A Data Analytics Study on Building Characteristics Impacting Energy Consumption in Single-Family Attached Homes

San Antonio, Texas is the seventh largest city in the United States with a population of 1.4 million people, and ranked among the fastest growing cities. To assess the implications of past and present building practices within the residential sector on future energy consumption, the energy utilization of single-family attached homes (SFAH) in Bexar County, Texas is studied. The available dataset includes 3932 SFAH records representing about 33% of the total number of SFAHs within the county. The study is based on pairing and analyzing data at the individual building level from a variety of sources including the buildings’ physical characteristics, access to fuels, and monthly energy consumption. The results indicate that the area of conditioned space, presence of swimming pools, number of stories, presence of fireplaces, fuel-type, and number of shared walls are a significant factor on the energy consumption of single-family attached homes. In terms of energy consumption, all-electric two-story homes sharing two walls are the most energy efficient among SFAHs. This study can aid comprehensive master planning efforts for developing sustainable communities by highlighting key features of SFAHs and making the case for higher density housing as a viable and more energy efficient alternative to single-family detached homes (SFDH).

Building Morphological Characteristics and Their Effect on the Wind in Beijing

An urban boundary layer model （UBLM） is improved by incorporating the effect of buildings with a sectional drag coefficient and a height-distributed canopy drag length scale. The improved UBLM is applied to simulate the wind fields over three typical urban blocks over the Beijing area with different height-towidth ratios. For comparisons, the wind fields over the same blocks are simulated by an urban sub-domain scale model resolving the buildings explicitly. The wind fields simulated from the two different methods are in good agreement. Then, two-dimensional building morphological characteristics and urban canopy parameters for Beijing are derived from detailed building height data. Finally, experiements are conducted to investigate the effect of buildings on the wind field in Beijing using the improved UBLM.

Effect of Using Land Use Data with Building Characteristics on Urban Weather Simulations:A High Temperature Event in Shanghai

Land use data with building characteristics are important for modeling the impacts of urban morphology on local climate.In this study,an extreme heat event in Shanghai,China,was simulated by using a WRF/BEP+BEM(Weather Research and Forecasting/Building Effect Parameterization+Building Energy Model)model.We incorporated local climate zone(LCZ)land use data that resolved urban morphology using 10 classes of building parameters.The simulation was compared to a control case based on MODIS(Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer)land use data.The findings are as follows:(1)the LCZ data performed better than the MODIS data for simulating 10-m wind speed.An increase in building height led to the wind speed to decrease by 0.6-1.4 m s^(-1)in the daytime and by 0.2-0.7 m s^(-1)at nighttime.(2)High-rise buildings warmed the air by trapping radiation in the urban canyon.This warming effect was partially offset by the cooling effect of building shadows in the day.As a result,the 2-m temperature increased by 0.8℃ at night but only by 0.4℃ during the day.(3)Heterogeneous urban surfaces increased the 50-m turbulent kinetic energy by 0.4 m^(2) s^(-2),decreased the 10-m wind speed by 1.8 m s^(-1)in the daytime,increased the surface net radiation by 45.1 W m^(2)-,and increased the 2-m temperature by 1.5℃ at nighttime.(4)The LCZ data modified the atmospheric circulation between land and ocean.The shadowing effect reduced the air temperature differences between land and ocean and weakened the sea breeze.Moreover,high-rise buildings obstructed sea breezes,restricting their impact to a smaller portion(10 km along the wind direction)of inland areas compared to that with MODIS.

CARRY FORWARD THEORETIC BUILDING OF PEOPLE-TO-PEOPLE DIPLOMACY WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS

The checkered history of China’s diplomacy since 1949 shows that people-to-people diplomacy has played a unique role–supplementing government-to-government diplomacy and even going before it sometimes.Since the beginning of the reform and opening up,people-to-people diplomacy has prospered in China,emerging as an essential part of the country’s diplomacy as a whole.China is now entering

Integrated GIS, Remote Sensing and Survey Data for Damage Assessment of Buildings in Tsunami Event, Ishinomaki City, Japan

