Course Reflections–Themes and Comments

Overview

Most of you were quite pleased with AE-510, liked the variety of topics and our focus more into the future than the present.  A number said it made a noticeable difference to their understanding of the profession and their career.  I couldn’t be more pleased at that outcome.

What follows are my comments on some topics that recurred in your posts.

More BIM

Seven of the twenty seven of you commented that you’d like more BIM, with a number of those saying that less focus on databases would be desirable to achieve that change.  In future versions of this course that may happen once we have the Digital Building concentration in place – that concentration will have a whole course on databases required.  Even then, though, I’ll probably retain some discussion of databases because they are such an essential tool in contemporary engineering.

Databases

As noted above, a number of you would prefer to have less emphasis on databases, with the reason being that you don’t see them as being relevant to your professional life.  Others appreciated the introduction to databases.  To the doubters I’d argue that you are going to be interacting with them throughout your career, and that therefore a working understanding of them is worthwhile.

Even the Workload

Several of you would prefer to even the workload in the courses by not having several assignments due in a week while other weeks have little or no work due.

My logic for this current arrangement is that having a week with little due allows you to look ahead and prepare future work.  Some liked that.  I’ll continue to ponder it.

Staying Aware of Technology

A number of you commented that staying aware of technology, an aspect of life-long learning, was important and that you appreciated the course for that reason.  I certainly believe that’s the case and am happy that some of you agree.

Final Class Meeting - Plan

In the final class you’ll work with the presentation groups assigned here.

Here’s the outline for the class including a link to the class survey I’d like you to take before the end of the class

Week-9–Plan for Class This Week

We’ll be using the entire class for an exercise to try and bring together everything we’ve studied this term.  Each grooup (A-E) will pick a building consider the appropriate technologies to use at each stage of the life cycle of the building.  You’ll develop and give a presentation about that “story” to the whole class.

Here’s the presentation that gives the organization for the class.

• It may develop some up to the start of class.

Groups for Week-10 Presentations

Here are the groups for the presentations in Week-10. 

I suspect that some project titles will have changed so don’t be worried if that’s the case.  I attempted to put teams with related topics together, but had to balance that with roughly equal numbers.

Group	Projects
M	#1 - integration of Revit and a structural analysis program - Krall #10 - Autodesk Storm and Sanitary Analysis - EPA SWMM Comparison - Alvarado Bastidas #7 - BIM Model of Elementary School of the Future - Houde #8 - Revit project - Wang, Li
N	#13 - Green vs. Intelligent Buildings - Mantua SD - Butler, Haddad, Ng #15 - Green Roofs - Bregande #16 - Green Roofs - Vazquez #2 - Intelligent and/or Green - Carpenter, Gulbenkian
O	#14 - Robotics in Construction - Hindes #3 - Robotics in Construction - Gonzalez, Cifligu, Gonzalez #5 - socio economic impact of the future use of robotics in construction - Meraz
P	#11 - sensor databases in a Building Management System - James #4 - sensors as a progressive way of building interaction with its surroundings  - Lancellotti, Martines, Pauliushchyk #6 - How do sensors availability can affect energy consumption in HVAC systems in buildings? - Ben-David, Morrison
Q	#12 - Equipment for energy efficiency of residences - Barry, Patel, Sawin #18 - Tedesco #9 - Philadelphia Row Home Efficiency Renovations (Green Vs. Intelligent) – Scanlon

Each team should bring paper copies of their presentation in sufficient quantity so that each person in your group can have a copy to follow along.  I suggest printing them out four slides to a page to save paper.

The plan in class is the following:

1. Each group will present to each other – using either a laptop you bring or the paper copies
2. Each group will choose one project to present to the entire class, with the other group members being prepared to explain why it was selected.
3. The selected Team will present to the entire class using their PowerPoint – 8 minutes max
4. The class will vote for extra credit for the “best” project in the following categories
   1. Most intriguing presentation
   2. Most technically competent
   3. Best use of “intelligent” technology

Skip Week-8 Blog

Last Tuesday we were going to start a topic that was to become the subject for the Week-8 blogs.  Because the lecture ran long we didn’t have time to start that discussion.  For that reason:

No Blog due Week-8.  Use the time to advance your Term Project.

Note that there is no blog in week-9 either, BUT there IS a blog due in Week-10.

A Seminar that Might Interest You–Friday 2/22/13–University Crossings-153

The technical details of this may be over the heads of many of us (myself included), but the topic is clearly relevant to the general focus of this course.

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Dr. Rahul Mangharam “Closing the loop with Cyber-Physical System Modeling”

Cyber-Physical Systems are the next generation of embedded systems with the tight integration of computing, communication and control of "messy" plants. I will describe our recent efforts in modeling for scheduling and control of closed-loop Cyber-Physical Systems across the domains of medical devices, energy-efficient buildings and programmable automotive systems. The design of bug-free and safe medical device software is challenging, especially in complex implantable devices that control and actuate organs whose response is not fully understood. Safety recalls of pacemakers and implantable cardioverter defibrillators between 1990 and 2000 affected over 600,000 devices. Of these, 200,000 or 41%, were due to firmware issues (i.e. software) that continue to increase in frequency. There is currently no formal methodology or open experimental platform to test and verify the correct operation of medical device software within the closed-loop context of the patient. I will describe our efforts to develop the foundations of modeling, synthesis and development of verified medical device software and systems from verified closed-loop models of the pacemaker and the heart. With the goal to develop a tool-chain for certifiable software for medical devices, I will walk through (a) formal modeling of the heart and pacemaker in timed automata, (b) verification of the closed-loop system, (c) automatic model translation from UPPAAL to Stateflow for simulation-based testing, and (d) automatic code generation for platform-level testing of the heart and real pacemakers. More details here. As time permits, I will describe our investigations in energy-efficient building automation in which we coordinate scheduling of controllers for peak power minimization across multiple plants. We will also briefly discuss in-vehicle and networked vehicle-to- vehicle programmable automotive architectures for the future.

