Amirhosein Ghaffarianhoseini

Auckland University of Technology | AUT · Built Environment Engineering

This study evaluates the efficacy of long short-term memory (LSTM) neuralnetworks in predicting indoor temperature and humidity dynamics fornaturally ventilated office environments in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam(10.8231°N, 106.6297°E). The tropical climate of this location, characterizedby consistently warm temperatures year-round, provides a specifi...

Purpose Urban backyards hold both aesthetic and practical value, offering significant potential for native biodiversity conservation within cities. Homeowners, as the primary managers of these spaces, play a crucial role in determining whether their backyards contribute to ecological sustainability by planting native species. This study aims to inv...

Improving outdoor thermal comfort is a critical aspect of enhancing the quality of outdoor spaces in various urban contexts. Despite Auckland, New Zealand, having a moderate climate, projections based on various Representative Concentrations Pathways (RCPs) suggest a significant future warming trend for the city. Analysing outdoor thermal comfort p...

Outdoor thermal risks in urban areas are increasingly critical due to climate change and urbanization. This study identifies high-risk areas at Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand, using a multi-layered approach integrating hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. Locations with Physiologically Equivalent Temperature (PET) exceeding 23°C wer...

Outdoor thermal risks in urban areas are increasingly critical due to climate change and urbanization. This study identifies high-risk areas at Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand, using a multi-layered approach integrating hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. Locations with Physiologically Equivalent Temperature (PET) exceeding 23°C wer...

Despite Digital Twins' (DTs) growing popularity in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Operations sector, currently, only a limited number of studies have focused on the applicability and potential offered by DT to deal with the whole Construction Supply Chain (CSC) challenges, justifying the significance of the present study. As a resp...

Purpose Autonomous vehicles (AVs) have the potential to transform the infrastructure, mobility and social well-being paradigms in New Zealand (NZ) amid its unprecedented population and road safety challenges. But, public acceptance, co-evolution of regulations and AV technology based on interpersonal and institutional trust perspectives pose signif...

Urban Consolidation Centres (UCCs) have delivered transferrable sustainability benefits in the urban freight logistics domain. Construction logistics have a high transport component, which has acknowledged social and environmental externalities, in addition to cost implications. The low cost-high volume nature of construction materials points to su...

Any building creates a unique micro-environment. Educational buildings tend to offer a wide range of purposes, with more operational functions than most other buildings. This paper focuses on the occupant’s experiences of Indoor Thermal Comfort (TC) in educational buildings in Auckland, New Zealand. The TC can impact the occupant’s experience and t...

Purpose Given the distinct and unique climates in these countries, research conducted in other parts of the world may not be directly applicable. Therefore, it is crucial to conduct research tailored to the specific climatic conditions of Australia and New Zealand to ensure accuracy and relevance. Design/methodology/approach Given population growt...

Cities are expected to face daunting challenges due to the increasing population in the near future, putting immense strain on urban resources and infrastructures. In recent years, numerous studies have been developed to investigate different aspects of implementing IoT in the context of smart cities. This has led the current body of literature to...

Purpose-This study aims to identify the primary research areas of modern methods of construction (MMC) along with its current trends and developments. Design/methodology/approach-A combination of bibliometric and qualitative analysis is adopted to examine 1,957 MMC articles in the Scopus database. With the support of CiteSpace 6.1.R6, the cluster...

City information modelling (CIM) offers a digital depiction of the urban environment, empowering stakeholders to critically review and optimise the performance of energy. In the pursuit towards Zero Energy Cities (ZECs), CIM becomes an essential instrument of this process. However, despite the promise it delivers, the uptake is slow. This research...

The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) offers promising ways to meet healthcare needs of patients recovering in their own homes and other environments. Interconnected and resilient smart systems offer innovative and cost-effective ways of supporting patients by capitalizing on available devices and networking infrastructure. However, future environm...

The New Zealand housing market has become a public concern due to the significant surge in housing prices. The steep increase in housing prices has presented significant difficulties for individuals seeking homeownership, particularly for first-home buyers. Therefore, this research aims to identify the crucial factors of the New Zealand housing pri...

Assessing the efficacy of mitigation measures for the improvement of the daytime microclimate has been advised extensively, especially in hot and humid tropical regions as an effort to a) reduce the cooling demand of buildings and b) enhance outdoor livability by improving the thermal comfort of pedestrians. The latter has been investigated in this...

