment where the buildings are predominantly low rise, detached and less complex. In Hong Kong the target production of the mass housing due to the growing number of population is 85,000 units annually. These residential units are small in the gross floor area, which are calculated from the prevailing limited land available for the building industries. Most of the mass housing has now reached to a 41 storey high with an average of 50 to 80 sq. m. of gross floor area. The basic configuration of the flats is determined from the households' furniture layout. Therefore, there is a limited option in the flexibility of the residential flat configuration. These are the significant constraints in the mass housing where total open and flexible building design are almost impossible. Due to this reason, there is a lack of user satisfacti...

A survey of 11 hotels in Hong Kong was carried out to collect three years' energy consumption data. Regression analysis indicated that gross floor area was a major and statistically acceptable factor in explaining the gas consumption in new hotels. Based on past consumption data and some established pollutant emission factors, the amount of sulphur dioxides, nitrogen dioxides, carbon dioxides and particulate created by the Hong Kong hotel industry's gas usage during a 10-year period from 1989–1998 was estimated. The study predicts the increase in these amounts in 1999–2003 accompanying the rise in the number of hotels. The findings indicate that emissions will rise by nearly 40% in the next few years, requiring urgent discussions. The study also finds that a heat pump running on coal-fired electricity and with a coefficient of performance (COP) greater than 3 could produce lower level emissions than a gas-fired boiler. It is further suggested that an effective method to reduce the emissions is to substitu...

Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is an established methodology that can provide decision-makers with comprehensive data on the environmental impacts of products and processes during the entire life cycle. However, the literature on building LCAs consists of highly varying results between the studies, even when the assessed buildings are very similar. This makes it doubtful if LCA can actually produce reliable data for supporting policy-making in the building sector. However, no prior reviews looking into this issue in the building sector exist. This study includes an extensive literature review of LCA studies on the pre-use phase of buildings. The purpose of this study is to analyze the variation between the results of different studies and find out whether the differences can be explained by the contextual differences or if it is actually the methodological choices that cause the extremely high variation. We present 116 cases from 47 scientific articles and reports that used process LCA, input–output (IO) LCA or hybrid LCA to study the construction-phase GHG emissions of buildings. The results of the reviewed studies vary between 0.03 and 2.00 tons of GHG emissions per gross area. The lowest was assessed with process LCA and highest with IO LCA, and in general the lower end was found to be dominated by process LCA studies and the higher end by IO LCA studies, hybrid LCAs being placed in between. In general, it is the methodological issues and subjective choices of the LCA practitioner that cause the vast majority of the huge variance in the results. It thus seems that currently the published building LCAs do not offer solid background information for policy-making without deep understanding of the premises of a certain study and good methodological knowledge., Tekes - the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation Academy of Finland 268099

Due to the high growth rate of urbanization in developing countries like Bangladesh leads to increase in vehicular traffic. Travel demand models are useful in managing the increased travel demand. So, Trip generation step is essential in planning of transportation facilities for Dhaka the capital of Bangladesh. In this study, the trip attraction rates of the shopping centers at Uttara Road, Uttara area of Dhaka are estimated by using trip rate analysis method. As part of this study, a total of six shopping centers are surveyed, for which the number of vehicles (car) and persons entering the shopping center during peak hour for every 15 minutes time interval are counted. The surveyed data deals with the relationship of trip attraction rates of the shopping center as a whole. Various physical features of the shopping centers are considered of this study, e.g total parking spaces, gross floor area, and the number of stores in the shopping center. This study will help for estimating the traffic volume of newly constructed shopping centers which has remarkable impact on the geometric design of roadways in the contiguous area.

© 2014 Perry Forsythe and Grace Ding. Despite considerable research concerning the manifestation of greenhouse gases in the usage of buildings, little has been done concerning emissions arising from the construction process itself. This paper specifically examines emissions arising from cut and fill excavation on residential construction sites. Even though such excavation is often seen as being economical in terms of providing a flat base for concrete raft slab construction, the environmental consequences of this approach need to be considered more fully in terms of impact on the environment. This is particularly important when steeply sloping sites are involved and for different soil types. The paper undertakes a study that quantitatively assesses the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions caused by cut and fill excavation on 52 residential projects in Australia for a range of slope and soil types. The paper presents results from the study and concludes that greenhouse gas emissions increase as site slope increases; the building footprint area (as distinct from Gross Floor Area), exposes the need to reduce the area of the building to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; excavation of rock soils creates higher emissions than other soil types; and cut and fill excavation on steeply slope sites increase emissions. Potential alternative construction includes suspended floor construction systems which involve less excavation.