Speaker Bio:

Rahul Mangharam is the Stephen J Angello Chair and Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Electrical & Systems Engineering and Dept. of Computer & Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He directs the Real-Time and Embedded Systems Lab at Penn. His interests are in real-time scheduling algorithms for networked embedded systems with applications in automotive systems, medical devices and industrial control networks. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University where he also received his MS and BS in 2007, 2002 and 2000 respectively. In 2002, he was a member of technical staff in the Ultra-Wide Band Wireless Group at Intel Labs. He was an international scholar in the Wireless Systems Group at IMEC, Belgium in 2003. He has worked on ASIC chip design at Marconi Communications (1999) and Gigabit Ethernet at Apple Computer Inc. (2000). Rahul received the 2012 Intel Early Faculty Career Award and was selected by the National Academy of Engineering for the 2012 US Frontiers of Engineering.

Travis Peyton–Week-8 Guest Speaker

Our speaker next week has much experience “in the trenches” dealing with networked sensors in the service of increasing building efficiency.  Here’s his bio from LinkedIn.

As the Owner of a consulting MEP/FP engineering firm and also an Energy Efficiency focused firm I spend my time solving design problems as well as operational problems. The dirty truth of buildings is that they are far more complex to build and manage than most people realize. My 20 years of experience allows me to help people untangle the complexity. My objective is to figure out a way to simplify how people build and run building energy systems.
Specialties:

• HVAC Engineering
• Energy Efficiency
• LEED Certifications
• Energy Star Certifications
• Computational Fluid Dynamics

Drexel Degrees

• BSAE
• BSCE (structural)
• MSCE (special topic - CFD)
• MSEngmt

www.hpegroup.com

Week-7 Class Structure

• Part-1 – Talk by Dr. Song on Relational Databases

• Part-2 – Databases – Some More Practical Material

CAT-061–Meeting Place on Tuesday 2/19 for Dr. Song’s Talk

As I announced in class, we’ll be meeting this week in a regular lecture hall, CAT-061, for our guest lecture by Dr. Il-Yeol Song.

Here’s a brief excerpt from Dr. Song’s biography.

Il-Yeol Song is a professor in the College of Information Science and Technology at Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA. He is also an affiliated professor of Computer Science Division of KAIST, Korea . He has been on the faculty since 1988, achieving Full Professor rank in 2000. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Louisiana State University in 1984 and 1988, respectively. His research focuses on the practical application of modeling & design theory to real-world problems.

His current research areas include conceptual modeling, design & performance optimization of data warehouses, OLAP, CRM, object-oriented analysis & design with UML, modeling & integration of medical & bioinformatic database, and digital forensics. He has won four teaching awards from Drexel University: Exemplary Teaching Awardin 1992, Senior Faculty Teaching Excellence Award in 2000, the 2001 Christian R. and Mary Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award in 2001, and Outstanding Instructor Award in 2011.

Databases–Starting–Class Exercises

Here are the links we’ll use in class tonight.

• Presentation – Outline of exercises
• Spreadsheet – In-Class work on exercises

Week-5 Class Outline

We’ll use this outline for the class tonight.

• Part-1 – Projects
• Part-2 – Data Representation and IFC
• Part-3 – BIM Wrapus

Updated Groups

I’ve updated the groups in both the blog and BbLearn to reflect the current class membership.  If you started with another group and wish to stay with it, feel free to do so – just let me know.

Class Survey Results

Here’s the promised summary of the class survey showing who you are, your experience and your interests.

Status

Concentration

BIM & Database Experience

Why You’re Taking the Course

Your Comments – Only two

I would have also picked the option that "Intelligent Building" sparks my curiosity
I need the professional elective but also taking the course because I thought it would be interesting.

During my first and second Co-op I worked for a company that dealt heavily with corporate energy management.  This lead to work with automated building systems and different controls used to help manage energy.  I found this very interesting and relevant to today's society.

Class Survey

In our first class I’m going to ask you to complete a survey about your experience and interests.  You’re welcome to complete it beforehand.

I’ll share the results in class and probably via blog post here.

Welcome to AE-510

We'll use this blog to post announcements and answer questions that are raised throughout this term related to AE-510.  We advise you to subscribe to it via an RSS reader such as Google Reader.  That way you won't have to go into BbLearn to see any changes.  There are many many blogs available on interesting topics.  A good place to search for others that may interest you is Technorati.

We’ll be using blogs quite a lot in AE-510 this term.  You’ll be posting to the Student Blog.  In the BbLearn instructions you’ll find specific requirements.

• Notes on weekly readings
• Progress on your term project
• Results of in-class exercises