Despite being established in Vietnam for over a decade, LOTUS has not achieved the same popularity as other international green building rating systems (GBRS), such as LEED and Singapore's Green Mark (GM). Consequently, concerns about its effectiveness persist. This study employed a systematic literature review to compare and analyse the effectiven...

This paper presents a comprehensive understanding of current digital twin (DT) implementations in the construction industry, along with providing an overview of technologies enabling the operation of DTs in the industry. To this end, 145 publications were identified using a systematic literature review. The results revealed eight key areas of DT im...

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the optimization of window and shading designs to reduce the building energy consumption of a standard office room while improving occupants' comfort in Tehran and Auckland. Design/methodology/approach The NSGA-II algorithm, as a multi-objective optimization method, is applied in this study. First, a comparis...

In the automotive industry, autonomous vehicles (AVs) are an advanced innovation that has the potential to revolutionise the existing transportation system significantly. In addition, AVs provide benefits for society, the economy, and the environment. As far as Lean Construction (LC) is concerned, these features appear promising. LC's primary objec...

High-rise buildings consume more energy and have greater environmental impacts, emphasising the need to adopt best practices during the design stage concerning BIM employment. However, despite strong support from the literature, little is known about the applications of BIM in high-rise buildings at the early design stage. Therefore, this paper aim...

Arid and hot regions, like Saudi Arabia, utilize up to 60% of the country’s energy to regulate buildings’ indoor comfort. Energy efficiency is a long-term sustainability measure that is part of the government’s Vision 2030 strategy. A standard method of improving the thermal performance of buildings is through the use of insulation materials. Consi...

Purpose To maximise acoustic comfort in a classroom, the acoustic conditions of the space should be variable. So, the optimal acoustic state also changes when the classroom changes from a study environment into a lecture environment. Passive Variable Acoustic Technology (PVAT) alters a room’s Reverberation Time (RT) by changing the total sound abso...

Purpose This paper critically analysed 195 articles with the objectives of providing a clear understanding of the current City Information Modelling (CIM) implementations, identifying the main challenges hampering the uptake of CIM and providing recommendations for the future development of CIM. Design/methodology/approach This paper adopts the PR...

Purpose Informed by acoustic design standards, the built environments are designed with single reverberation times (RTs), a trade-off between long and short RTs needed for different space functions. The novel intelligent passive room acoustic technology (IPRAT) has the potential to revolutionise room acoustics, thus, it is imperative to analyse and...

Despite the remarkable contribution of urbanisation to socioeconomic development, it has complicated negative impacts on the environment. The growth of urbanisation has noticeable adverse impacts on urban microclimate and parameters generating the urban heat island (UHI) effect. These impacts, exacerbated by the gradual influences of global warming...

Applications of the Internet of Things (IoT) are rapidly utilized in smart buildings and smart cities to reduce energy consumption. This advancement has caused a knowledge gap in applying IoT effectively by experts in the built environment to achieve energy efficiency. The study aims to provide an extensive review of IoT applications for energy sav...

Despite the remarkable contribution of urbanisation to socio-economic development, it has complicated negative impacts on the environment. The growth of urbanisation has noticeable adverse impacts on urban microclimate and parameters generating the urban heat island (UHI) effect. These impacts, exacerbated by the gradual influences of global warmin...

The construction industry’s inherent fragmentation fuels Construction Supply Chain (CSC) complexity. Logistics form an essential part of the CSC in terms of costs and project management. In turn, transportation accounts for more than half the logistics costs due to construction materials being low-cost/high-volume, and most other logistics processe...

Purpose This research is focused on solar-powered (smart) urban furniture, and it is aimed at providing a classification of it and to understand the main problems related to the adoption of these devices and where future design-led research should focus. Design/methodology/approach The methodology involved a selection of international case studies...

This study aims to provide a comprehensive overview of three-decade research developments in the field of Net-Zero Energy Buildings (NZEBs) by using bibliometric analysis techniques. The specific objectives of this paper are to: (1) identify the most influential researchers, sources, and countries in this field; (2) identify the main thematic resea...

Increasing demands for full-glazed façades have motivated designers/ researchers to propose advanced control strategies for dynamic shading systems to mitigate the negative impacts of excessive sunlight penetration into interior spaces. Nevertheless, in line with the latter, outside view is commonly obstructed as a result of utilizing conventional...

Green Star NZ is New Zealand’s primary rating system that determines and assesses how environmentally friendly non-residential buildings are. New Zealand portrays itself as a clean and green nation; however, its uptake of the Green Star NZ assessment tool has been slow. This research examines the current strengths and limitations of the New Zealand...