Studies indicate that there is a relationship between project cost and construction time for different construction markets. The purpose of this study was to validate the time-cost relationship model developed by Bromilow et al. (1980) in the context of commercial, residential, and industrial construction projects in India. The model was extended to include the magnitude of the projects in terms of gross floor area and construction types, to determine whether these variables also have an effect on project duration. Data related to 99 construction projects from all over India were obtained. The SPSS® program and the General Linear Model were used for analysis. The results show a statistically significant relationship between construction time and magnitude of the project, measured by gross floor area, at the level of significance (p-value) of < 0.0001. This variable, when introduced the model, presumably acts as a proxy for actual construction cost. Construction type did not have a statistically significant relationship with construction time. A prediction model of construction time has been developed based on the results of the study. This model will be useful to constructors who work at an international level.

Cities are complex systems that are constantly evolving to better allow people to connect with one another. Moreover, and similar to countless natural phenomena, cities exhibit inherent orders that can be captured and expressed through complex analyses of their components. Using a variety of large datasets, this work offers a ring-buffer approach to analyze the spatial characteristics of four components of Chicago urban system, namely: roads, intersections, buildings, and population+ employment. The complex nature of these four components manifests itself in power-law relationships, represented by their fractal dimensions. Results show that road length and number of intersections, and to a larger degree, population+employment count and building gross floor area exhibit significantly similar properties. The proposed method could further be used to analyze large demographic, socio-economic, and other geospatial datasets with the aim to study their impacts on relevant urban systems characteristics, including mobility, connectivity, and accessibility to name a few.

Trip Generation rates are important for transportation engineers and planners in the Travel Demand Forecasting process as well as for Traffic Impact Studies. Trip generation by a given land use type depends on one or more factors based on the socio-economic characteristics. The Institute of Transport Engineers (ITE) publishes and updates trip generation rates for different land use types at an interval of 2-3 years. In Malaysia, the Ministry of Public Works publishes trip generation information and the latest edition was published in 2010. Both of these documents recommend that the published trip rates be verified with local data, if possible. Different researches have been conducted in the developed countries but very rare in Malaysia. This study developed trip generation rates at fast-food restaurants in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. Ten fast-food locations were studied in detail. Trip rates were related to the number of parking spaces and gross floor area. However, the trip rates did not depend on the Number of Seats in the restaurants. The trip rates found in this study were lower than the ITE Trip Generation and higher than the Malaysia Trip Generation Manuals.

When estimating the duration of the construction stage during the design stages of construction projects, empirical models are often used as a substitute for more accurate estimates based on detailed scheduling. These models, traditionally designated as time-cost relationships (TCR), derive from regressions relating the duration of concluded construction projects with characteristics that can be easily foreseen during the planning and design stages—both quantitative (e.g., cost, gross floor area, number of floors) and qualitative (e.g., type of contract). This paper reviews the approaches that have been adopted to develop the TCR models and discusses the complementary roles that statistics and engineering judgment can play towards their optimization and enhanced accuracy. This discussion includes the statistical and practical implications of (1) the quantitative independent variables used, (2) the qualitative independent variables used, and (3) the mathematical structure used. The paper aims at de...