The 2011 Tsunami event in the eastern coastal area of Japan caused a huge amount of damages or devastations on buildings. To this date, several field surveys have been conducted which provide detailed information about inundation areas and building damage characteristics in attacking east coastal areas by this tsunami. In this study, building damage data of Ishinomaki city, with special attention to the plain coast affected area, are classified and analyzed using data surveyed by the Ministry of Lands, Infrastructure and Transportation of Japan (MLIT) for more than 52,000 structures. The classification includes information on six levels of damage, four types of building materials and damages due to tsunami inundation for each building material which are necessary information for an effective hazard mitigation. Notably, damage level percentage distribution of different building materials is plotted for different inundation depth ranges in several sets of figures. This graphic illustration not only shows a better resistant performance of Reinforced Concrete (RC) and steel buildings over wood or other buildings for all inundation depth ranges, but also can explain clearly the inundation-induced damage behavior for each building material as well as the threshold depth for each damage level. Moreover, this research contains an analysis of vulnerable areas due to the coastal topography and the geographical factors. Surveyed data provided by Geospatial information authority of Japan (GSI) that classifies Ishinomaki plain coast area into three classes are compared with the damage map produced using an Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) methodology in ArcGIS 10.2 environment. The influence of key geographical features on tsunami-induced building damage, notably Kitakami river and water canals flooding, is taken into account with respect to the weighting of factors. A good agreement produced building damage map with surveyed GSI data shows the power of a GIS tool based on the AHP approach for tsunami damage assessment. The results of this study are useful to understand the damage behavior of buildings with different structural materials located in coastal areas vulnerable to the tsunami disaster.

Radon in Rented Accommodation and Variables Determining Its Level

Indoor radon levels were measured in 221 homes in rented accommodation. In addition, buildings were registered for a series of variables describing building characteristics and used materials. The mean year value of the indoor radon level was 30.7 （1~250） Bq/m3. The indoor radon level exceeded 100 Bq/m3 in 5.9% of the homes. Of the investigated variables, only homes in single-family terraced houses, were statistically significant. Approx： 75% of homes exceeding 100 Bq/m3 indoor radon level had levels between 100 and 200 Bq/m3 and 25% had indoor radon levels exceeding 200 Bq/m3. Significant differences in indoor radon levels were found in homes located in multi-occupant houses. Additionally, the risk of indoor radon levels exceeding 100 Bq/m3 in homes in multi-occupant houses was found to be very low, but the risk was the highest on the ground floor in a building constructed with slab on ground.

Influence of Geological Factor on Indoor Radon Concentrations in Dwelling of Queretaro,Mexico

In this study, radon-222 concentrations were measured within 34 houses distributed in the northern, southern, and central areas of the city of Querétaro in 2007. The objective of this study was to establish the spatial distribution of radon with respect to geological faults and its relation to certain environmental variables. For each sampling site, the radon-222 concentration was analyzed as a function of various climate variables, relative humidity, temperature, and atmospheric pressure, in addition to the ventilation of the house and distance of each site from any geological faults in the area. A multivariate statistical technique was used to analyze these variables based on two components. For component 1, the relative humidity and temperature had the greatest weight, 0.677 and 0.492, respectively, while for component 2, the greatest weights corresponded to radon and the temperature with 0.693 and 0.609, respectively. The average radon concentration across the entire sampling period was 38.92 Bq/m3, the minimum detected value was 6.01 Bq/m3?for site 91GAG0607, and the maximum detected value was 225.95 Bq/m3?for site 91CAM20907. This last value is outside the standards permitted by the Environmental Protection Agency of the United Stated, which is 148 Bq/m3?for indoor environments. With respect to geological faults and their relationship to radon-222, the concentrations for the sampling sites had no relationship to the closeness or distance to these faults.

Architectural Research and Reutilization of Lvshun Public High School Site

Public high school in Lvshun is a typical example of modern school architecture in Dalian during the Japanese colonial period. This paper summarises the historical background, development and current situation of the old site of public high school in Lvshun by approaches such as historical literature research and present situation surveying. Then, it analyses the characteristics of public high schools in Lvshun in four aspects: architectural scale, plane function, architectural style and material structure. After that, the school is judged to have four dimensions of value: historical, technological, and cultural and use value. In the end, this paper explores the protection and reuse of the building from the aspects of authenticity, suitability and integrity. It is intended to provide a theoretical basis for the protection and reutilization of modern architectural heritage.