Autonomous Vehicles [AVs] will emerge as a powerful catalyst, thus forming a potentially disruptive technology opening doors to technological, socio-cultural and legal challenges. Present-day research is mainly focused ontechnological orientation, lacking the predominant social and behavioural linkages. NZ being a testbed of innovative technologies...

Purpose Green building information modelling (BIM) has been highlighted as an essential topic owing to its potential benefits. However, both Green Star and BIM are still in their earlier stages in New Zealand. This paper aims to examine and evaluate the benefits, barriers/challenges and solutions for the integration of Green Star and BIM in New Zea...

Simulated architectural environments provide immense value in technology validation and optimisation in smart buildings. Automated variable acoustics (intelligent acoustic technology) as a novel, emerging technology would benefit largely from simulated environments. Notably, such technology exhibits opportune application for use in classrooms, sugg...

Purpose Informed by acoustic design standards, the built environments are designed with single reverberation times (RTs), a trade-off between long and short RTs needed for different space functions. A range of RTs should be achievable in spaces to optimise the acoustic comfort in different aural situations. This paper proclaims a novel concept: Int...

Purpose Dynamic planning and scheduling forms a widely adopted smart strategy for solving real-world problems in diverse business systems. This paper uses deductive content analysis to explore secondary data from previous studies in dynamic planning and scheduling to draw conclusions on its current status, forward action and research needs in const...

Over the last decades, Australia has taken several measures to tackle the increasing trend of energy use in residential buildings. Recently, the Trajectory for Low Energy Buildings has been endorsed aiming to reduce energy usage in residential buildings. However, the primary focus of this trajectory is on decreasing operational energy without consi...

Perception of space is a multifaceted process, where humans may direct their behaviour within the environment through the influence of sensory stimuli, cognitive processing and subjective evaluation. Yet in streets, perceptual studies commonly focus on the physical structure of the environment while undermining the psychological and subjective comp...

This research assesses the effect of outdoor parameters, including solar radiation and shading and glazing configurations, on indoor thermal comfort and air quality in multi-purpose halls in Auckland, New Zealand. The Design of experiment (DOE) method by using CFD simulation has been used for this study. Input parameters are windows length, overhan...

Urban Consolidation Centres (UCCs) have delivered transferrable sustainability benefits in the urban freight logistics domain. Construction logistics have a high transport component, which has acknowledged social and environmental externalities, in addition to cost implications. The low cost-high volume nature of construction materials points to su...

Air movement affects thermal comfort both by increasing evaporative loss through the skin and heat transfer between the body and surrounding environment through convection. Generally, in cold climates, it is best to avoid wind to better control the thermal environment. However, crafted passive airflow is essential for providing fresh air and natura...

Purpose Recent studies have found that the high demand for air-conditioning usage in tropical countries has affected the thermal adaptability of building occupants to hot weather, and increased building energy consumption. This pilot study aims to investigate the effects of transient thermal environment changes on participants' sensory and physiolo...

The implementation of green roof system is still comparatively new in Malaysia despite the extensive probable advantages covering environmental, social, ecological, and economic aspects. This project was initiated to study a site in University of Malaya which worked as an experimental and computation living lab focusing on achieving the environment...

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is an emerging technology which is expected to improve building refurbishments throughout the life cycle of an existing building facility. Refurbishment projects accounts for over 50 percent of cost of the project throughout the life cycle of an existing facility, thus requiring a sustainable platform to holisti...

Purpose: This research aims to explore the perspectives of the key actors in the New Zealand construction industry towards BIM adoption. Specifically, four themes are examined, including what BIM is; BIM knowledge and understanding; benefits of BIM adoption; and challenges/barriers to BIM adoption. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative approa...

Due to the ever-increasing demand for urbanized life and fast-constructed built environments, the urban quality of life and psychological well-being of the inhabitants is often neglected. This has led to the current built environment that we spend most of our lives in, without adequate investigation into how it impacts the human mental health and w...

Malaysia is frequently affected by the annual flooding event caused by the seasonal monsoon which accounts for significant losses. Flood risk, exposure and damage potential are increasing, causing the level of poverty and vulnerability to rise. The annual occurrence of the flood hazard has forced residents to prepare beforehand to help them spring...