La localización de polos generadores de viajes comerciales produce en el área de influencia impactos urbanos por aumentos de viajes motorizados que afectan la calidad de vida y el ambiente. Para mejor comprensión de este fenómeno, se reporta en el presente artículo un análisis de tasas y modelos de generación de viajes en hipermercados y supermercados efectuado con relación a variaciones en el tiempo y al porte de los establecimientos tomando experiencias de Estados Unidos. Se analizan diferentes ediciones del Trip Generation Manual publicado por el ITE (Institute of Transportation Engineers) observando que las tasas reportadas de generación de viajes motorizados disminuyen con el aumento de Área Total Construida (ATC), como variable independiente. Este efecto también se observa en modelos de Shopping Centers que abarcan los rangos de ATC de hipermercados y supermercados, lo que permite vincular estos usos del suelo. Finalmente, la relación entre generación de viajes y porte del establecimiento se prueba para casos de hipermercados en Argentina, y se formulan modelos de generación con funciones de potencia de exponente 2/3 para la variable independiente ATC. The location of commercial trip generation hubs produces urban impacts in the area of influence since they increase the number of vehicle trips that affects environment and quality of life. For better understanding of this phenomenon, it is reported in this article an analysis of trip generation rates and models in hypermarkets and supermarkets considering different periods of time and size of the establishments, taking into account USA experiences. After analyzing several editions of the Trip Generation Manual published by ITE (Institute of Transportation Engineers) it is noted that the reported generation rates of vehicle trips decrease with increasing Gross Floor Area (GFA), as the independent variable. This effect is also observed in Shopping Centers models, where the ranges of GFA include those of hypermarkets and supermarkets, allowing to relate these land uses. Finally , the relationship between trip generation and size of the establishment is checked for hypermarkets in Argentina, and generation models of power functions with exponent 2/3 for the independent variable GFA are proposed.

In 2001, the Hong Kong government implemented a concession policy allowing green and amenity features to be exempted from gross floor area (GFA) calculations in new residential properties. There have recently been community concerns that developers are using this policy to substantially increase the floor area of buildings. In the 2010–2011 policy address, the Hong Kong government decided to tighten the existing policy. This paper attempts to estimate the efficacy of the proposed GFA concession policy. Five case studies are selected to demonstrate the change in GFA concession. It is found that the proposed GFA concessionary has a positive effect in controlling the height and bulk of buildings, and a reduction of approximately 4.58% GFA concession can be achieved, compared to the existing policy. However, some negative effects are also created, including the increase of housing price (or the drop of land auction price) and the discouragement of green features.

The literature states that project duration is affected by various scope factors. Using 168 building projects carried out in Spain, this paper uses the multiple regression analysis to develop a forecast model that allows estimating project duration of new builds. The proposed model uses project type, gross floor area (GFA), the cost/GFA relationship and number of floors as predictor variables. The research identified the logarithmic form of construction speed as the most appropriate response variable. GFA has greater influence than cost on project duration but both factors are necessary to achieve a forecast model with the highest accuracy. We developed an analysis to verify the stability of forecasted values and showed how a model with high values of fit and accuracy may display an anomalous behavior in the forecasted values. The sensitivity of the proposed forecast model was also analyzed versus the variability of construction costs. The study presented in this paper was mainly funded by a research grant awarded by the Office of the Vice President for Research, Development and Innovation of the University of Alicante (resolution 22 December 2011). It has also been partially funded by the Spanish Government through the project TEXTMESS 2.0 (TIN2009-13391-C04) and by the Valencian Government through the project PROMETEO (PROMETEO/2009/199).

The accuracy of early cost estimates is critical to the success of construction projects. The selected tender price (clients' building cost) is usually seen in previous research as a holistic dependent variable when examining early stage estimates. Unlike other components of construction cost, the amount of contingencies is decided by clients/consultants with consideration of early project information. Cost drivers of contingencies estimates are associated with uncertainty and complexity, and include project size, schedule, ground condition, construction site access, market condition and so on. A path analysis of 133 UK school building contracts was conducted to identify impacts of nine major cost drivers on the determination of contingencies by different clients/cost estimators. This research finds that gross floor area (GFA), schedule and requirement of air conditioning have statistically significant impacts on the contingency determination. The mediating role of schedule between gross floor area and contingencies (GFAScheduleContingencies) was confirmed with the Soble test. The total effects of the three variables on contingencies estimates were obtained with the consideration of this indirect effect. The squared multiple correlation (SMC) of contingencies (=0.624) indicates the identified three variables can explain 62.4% variance of contingencies, and it is comparatively satisfactory considering the heterogeneity among different estimators, unknown estimating techniques and different projects

Aims to compare the energy embodied in office buildings varying in height from a few storeys to over 50 storeys. The energy embodied in substructure, superstructure and finishes elements was investigated for five Melbourne office buildings of the following heights: 3, 7, 15, 42 and 52 storeys. The two high‐rise buildings have approximately 60 percent more energy embodied per unit gross floor area (GFA) in their materials than the low‐rise buildings. While building height was found to dictate the amount of energy embodied in the “structure group” elements (upper floors, columns, internal walls, external walls and staircases), other elements such as substructure, roof, windows and finishes seemed uninfluenced.

