Research and Publications
Ongoing Research Projects and Funding Sources
International Network of Networks for Well-being in The Built Environment (IN2WIBE)
NSF AccelNET Catalytic Award #1931238 2019-2021
IN2WIBE is a catalytic network with the shared understanding that well-being is strongly dependent on the links between the built environment and the personal, cultural, economic, and social forces that drive health, productivity, satisfaction, and comfort. Well-being in the built environment is a broad research area, and there exist myriad approaches and solutions that emerge from different disciplinary perspectives. IN2WIBE aims to foster effective, robust, and widely applicable solutions and will connect and educate future building scholars and data scientists on well-being in buildings while informing better building design, construction, operation, and use. This will be achieved through leveraging resources from 34 existing networks and partners in 5 continents (N. America, Africa, Europe, Australia, and Asia), comprising a total of 17 countries. Through strategically designed activities, IN2WIBE will cultivate and foster connections through the development of community consensus.
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Zheng, O’Neill, Associate Professor, Texas A&M University
Burçin Becerik-Gerber, Professor, University of Southern California
Simi Hoque, Associate Professor, Drexel University
Giulia Pedrielli, Assistant Professor, Arizona State University
Jin Wen, Professor, Drexel University
Teresa Wu, Professor, Arizona State University
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Join the community at IN2WIBE.net
Integrated Urban Metabolism Analytical Tool
NSF CAREER #1554531 2016-2022
Cities today contribute almost two-thirds of the world’s primary energy demand. By 2030, this fraction is projected to increase to three-quarters, matching the urban sector’s expected share of global energy-related CO2 emissions. The current urban outlook demands a comprehensive understanding of urban sustainability policies to address climate change and energy security. Our research is aimed at developing an Integrated Urban Metabolism Analytical Tool (IUMAT) to measure, evaluate, and predict the impacts of energy and water use, land use, and transportation systems at an urban scale. IUMAT is designed to systematically quantify aggregate impacts in terms of performance metrics, such as GHG emissions and energy use.
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Design Supplement Award: NSF #2015207
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Post-doctoral Scholar: Nariman Mostafavi, Drexel University 2016-2018
Ph.D. researcher: Shideh Shams Amiri
Undergraduate summer researcher: Maya Mueller (Summer 2020)
Former Ph.D. researchers: M. Farzinmoghadam, Ph.D., UMass Dept. of Landscape and Regional Planning 2011-2016; N. Mostafavi, Ph.D., UMass Dept. of Environmental Conservation 2010-2016
Climate Change Impacts on Buildings
NSF CBET collaborative research award #2035176 (2020-2023)
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Buildings are an important cultural resource that are now facing greater risks due to regional climate impacts that affect their performance and resilience. Current simulations of building performance use weather input files based on the past thirty years of climate observations. These 20th century climate conditions may be inadequate when considering how buildings are meant to function in the 21st century. We are developing predictions of how buildings will perform based on different climate modeling scenarios developed by the IPCC. Our simulations show how these buildings will be impacted by variability in temperature, humidity, wind, and rainfall. Building simulation is a key computational method that can contribute to more efficient, responsive, and environmentally conservative buildings. Our models are used to analyze the performance of different components such as the heating, cooling, lighting, and electrical energy systems, as well as understand the uncertainties of these predictions. This knowledge can be broadly applied towards understanding the risks and vulnerabilities against climate change and offering decision tools to evaluate the economic and environmental costs of managing buildings.
