Fuzhan Nasiri

Concordia University Montreal · Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Road and highway networks are among the most critical infrastructures that significantly impact society. Therefore, predictive analysis is needed to investigate these networks' future performance to better understand their efficient maintenance management and resource allocation. In this research, a dataset containing the provincial highway network...

Purpose This paper extends the authors’ previous research work investigating resilience for municipal infrastructure from an asset management perspective. Therefore, this paper aims to formulate a pavement resilience index while incorporating asset management and the associated resilience indicators from the authors’ previous research work. Design...

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in urban areas are of great interest due to their significant role in forming ground-level ozone and adverse public health effects. Emission inventories usually compile the outdoor VOCs emission sources (e.g., traffic and industrial emissions). However, considering emissions from volatile chemical products (e.g., s...

Healthcare facilities are one of the fundamental elements in the society that require high level of efficient maintenance programs to preserve their structural integrity along their service life. A cost-effective maintenance, repair and rehabilitation (MR&R) activity is highly capitalized on the capacity of the deterioration model to forecast the f...

With the advancements in renewable energy and energy storage technologies, the energy hubs (EH) have been emerging in recent years. The scheduling of EH is a challenging task due to the need to incorporate uncertainties at energy supply and load side. The existing model-based optimization approaches proposed for the above purpose have limitations i...

Microgrids (MGs) can be used as a solution to ensure resilience against power supply failures in electricity grids caused by extreme weather conditions, unavailability of generation capacities, and problems with transmission components. The literature is rich in research focusing on strengthening the planning of microgrids based on overall load dem...

The intermittency nature of renewables adds several uncertainties to energy systems and consequently causes supply and demand mismatch. Therefore, incorporating the energy storage system (ESS) into the energy systems could be a great strategy to manage these issues and provide the energy systems with technical, economic, and environmental benefits....

The Vapor Compression Refrigeration System (VCRS) is one of the most critical systems in buildings typically used in Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems in residential and industrial sections. Therefore, identifying their faults and evaluating their reliability are essential to ensure the required operations and performance in...

Building decarbonization initiatives have gained momentum in recent years as many cities and governments are establishing net-zero emission targets. Although many municipalities have already introduced energy requirements and metrics to promote new high performing and net zero constructions, decarbonization of existing residential buildings suffers...

Biomass has great potential to meet greenhouse gas reduction and fuel supply security in the future. Although the grate biomass combustors are increasingly deployed worldwide to generate energy from solid biomass, challenges in understanding the system operation to some extent have remained. This paper analyzes the effects of fuel composition uncer...

Several research studies have ranked indoor pollution among the top environmental risks to public health in recent years. Good indoor air quality is an essential component of a healthy indoor environment and significantly affects human health and well-being. Poor air quality in such environments may cause respiratory disease for millions of pupils...

This article provides a state-of-the-art review on emerging applications of smart tools such as data analytics and smart technologies such as Internet-of-things (IoT) in case of design, management and control of energy storage systems. In particular, we have established a classification of the types and targets of various predictive analytics for e...

Prioritization of maintenance and rehabilitation interventions according to their urgency, expected improvements, costs, and downtimes is a necessary task in facility management. This is particularly of interest in critical facilities requiring nondisrupted operations or minimal stoppages such as hospital buildings. Maintenance scheduling is curren...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to minimize cost and minimize building condition. Weibull distribution approach was employed to generate deterioration curves over time. The third floor of Concordia University’s Engineering And Visual Arts (EV) Complex in Montreal, Canada, served as a case study to test the maintenance model and determine the o...

Optimal load dispatching plays a vital role in improving the reliability and efficiency of renewable energy systems. This research presents a Mixed‐Integer Linear Programming (MILP) approach for optimizing a power system's daily operational cost while increasing its resilience, including a wind turbine, battery, and conventional grid. Deep learning...

Purpose This study highlights the findings of an empirical study to investigate waste factors (WFs) affecting the performance and delivery of construction projects in developing countries. The objectives of this study are to identify non-physical WFs in developing nations and rank the identified factors based on their degree of influence on the key...

During the normalized phase of COVID-19, droplets or aerosol particles produced by infected personnel are considered as the potential source of infection with uncertain exposure risk. As such, in densely populated open spaces, it is necessary to adopt strategies to mitigate the risk of infection disease transmission while providing sufficient venti...

Facility managers of hospitals face complex maintenance decisions as they deal with a multitude of maintenance requests in an environment of limited resources and segmented information. Responding to a growing demand for maintenance, on one hand, and lack of proper maintenance management systems, on the other, has led to delays in repair and mainte...

In this paper, a combined biomass-geothermal system, intended to supply heat in low enthalpy areas with an extremely cold climate, is optimized based on a nonlinear optimization methodology. A Multiple Criteria Decision-Making technique is coupled with a two-step optimization to achieve the most exploitable energy with the least pollution and cost...

The development of decision support tools for use in the maintenance management and renewal prioritization of healthcare facility assets is considered a highly challenging task due to the multiplicity of uncertainties and subjectivity levels available in such a decision-making process. Accordingly, this study utilizes a combination of Neutrosophic...