The development of public housing has major traffic impacts on road networks, particularly in already congested cities. Hong Kong, being one of the most congested cities in the world, has a significant amount of public housing in town. Severe traffic congestion occurs in the adjacent road network if the forecast of traffic generation is not accurate. This technical note develops a multilinear regression model to forecast traffic generation for large-scale, high-density, multistory public residential housing estates in Hong Kong. Manual traffic counts were conducted at 36 housing development sites throughout Hong Kong. Regression analysis was undertaken for model evaluation. Many variables, such as the number of apartments, population, gross floor area, parking spaces, and accessibility, were included in the analysis, and the resulting model is both qualitatively and quantitatively reasonable.

in 1969 to 3.4 m3 in 1996. Most of the wood is currently applied to roof and window frames. It appears that there is a decrease in the total wood use for new OFD's and that the amount of wood products per average OFD also shows a declining tendency, counterbalanced however by a growing gross floor area and an increasing number of unsubsidized OFD's. For 1996, a balance of the total amount of wood applied in all OFD's with the input and output of wood products is presented. The total wood stock in all OFD's is estimated to amount 21 × 106 tonnes for 1996. This can be seen as a reservoir out of which wood becomes available every year through renovation and demolition of OFD's. This secondary wood (together with wood waste from newly built OFD's) can be cascaded, so that the resource wood is optimally used. The article concludes with options to increase the amount of wood used in new OFD's, by – amongst others – increasing the market shares of timber frame dwellings, wooden flooring and wooden foundation piles.

This paper describes analysis work undertaken to examine relationships between building function, building form and mechanical and electrical services cost, including the collection of raw data, and the transformation work undertaken to enable analysis. Relationships are identified between building form parameters, e.g. perimeter of external walls, gross floor area, storey heights, percentage of glazing, and the mechanical and electrical services costs for buildings of different functions (commercial, industrial and residential). There are relationships between the costs of the mechanical and electrical services installations and some building form descriptors, but the particular descriptors and the strength of the relationships vary according to the function of the building.

At project inception stage, a quick and reliable method of estimating labour resource requirements and cost, is desirable. This paper presents a fresh approach in that ambition. During inception, while design information is at a premium, cost forecasts should be within 20% of the final cost of the building. The method presented achieves this by utilising the productivity rates of contractors’ planning engineers for a ‘typical’ building type (in this instance, a concrete framed high-rise structure is featured). The estimated labour resource requirements for such a building constructed in France, Germany and the UK are calculated. Planned productivity rates form the basis of the estimate, these being used to generate a ‘Labour Estimate Factor’. This factor is defined as the man-hour requirements per square metre of the building’s gross floor area. Respective national all-in wage rates are then applied to forecast estimated budget costs, for construction in each international location. The calculations are based on a ‘typical’ design, hence, they are applicable to other buildings of similar type and form. Armed with relevant data, resource estimates could similarly be generated for alternative international locations, and, for different classifications of ‘typical’ building forms. The process will be of interest to practitioners and clients\customers of the international construction industry.

