Automated checking of building requirements on circulation over a range of design phases

This study focuses on the development of a new, formal method for the automated checking of occupant circulation rules in U.S. Courts Design Guide. The theoretical goals of this study are to provide a logical foundation upon which one can build an automated checking module for circulation rule checking and that is capable of outlining the rule-validation process independently from its diverse implementation. The theory for circulation rule checking is devised to represent the process of the validation of a building design in the development stage. The theory deals with issues of validation caused by the lack of data in the development of a building design.As a preliminary research to figure out the main issues in the development of a generic circulation rule checking module the research started from detailed review of occupant circulation rules in U.S. Courts Design Guide. Based on the review of the occupant circulation rules, this study classifies the rules by types according to the common properties of occupant circulation rules and then defines the scope of occupant circulation rules. It also defines the conceptual structure of the rules within this scope to create a framework within which consistent rules can be interpreted and based on the conceptual structure of the rules, it develops a computable representation of occupant circulation using parameters intended to define the conditions of the rules.To overcome the limitations in the modules developed in the initial investigation, this thesis focuses on the generalization of checking to cover models in all design stages including preliminary concept design and final concept design. To achieve these goals, this thesis focuses on the following issues.Building design in the development stage can vary from the diverse perspective of completeness. It can have diversity in completeness at the building entity level, such as whether it has doors, walls, aggregated space, and so forth. It also varies according to the completeness of department levels, floor level, and building system level, such as the MEP system. From an almost immeasurable amount of diversity, the cases meaningful for occupant circulation rule checking have been investigated. The strategy to deal with lack of information in each case has also been studied.One of the issues for the generalization of the checking method is to develop a generic algorithm flexible enough to cover the diversity of models in the development stage. The algorithm should also be independent of the diverse way of modelling and implementation. To achieve this goal, the checking process is described logically based on the abstracted representation of requirements in the rules and the building models in the development stage. The checking algorithm is developed based on the logical representation of the checking process. With this approach, the checking algorithm is independent from the implementation method of a building model and programming languages.For representing routes in a building, this thesis adopts two types of graphs: the connectivity graph and the adjacency graph. The connectivity graph is intended to represent currently existing routes in a building, and the adjacency graph is designed to capture potential connections between spaces according to the design developments. By using these two graphs, the thesis validates a model not only as it is but also as it could be.In order to have more flexibility of implementation in terms of the extension of the type of building model and rules for circulation checking, object oriented representation of building model and circulation rules are developed. Even the main rule for circulation checking method is the rules in U.S. Courts Design Guide, the object oriented classes structure of checking method is developed from the logical process of circulation rule checking so that the checking method can be extensible to cover other type of rules in future needs without changing the existing structure.The contribution of this thesis is that it is the first study pertaining to the logical representation of the automated checking of circulation rules considering design development. The logical representation of checking process is used to develop an object-oriented class structure of the rule checking system with the intention of extending it to cover other types of rules by defining subclasses of the existing classes without changing the main structure. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...