During the normalized phase of COVID-19, droplets or aerosol particles produced by infected personnel are considered as the potential source of infection with uncertain exposure risk. As such, in densely populated open spaces, it is necessary to adopt strategies to mitigate the risk of infection disease transmission while providing sufficient venti...

Conventional approaches towards energy-system modelling and operation are based upon the system design and performance optimization. In system-design optimization, the thermal or mechanical characteristics of the systems providing for the heat or electricity demands were derived separately without integration with the energy source and without inte...

The recent global events have demonstrated the vitality of keeping the hospital buildings and healthcare facilities in a properly maintained state in order to ensure the best care possible for patients of all types. However, the unlimited demand for healthcare facilities is often challenged by tight budgets and limited resources. Therefore, the mai...

Transmission pipelines comprise a major part of a gas network, conveying natural gas within jurisdictions, and across international boundaries. In the United States, more than 10,000 failure incidents have been reported in gas transmission pipelines in a 20-year period from 1996 to 2016 leading to a cumulative property damage of more than $748 mill...

This paper analyzes a moving grate biomass boiler operating with three alternative waste fuels, including biomass pellets, wood waste, and refuse-derived fuel (RDF) from a combination of thermal, economic, and environmental perspectives. The focus of this paper is on system functionality adaptation to retrofit the current systems operational condit...

Deterioration and aging associated with building assets are becoming major concerns in most countries as their building portfolios continue to increase and expand. Healthcare facilities are a special case of building assets that inherit a significant criticality and complexity within its operation and maintenance regimes which makes monitoring the...

Healthcare building infrastructure in Canada is currently facing two problems: Aging and Deferred Maintenance, leading to an increase in unexpected failures causing interruptions in the hospital operation which in turn affects the health and safety of its occupants. Despite the efforts exerted to overcome this, solutions cannot be easily implemente...

Construction projects result in the generation of wastes, which can be broadly classified into physical and non-physical wastes. Non-physical wastes present a different challenge than physical waste due to their intangible nature. This study focuses on understanding the importance of the classical Lean Construction (LC) wastes and their degree of i...

Healthcare facilities are constantly deteriorating due to tight budgets allocated to the upkeep of building assets. This entails the need for improved deterioration modeling of such buildings in order to enforce a predictive maintenance approach that decreases the unexpected occurrence of failures and the corresponding downtime elapsed to repair or...

Lean construction (LC) targets the reduction and eventual removal of non-value adding activities (otherwise known as waste) in construction projects to increase value to stakeholders. The application of LC principles could lead to significant gains in road maintenance projects where the effect of delay in service is profound and the consequences ar...

Although renewable technologies are progressing fast, there are still challenges such as the reliability and availability of renewable energy sources and their cost issues due to capital intensity that hinder their broad adoption. This research aims at developing a configuration-sizing approach to enhance the cost efficiency and sourcing reliabilit...

Solid biomass combustors are being increasingly deployed for energy supply to help global greenhouse gas reduction, despite the fact that it still suffers from some uncontrolled deflections. Biomass composi-tions variability is a factor that can provoke uncertainty in the combustion properties while it has not been enough regarded so far. This pape...

Uncertainty Quantification of Biomass Composition Variability Effect on Moving-Grate Bed Combustion

Urban railways play a critical role in the daily life of citizens. However, extensive deterioration of mostly aged systems complicates the management of this type of infrastructure in coping with increased demand and restricted upgrade and renewal budgets. The main objective of this research is to develop a comprehensive network-level decision-maki...

Construction workspace management has been a big issue in research and practice in recent years due to the need to improve productivity and safety by reducing spatio-temporal clashes in the management of construction projects. The complexities and dynamic nature of construction sites make construction workspace management difficult due to the conti...

Purpose One of the most critical infrastructures is a data center (DC) because of it having many servers, computers and other equipment. DCs provide online services for various companies in the information technology (IT) industry. DC facilities should provide reliable online services while addressing the required quality and performance level cons...

This paper proposes an availability-based maintenance scheduling for a vibrating-grate biomass boiler. The main objective is to minimise the maintenance programme cost while maintaining the system availability at a targeted level. A modified failure density function was employed to deliberate the effect of maintenance on the reliability of the comp...

A large portion of natural gas is transferred through transmission pipelines. For these facilities, in the United States, external corrosion has led to more than 1700 failures in the past decades, causing a property damage of approximately $189 M. Such numbers highlight the importance of maintaining such facilities in safe conditions to postpone co...

The complex, uncertain, and dynamic nature of the maintenance management environment is a source of concern to facility managers in hospitals due to the unexpected failure of building components, daily arrival of maintenance orders, and changes in schedule. In such circumstances, centralized systems become far-fetched because of their top-down appr...

According to Canada Infrastructure Report 2016, 62.6% of roads in Canada are in a good condition, nevertheless, with current investment rates, significant road networks will suffer a decline in its condition and will be vulnerable to sudden failure. Accordingly, this paper tackles the pavement resilience from an asset management perspective and aim...

Improving energy performance of buildings is of particular importance in new construction and existing buildings. Building refurbishment is considered a practical pathway towards energy efficiency as the replacement of older buildings is at a slow pace. There are various ways of incorporating energy conservation measures in buildings through refurb...