An ever changing state of design provoked by unpredictable economies and shifting cultures necessitates a new methodology of design. Data describing constructed buildings is an untapped resource of design-knowledge which, when brought into fruition, can guide designers towards efficient, synergy-oriented environments. Designers have examined attributes of previously designed projects to understand how key parameters could inform current design practices. These parameters include gross floor area, number of stories, occupancy, material type and quantities, geographic location, seismicity, climatic influences, etc. Utilizing collected data, two informative analysis tools for intelligent design are proposed. The first is the Environmental Analysis Tool™ (EA Tool™). EA Tool™ quantifies the estimated equivalent carbon dioxide emissions of structural components. The second is Parametric City Modeling (PCM). PCM estimates the usable area of a tower by computing net floor area considering major building systems such as structure, mechanical, elevatoring, etc. When these tools are applied to multiple buildings at a district scale, a new level of design and planning can be facilitated. Synergies of embodied carbon, material, form, wind, and seismicity can be incorporated into the fabric of the built environment at early design stages when decisions are most influential.

research is a case study performing the air-handler fan pressurization test in a real building. The test has been performed following an existing test method (i.e. CGSB- 149.15-96). The test building is a 5-story office with a square (32.4m x 32.4m) footprint built in 2001 at Daejeon, South Korea. The gross area of the building is 6,165m 2 and the curtain wall structure is used as the building envelope. Atrium is located at the center of the building form 1 st floor to 5 th floor, and offices are placed around the atrium in each floor. The test building has four air-handling units, but the unit located at the basement was out of order. Consequently, the 3 air-handling units installed at the 1 st floor and the 5 th floor were used to pressurize the building. To measure the whole building envelope air leakage, the SA airflow rates in each air handler, operated at the 100% outdoor air mode with closed return and exhaust air dampers, were monitored together with the building pressure. Five differential pressure gauges were installed to figure out the mean differential pressure between inside and outside of the building. This paper provides some practical information acquired in the field measurement of envelope leakage using the established air-handler fan pressurization test method.

National benchmarks are a valuable tool for assessing and monitoring energy consumption in existing building stocks worldwide, but can be time consuming and expensive to generate. I explore a low-cost alternative by coordinating building related data collected by municipalities in South Africa for billing and rates purposes, to create energy use intensities (EUI) for the existing building stock. For a sample of commercial buildings in Cape Town, I link electricity data supplied by the municipality billing department with gross floor area data from the municipality valuation (rates) department, to establish EUIs. From these I calculate benchmarks that represent typical annual electricity usage for retail and office buildings in Cape Town. In addition I identify a number of improvements to data quality and access that would enable South Africa to realise the current opportunities that exist in the structure of its building data collection. In doing so South Africa can potentially leapfrog many other countries in the development of performance-based benchmarks and rating tools for a range of building activities, positioning it at the forefront of building energy-data collection.

This is the second phase of an investigation into the significant factors influencing construction duration of projects in Hong Kong. The results of the first phase led to the conclusion that larger samples were justified to investigate further the discerned relationships. Expanded samples were obtained in this second phase by adding some reported data from Hong Kong projects to the original surveyed sample. The second phase of this study also further investigates the relationships between different project characteristic variables such as the construction duration, construction cost, total gross floor area and the number of storeys in the case of buildings. Moreover, a case study on plant utilization level and site labour productivity was carried out on a building site to explore the ‘micro-factors’ that affect construction durations. The findings are of importance to all construction industry participants as the derived models help to estimate the construction duration of a project on the basis of signi...

The interaction of plan geometry and structural configuration, a determinative factor in the earthquake behavior of buildings, has become a serious issue in the building industry in Turkey due to the poor seismic performance of R/C buildings during the latest earthquake. Consequently, designing new buildings without structural irregularities against earthquake loads is proving to be more significant. This study focuses on the effects of plan geometries on earthquake performances of buildings. In that respect, structural irregularities in the plan are investigated in detail based on the Turkish Earthquake Code (TEC 2007). The study is based on five main parametric models and a total of 40 sub-models that are grouped according to their plan geometries with excessive projections such as L-shaped, H-shaped, T-shaped and U-shaped models. In addition to these, a square model without any projections is also generated. All models are designed to have the same storey gross area but with different number of storeys. Changes in the earthquake behavior of buildings were evaluated according to the number of storeys, the projection ratios and the symmetry conditions of each model. The analysis of each structural irregularity resulted in many findings, which were then assessed. The study demonstrates that the square model delivers the best earthquake performance owing to its regular plan geometry.

Average annual electricity use per gross floor area is 236kWh/m2yr for offices and 366kWh/m2yr for hotels. HVAC and lighting account for 70–80% of total energy in fully air‐conditioned commercial buildings in Hong Kong and should be a priority for energy management programmes.