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Ph.D. researcher: Hamed Yassaghi
Collaborators: Melissa Bilec, University of Pittsburgh
Fine Arts Center, University of Massachusetts-Amherst (K. Roche)
Modeled by Dr. Carl Fiocchi in REVIT for analysis in DesignBuilder
Thermal, Acoustic, and Luminous Comfort in Hospitals
NSF CPS collaborative research award #2038706 (2021-2023)
Hospital room
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Hospitals are at best neutral or at worst, uncomfortable places to work. Poor thermal, acoustic, and luminous environments negatively impact comfort and well-being. Environmental controls for heating, cooling and ventilation, noise attenuation, and lighting in hospitals are based on outdated models of how hospitals function, who occupies these settings, and what energy expenditures are necessary in a modern day medical facility. As a result, hospital rooms are just functionally adequate, often likely to be too cold or hot, too loud, or too bright. This project investigates the impact of thermal, acoustic, and luminous comfort on patient comfort and satisfaction in hospital rooms. The overall objective is to measure the impact of air speed, mean radiant temperature (MRT), air temperature, and humidity on the thermal comfort of hospital patients; to measure the impact of noise decibels on the acoustic comfort of hospital patients; and to measure the impact of lighting levels on the luminous comfort of hospital patients. By correlating thermal, acoustic, and luminous measures with patient responses, we can more efficiently meet the needs of patients and define strategies that optimize their sense of well-being. Our study will be used to inform medical facility administrators about the influence of environmental controls in hospital rooms on patient outcomes, and will be used to develop a decision matrix to prioritize patient-centered environmental design strategies that more closely align with a patient’s comfort and health.
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Collaborators: Rachel McCarthy, Mary Alcarez, Abigail Duncan, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Olga Boric-Lubecke and Victor Lubecke, University of Hawaii-Manoa
Teresa Wu and Guila Pedrelli, Arizona State University
Jin Wen, Drexel University
Sara Girotto, St. Joseph's University
10 Most Recent Journal Publications
Shams-Amiri, S., Mueller, M., & Hoque, S. (2022). Investigating the Application of a Transportation Energy Consumption Prediction Model for Urban Planning Scenarios in Machine Learning and Shapley Additive Explanations Method, Journal of Sustainability Research, 4(1): e220001.
Mostafavi, M., Fiocchi, J., Dellacasa, M., & Hoque, S. (2021). Resilience of Environmental Policy amidst the Rise of Conservative Populism, Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 1-16.
Awada, M., Becerik-Gerber, B., White, E., Hoque, S., O'Neill, Z., Pedrielli, G., Wen, J., & Wu, T. (2021). Occupant health in buildings: Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the opinions of building professionals and implications on research, Building and Environment, 207 (A), 108440.
Pang, Z., Becerik-Gerber, B., Hoque, S., O'Neill, Z., Pedrielli, G., Wen, J., & Wu, T. (2021). How Work from Home has affected the Occupant’s Well-Being in the Residential Built Environment: An International Survey Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic. ASME Journal of Engineering for Sustainable Buildings and Cities. 2(4).
Yassaghi, H., Wen, J., and Hoque, S. (2021). Partitioning Climate, Users and Thermophysical Uncertainties from Building Energy Use: A Monte Carlo & ANOVA Approach. Buildings. 12(2): 95.
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Mostafavi, N., Heris, M.P., Gándara, F., and Hoque, S. (2021). The Relationship between Urban Density and Building Energy Consumption. Buildings. 11(10): 455.
Pearsall P., Hoque, S. et al. (2021). Advancing equitable health and well-being across urban-rural sustainable infrastructure systems. npj-Urban Sustainability. 1(1): 26.
Shams-Amiri, S., Mottahedi, S., Lee, E., and Hoque, S. (2021). Peeking Inside the Black-Box: Explainable machine learning applied to household transportation energy consumption. Computers, Environment, and Urban Systems. 88:101647
Yassaghi, H., & Hoque, S. (2021). Impact Assessment in the Process of Propagating Climate Change Uncertainties into Building Energy Use. Energies, 14(2), 367.
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Awada M, Becerik-Gerber B, Hoque S, O'Neill Z, Pedrielli G, Wen J, et al. (2020). Ten questions concerning occupant health in buildings during normal operations and extreme events including the COVID-19 pandemic. Building and Environment,188:107480.
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