This article reviews the current state-of-the-art literature dealing with numerical modeling and experimental analysis of the moving grate biomass combustors. The attentions are mostly paid to the modeling of the thermochemical conversion in the fuel bed. The changes in the fuel characteristics are also tracked during the combustion. The review can...

Transportation developments are shifting from the construction of new highways to the reconstruction of existing ones. The reconstruction of elevated urban highways requires the use of heavy construction equipment, and therefore, planning the equipment workspace becomes very important to ensure that there are no delays to the project completion ari...

Utilizing appropriate materials and assemblies in building envelope components could lead to energy savings, increased durability, and sustainability gains. This study aims at providing an integrated assessment framework to compare three different types of exterior wall systems: wood frame, insulated concrete forms (ICFs), and pre-cast insulated co...

There are many pathways of incorporating energy conservation in buildings through refurbishment projects. An integrated assessment-optimization framework is presented to direct energy management decisions in refurbishment projects. The focus will be on the case study of alternative passive measures, as part of refurbishment projects, to reduce the...

A significant share of the total primary energy belongs to buildings. In many buildings, the energy usage can be significantly reduced by adopting passive strategies. These methods might not need additional capital investment. For instance, an integrated building renovation approach, in which passive methods are implemented, can reduce the energy c...

As assets begin to deteriorate either due to age or additional demands based on urbanization, it becomes imperative to renovate or replace them to ensure that they continue to deliver the level of service required by the end user. Asset management, therefore, becomes a very important consideration in the development of nations. However, there is an...

Water Supply Networks (WSNs) are critical infrastructure systems that provide water to the public. Maintaining functionality of WSNs is desirable especially after hazard events to facilitate firefighting and rescue activities. Aging of WSNs increases their vulnerability and the likelihood of function interruption. There is a growing need to investi...

Alleviating poverty in low-income and developing nations is integral to social stability, attracting investments and generating employment opportunities which in turn elevate people's well-being. Employment could be encouraged through a combination of direct (travel time and training) and indirect measures (social institutions like childcare and el...

The ability of construction projects in satisfying the key performance indicators of time, quality and cost have long been the subject of concern to industry practitioners and the academia over the years. Many project management tools, techniques, and processes have been suggested as means of managing projects to ensure that they better meet the ex...

Metro systems play a crucial role in the movement of millions of passengers worldwide as commuters rely on a fast, reliable, and convenient underground railway for their daily transportation. However, in many cases, the quality of the service that can be delivered, including performance, attractiveness, and customer satisfaction, are constrained by...

This study investigates the availability-based reliability-centered maintenance scheduling of domestic (building-integrated) hot water (DHW) of HVAC systems. The keeping system availability (KSA) method is adopted, which provides maintenance scheduling by incorporating the effect of the maintenance activities. This method has been developed for mai...

The objective of this research is to provide a review on the methodologies proposed to predict failure parameters for oil and gas pipelines. Such a review gathers, categorizes and analyzes the models proposed to predict different failure parameters.

This study aims at introducing a holistic resilience-based asset management approach that can be applied to assess the resilience of water supply network. A System Dynamics (SD) model is developed to provide a novel tool that supports both strategical and tactical decisions related to WSNs. The output of this model facilitates the decisions that ai...

Resilience, Water Supply Network, System Dynamics, Evolutionary Optimization

Municipalities strive to encourage citizens to use public transit, in order to reduce road congestion,prevent road collisions and mitigate air pollution. However, public transit competes with popular automobile trips. Classical modeling of transit demand looks only into the generalized cost of transit (i.e. walking time, waiting time, in vehicle...

Water reuse is an obvious and important response to water scarcity in cities. It takes many forms – potable and non-potable, centralised and decentralised, direct and indirect, and planned and unplanned. How different forms of reuse emerge and stabilise depends on technical, economic, social, environmental and political factors, and specific local...

Canada’s railway industry has invested more than $20 billion since 1999 in order to improve the safety of users as a top priority. Although accident rates have decreased, user’s safety could be impacted by other indicators related at the same time to comfort such as: vehicle’s vibrations, air quality and noise levels. Comfort and safety are mutuall...

Purpose The complexity and criticality of healthcare services highlight the importance of maintenance management function in healthcare facilities. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on maintenance management of healthcare facilities and hospital buildings to provide an organized literature review and identify gaps from the persp...

Alleviating poverty in low-income and developing nations is integral to social stability, attracting investments and generating employment opportunities which in turn elevate people’s well-being. Employment could be encouraged through a combination of direct (travel time and training) and indirect measures (social institutions like childcare and el...

Although by implementation of new principles, tools, and techniques infrastructure asset management has been improved and expanded rapidly, however, key concerns resulted by new economic, and sustainability issues, still must be taken into account to develop a comprehensive framework for public transit system management. Existing researches focus m...

The economies of the countries of the world are constantly changing and the need for more efficient and effective delivery of construction projects has forced stakeholders to seek ways of improving the productivity and maintaining relevance. This research focuses on highlighting the impact of buildability assessment and value management on the perf...