Nearly 1 million m2 of gross floor area is represented by the survey which identified four different building envelope designs. To enable judgements to be made on construction cost and time, a comparative study was carried out based on a 40‐storey generic office building.

Traffic status of a region is typically related to its land-use patterns. This paper aims at forecasting traffic generation based on urban land-use patterns that are derived from single high spatial resolution remote sensing satellite images. Since the gross floor area, building density, and the building volume cannot be obtained directly from a single satellite image, we present a new method to solve this problem. The method involves extracting the shadow of a building and measuring its length in the image, calculating the number of floors and gross floor area of a building, as well as the building volume of a traffic zone. To avoid multiple correlations among urban land use indexes, we used a Partial Least-Square principle (PLSR) method to establish the relationship model between traffic generation and urban land-use patterns. The model was tested and yielded results consistent with observations suggesting that the model is effective in forecasting traffic generation. The results also show that indexes related to land use intensity have the most significant influence on the traffic generation.

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses “Concepts of Tension on Structural Elements.” Tension on materials such as wood and steel are discussed. Various examples are given to calculate the tensile load to compute the elongation or change in length for a predetermined steel bar of known cross-section. When nuts and bolts are driven into steel plates, the inherent strength of the structure/material is weakened by some degree. With steel, internal tensile forces are generally uniform throughout the entire length of the element, yielding would result in extremely large deformations. On the other hand, if yielding commenced on the net area (where bolt holes reduce the gross area), the part of the element subjected to yield strains would be limited to the local area around the bolts, and excessive deformations would not occur. This study shows just how much loss of structural strength takes place. The process of joining one part to another by bolts/ rivets are compulsory in any structure of any magnitude. Thus, the combined effects of such joints and the resultant effect on the entire structure as a whole and of the building materials in particular are vital to the designer.

In 2013 the new Vienna Main Railway Station will be constructed on the location of the old Vienna Southern and Eastern Railway Stations which will be demolished. A large section of the area of the old stations, north of the new Railway Station, will be available for development (500,000 square-meter / 5.4 mill. square feet of gross floor area). This paper focuses on the feasibility of different public transport systems (PT systems) as supplementary systems to the existing and already planned PT systems (tram, bus and S-Bahn) for this area. The main target was a better connection between the development area, the new Main Railway Station and the Underground Station of Line U1 (Sudtirolerplatz). Four different PT systems (conveyor belt / moving walkway, APM, tram bus) were compared and finally the cable driven pinched-loop system (multiple vehicles with a short headway and a detachable grip system) was chosen as the preferred alternative. In a second stage this system was further investigated and additional routes worked out. Currently the stakeholders (City of Vienna, Austrian Railway Company OBB and the developers) negotiate the financing of the project.

The purpose of the research was to show how lean asset thinking can be applied to UK health-care\ud facilities using different measures to compare the estates contribution to the business of health-care\ud providers. The challenge to conventional wisdom matches that posed by ‘Lean Production’ to ‘Mass\ud Manufacturing’. Data envelope analysis examined the income generated and patient-occupied area as\ud outputs from the gross area of a NHS Trust’s estate. The approach yielded strategic comparisons that\ud conventional facilities management measures of cost per square metre hide. The annual cost of an excess\ud estate is conservatively estimated at £600,000,000 (in England alone). Further research to understand the\ud causes of the excess is needed. Meanwhile the research illustrates the power of an alternative way of\ud assessing facilities performance. The authors are not aware of the lean asset perspective previously being\ud applied to health-care facilities. The research shows the underlying fallacy of relying on cost per square\ud metre as the primary measure of asset performance. The results and discussion will be particularly useful\ud to senior estates and facilities managers wishing to use new measures to define strategic estates targets.