Uptake of Building Information Modelling (BIM) for complex refurbishment projects is foreseen as an essential resolution which will possibly increase the BIM adoption rate and eventually play a major role in transforming the construction industry. This anticipation is primarily based on the success of BIM with regards to complex construction operat...

Although academia has concentrated on issues related to green building recently, Green Star, considered as the primary green rating system in New Zealand, has not caught adequate attention, leading to its slow development with a modest number of certified projects. This research aims to explore the perspectives of the key stakeholders in the New Ze...

This paper aims to review the achievements of previous studies addressing the capability of atriums for providing adequate levels of daylight and visual comfort. This study also performs several simulations using Radiance IES-VE software predominantly with the target to support the literature review results. The analysis discusses ways of daylight...

This paper aims to review the achievements of previous studies addressing the capability of atriums for providing adequate levels of daylight and visual comfort. This study also performs several simulations using Radiance IES-VE software predominantly with the target to support the literature review results. The analysis discusses ways of daylight...

In recent years, there has been a radically growing attention for optimizing the sustainable design of built environments towards tackling the large-scale environmental concerns of cities. This contribution holistically explores the current status of the construction industry in Auckland, New Zealand, and critically argues the lack of adequate atte...

Building information modelling is perceived as a remarkable innovation in the built environment sector with a handful of expectations towards refurbishment of existing buildings. Despite the motivations and acceptance of BIM within Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC), this promise seems to be hampered by less consideration of environme...

This paper describes the early stages of a research project aiming to develop a BIM framework for practical assessment. Globally prestigious models adopted to evaluate the development of an organization including Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA), European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM), and Australian Business Excellence Fr...

Despite its notable role in the exacerbation of urban climate, Urban Heat Island (UHI) was poorly addressed, communicated and integrated into local urban policies of many developing countries. Such scenario often queried the level of UHI understanding amongst the key players who were involved in urban policy formulation. Hence, a qualitative study...

The rapid urban expansion in East-Asian cities has increased the need for comfortable public spaces. This study presents field measurements and parametric simulations to evaluate the microclimatic characteristics in a university campus in the tropical climate of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The study attempts to identify the thermally uncomfortable area...

Building Information Modelling (BIM) has rapidly developed in the construction industry recently; it is also considered as one of the core concepts in the Industry 4.0. However, BIM understanding is always seen as a significant problem for BIM implementation. Therefore, this paper aims to provide the insights into BIM awareness of the construction...

Neither Building Information Modelling (BIM) nor Green Star certification has yet to be widely adopted in the New Zealand construction industry. This paper, therefore, aims to encourage their development by examining the relationship between BIM adoption and Green Star certification. The qualitative approach using 21 semi-structured interviews with...

Emerging immersive technologies comprising Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality (VAMR) and Electroencephalography (EEG) environments are creating a revolutionary and non-invasive Brain Robot cum Human-Computer interaction paradigms. The burgeoning rise of autonomy in the vehicles and expected introduction of self-driving vehicles will underpin the...

Inspection of sustainable performance during post-construction has become increasingly essential. However, conventional operation and maintenance processes are limited with a high probability of inaccurate manual building inspections and the lack of real-time input of dynamic factors. In this regard, engagement of an Integrated Knowledge-based Buil...

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is an emerging technology. Its application in the refurbishment of building project can significantly improve the construction workflows throughout the project lifecycle. Despite the promising benefits of BIM adoption for the entire Architecture, Engineering, and construction (AEC) industry, this process seems t...

Health and well-being are vitally important aspects of people centric building design and are the roots of productivity. Sick building syndrome (SBS) is a collection of factors that can negatively affect physical health in several ways. Besides physical health is also related to psychological well-being because the human body is one interactive bio...

Canopy-level Urban Heat Island (UHI) is a well-documented effect on cities’ microclimate and has become an emerging challenge for Greater Kuala Lumpur (GKL) due to different thermal properties between urban and the surrounding rural settings. This study evaluated the temporal variations of UHI Intensity (UHII) in three selected urban stations with...

The future is now. While complex forms were once very difficult and costly to design, produce and assemble using conventional construction methods, computerised technologies have now revolutionised the manufacturing of construction components. Evolution of digital fabrication Information technology and information and communications technology (IT/...

Urban Heat Island (UHI) phenomenon has become a regional issue for Greater Kuala Lumpur (GKL) as a number of studies reported an elevated air temperature in highly dense urban areas compared to the rural peripheries. An initial literature survey of UHI studies in GKL revealed an insufficiency and paucity of field measurements for more than one deca...