Simulation modelling in a BIM environment: The case of school re-opening during Covid-19 pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic influenced the way that buildings are used and experienced. In particular, educational facilities were among the most affected by the pandemic in terms of use processes. This paper presents a methodology developed to reorganise spaces in a school building, a real case study, to allow safe reopening. Social distancing and availability of learning spaces were taken into account to simulate the use of the educational facility according to the emergency protocols. Based on a digital survey of the existing building, a building information model was generated and used as a basis for spatial analysis and crowd and agent-based simulations. Additionally, interactive games and training videos were developed as communication tools to inform end users about the new rules to be respected inside the building. The digital approach adopted for the analysis of use processes as well as for communicating the results to the end users allowed them to experience the school fruition processes within a virtual environment before the school reopening. Future works could deal with the application of the same methodology in other schools, as well as in different contexts, going beyond the specificity of the pandemic emergency, and for other types of buildings. © 2023 ICE Publishing: All rights reserved.

A Hybrid Agent-Based Model to Simulate and Re-Think Post-COVID-19 Use Processes in Educational Facilities

The paper presents the development and application of a hybrid multi-agent system to simulate people’s behavior in educational facilities, to support decisions and strategies related to the post-COVID-19 scenarios. Complex use phenomena as the ones occurring in schools and educational facilities, required mixed, hybrid simulation models where the agent-based component, usually controlling single users/bots, is combined with a process-driven engine that ensures correspondence of the users’ behaviors to the general scenario. In our case, hybridization includes also the direct interaction of the intended users through a virtual reality 3D game, to further increase accuracy and adherence to the reality of the simulated phenomena. This paper also presents the application of the simulation model to a real case study, a school in Italy, where use processes have been simulated and currently under assessment during the school opening. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

CESS: Closed environment safety system

The worldwide spread of the COVID-19 disease has required the adoption of restrictions to protect public health. These rules have heavily changed the access to working places, damaging in-person business, which is still the core of global and local economies. From large corporations to small companies the main challenge is to keep working places open and functional to maintain productivity and efficiency standard under the application of the anti-Covid-19 measures. This paper describes the design, prototyping work, simulations and test procedures of a low-cost system designed to monitor the fluxes of people and air quality of target areas (e.g., company's offices) to warn about the exposition to risky condition and to model crowd flows around a building to advise virtuous behaviour and preserving safe working conditions. To do that, the system merges the data produced from different suits of sensors to create safe working environments and keeping in person business running. © 2021 ACM.

INDOOR MOBILE MAPPING SYSTEM AND CROWD SIMULATION TO SUPPORT SCHOOL REOPENING BECAUSE OF COVID-19: A CASE STUDY

Occupancy analyses represent a crucial topic for building performance. At present, this is even true because of the pandemic emergency due to SARS-CoV-2 and the need to support the functional analysis of building spaces in relation to social distancing rules. Moreover, the need to assess the suitability of spaces in high occupancy buildings as the educational ones, for which occupancy evaluations result pivotal to ensure the safety of the end-users in their daily activities, is a priority. The proposed paper investigates the steps that are needed to secure a safe re-opening of an educational building. A case study has been selected as a test site to analyse the re-opening steps as required by Italian protocols and regulations. This analysis supported the school director of a 2-to-10 year old school and its team in the decision-making process that led to the safe school re-opening. Available plants and elevations of the building were collected and a fast digital survey was carried out using the mobile laser scanner technology (iMMS - Indoor Mobile Mapping System) in order to acquire three-dimensional geometries and digital photographic documentation of the spaces. A crowd simulation software (i.e. Oasys MassMotion) was implemented to analyse end-users flows;the social distance parameter was set in its proximity modelling tools in order to check the compliance of spaces and circulation paths to the social distancing protocols. Contextually to the analysis of users flows, a plan of hourly air changes to maintain a high quality of the environments has been defined.