In Korea, the local traffic safety master plan has been established and implemented according to the Traffic Safety Act. Each local government is required to establish a customized traffic safety policy and share roles for improvement of traffic safety and this means that local governments lead and promote effective local traffic safety policies fit for local circumstances in substance. For implementing efficient traffic safety policies, which accord with many-sided characteristics of local governments, the prediction of community-based traffic accidents, which considers local characteristics and the analysis of accident influence factors must be preceded, but there is a shortage of research on this. Most of existing studies on the community-based traffic accident prediction used social and economic variables related to accident exposure environments in countries or cities due to the limit of collected data. For this reason, there was a limit in applying the developed models to the actual reduction of traffic accidents. Thus, this study developed a local traffic accident prediction model, based on smaller regional units, administrative districts, which were not omitted in existing studies and suggested a method to reflect traffic safety facility and policy variables that traffic safety policy makers can control, in addition to social and economic variables related to accident exposure environments, in the model and apply them to the development of local traffic safety policies. The model development result showed that in terms of accident exposure environments, road extension, gross floor area of buildings, the ratio of bus lane installation and the number of crossroads and crosswalks had a positive relation with accidents and the ratio of crosswalk sign installation, the number of speed bumps and the results of clampdown by police force had a negative relation with accidents.

As the need for international climate change negotiation and national sustainable development increases, China has announced its energy conservation and emission reduction target, in which building energy consumption is an important part. The energy consumption and total energy consumption of classified buildings in China during 2004–2013 are calculated, taking into consideration the characteristics of China's building sector. The LMDI (Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index) method is adopted to carry out the factor decomposition research and discussion of the four factors influencing the energy consumption (comprising different building types of GFA (gross floor area) per capita, the energy consumption per unit GFA, the urban population proportion, and the total population) of China's building sector. The results show that the continuous increase of GFA per capita is the primary factor influencing the increase in China's building energy consumption and the increase of urbanization ratio is the secondary factor. Meanwhile, controlling building energy consumption per unit GFA is the effective way to decrease the total energy consumption. The core method of controlling the energy consumption demands of China's building sector in the future is to reasonably control the future GFA per capita and to simultaneously take corresponding measures to reduce the building energy consumption per unit GFA.

This paper proposes damage detection algorithm of a structural health monitoring (SHM) system for a seismic isolated building. The proposed algorithm consists of the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) modal analysis and the physical parameter identification. A story stiffness as a direct damage index of the structure is identified using complex modal properties obtained by subspace-based state space model identification (4SID). This algorithm is tuned for seismic isolated structures using substructure approach (SSA). Of a seismic isolated structure, the isolation layer and superstructure are treated as separate substructures as they are distinctly different in their dynamic properties. The damage scenario for a seismic isolated structure is much simpler and more accurate than for a conventional building. Our strategy is to maximize the benefit of this simplicity. The effectiveness is verified through the numerical analysis and experiment. The method is finally applied to an existing building in Japan. The monitoring target is a 7-story seismic isolated building with the gross floor area of 18606m 2 and with total height of 31m. This study shows potential to build a simple and reliable SHM system for seismic isolated buildings.

Regional palinspastic reconstructions of north Louisiana's down-dip Hosston strata offer a basis for predicting the most likely area that might have contained deep-water sand deposition at the beginning of early Cretaceous time. Since the area's deep well control to the base of the Hosston is very limited, future regional 3-D seismic surveys will remain the preferred way of predicting individual sand trends. However, an in-depth integrated modeling and simulation analysis of the regional stratigraphic, structural, and thermal history provides one method of defining the main potential prospective trend. Furthermore, this type of analysis, in conjunction with conventional petrophysical log analysis, provides a method for (1) determining the location of specific trend segments that appear more sandprone, and (2) defining the confining window of thermal maturation where hydrocarbon potential still may remain. A predicted trend area for deep-water sand development, compatible with the present hydrocarbon maturation window, covers a gross area with dimensions of 20-40 miles (32-64 km) in width and 110-140 miles (177-225 km) in length. The area extends eastward across the State from the south flank of the Sabine uplift. Up-dip, the area is situated mainly within the southern confines of the North Louisiana Salt Dome Basin and extends down-dip to the northern edge of the South Louisiana Salt Dome Basin. On the north, its limit is expected to be governed by individual sand bodies encased and terminated in fore-shelf claystones. The trend's southern limit can be defined by its containment within thermally over-matured strata which create an economic drilling barrier.

The Amartapura I tower, part of an urban development project outside of Jakarta, is the tallest residential building in Indonesia. This 52-story building is a reinforced concrete structure with a gross area of about 50 000 m 2 . In addition, the development includes a 42-story apartment tower and a seven-story parking garage.

To examine the confinement effects of rectangular ties in reinforced concrete columns, 18 short tied columns are tested. The variables are the tie spacing, the amount and the yield strength of lateral steel, the tie configuration, and the amount and the distribution of longitudinal steel. Based on the test results, the stress-strain curves of confined core concrete are obtained and the results are compared with some models proposed by other researchers. It is concluded that these models have the limit of application to the test results. A new model is then proposed. The relationships between the test results and the calculated results are satisfactory. In this paper the effects of the strain rates and the ratio of area of the core bounded by the perimeter tie to the gross area on confinements, are also discussed through the comparison with other researchers' test data.

This paper summarizes the results of 400 fatigue tests of high-strength bolted joints that were reported in eight domestic and six foreign studies. The following variables were investigated: type of bolt and washer, bolt pattern, bolts-to-member strength ratio, initial bolt tension, yield strength, skew, joint length, and partial connection of member elements. The analysis of the data showed that, within the limits on maximum stress imposed by the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO) specifications on Vedge distance, bolt spacing, etc., both friction-type and bearing-type joints can be designed to Category B on the basis of the gross area stress range. The fatigue strength of long bolted joints with more than four bolts in a line of stress must be lowered from Category B to C. The stress range in members that transfer load through some, but not all, cross-sectional elements must be calculated using a reduced effective gross area.

The effect of recent planning rules on the scale and character of new building developments in the central business district of a city has been investigated. Relationships between characteristics such as gross floor area, rentable floor area, number of levels, rentals, site value, and building value were investigated for a group of fifty-two office buildings in the city of Melbourne, and all were found to be well-described as simple functions of site area. Average gross floor area per level showed a trend towards an upper limit of about 1600 m2, whereas the proportion of the site area used by the typical tower block construction was shown to be a function of the size of the site, and was not influenced by bonus floor areas allowed for building setbacks. Expected return on a building that is in accord with all the trends found in the study is shown to have a minimum value for buildings on a site area of 1500 m2.

The significance of the ratio of the floor area to site area in determining the economics of competing land uses in city mixed-use areas has been investigated. Theoretical analysis leads to a simple rule which defines the conditions for equal opportunity for alternative types of development in a mixed-use area. This rule is that the floor area to site area ratio limit applied to each land use should be inversely proportional to the capitalised building cost per unit gross floor area of building. The validity of the rule is demonstrated by detailed economic assessments of building developments typical of home units, town houses, flat and small office developments in areas designated mixed use in the City of Melbourne.

This report presents an analysis of the costs of fire protection in the "electrical and mechanical" works. The fire protection investment rate, the number of stories and the gross floor area, for each occupancy extracted from a data base, are shown by using the single variate and correlation analyses. The results of the analyses show that the fire protection investment rate has a wide range of variation, particularly in shops and industries, and that no correlation is found between the number of stories or the gross floor area and the fire protection investment rate in any occupancy.Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Cluster Analysis have been employed to determine the subjects of further detailed researches. By using PCA, five new characteristic features of the newly defined forty-two occupancies are discussed from fifteen variables, i.e. twelve different costs for fire protection items, the fire protection investment rate*, a specific space inside a building and a specific height of a building. The forty-two occupancies are then grouped together into eight clusters systematically, by using Cluster Analysis.Taking the above-mentioned results into consideration, office buildings are then chosen for further detailed researches.

For many large metropolitan areas, gross land area, stratified by broad land-use categories, such as residential, commercial, industrial, and open space, is usually the only readily obtainable data outside the central business district. Need exists for reliable techniques that can be used for trip-attraction estimation for such urban areas. This paper presents a set of equations that have been calibrated, using multiple linear regression analysis, to compute zonal person-trip attractions for various trip purposes as a function of gross land area. For each trip-purpose, equations have been further stratified by pseudo-employment density ranges and dummy variables that reflect the presence of major trip attractors capable of satisfying the trip purpose in question. For zones falling within very high density areas, equations have been calibrated as a function of zonal gross floor area. Equations have also been developed for estimating zonal nonhome-based and truck trip ends.