Ravi S. Srinivasan

Ravi S. Srinivasan
University of Florida | UF · School of Construction Management

Ph.D., Certified Energy Manager, LEED AP, GGP

About

105
Publications
46,007
Reads
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4,635
Citations
Introduction
I received my Ph.D. and M.S. in Architecture (Building Technology) from the University of Pennsylvania; M.S in Civil Engineering from the University of Florida. My current research focuses on the development of Dynamic Sustainability Information Modeling (Dynamic-SIM) Workbench with integrative modeling, simulation and visualization platform using extensible environments for Smart Cities - Neighborhoods - Campuses - Buildings. http://built-ecologist.com/
Additional affiliations
June 2018 - present
University of Florida
Position
  • Professor (Associate)
January 2011 - present
University of Florida
Position
  • Research Assistant
Education
June 2004 - May 2011
University of Pennsylvania
Field of study
  • Architecture
September 2002 - May 2004
University of Pennsylvania
Field of study
  • Architecture
January 2001 - August 2002
University of Florida
Field of study
  • Civil Engineering

Publications

Publications (105)
Article
With the rapid growth in the volume of relevant and available data, feature engineering is emerging as a popular research subject in data-driven building energy prediction owing to its essential role in improving data quality. Many studies have examined the feasibility of applying feature engineering methods to data-driven building energy predictio...
Article
Full-text available
Global warming is expected to increase 1.5 °C between 2030 and 2052. This may lead to an increase in building energy consumption. With the changing climate, university campuses need to prepare to mitigate risks with building energy forecasting models. Although many scholars have developed buildings energy models (BEMs), only a few have focused on t...
Article
The threats posed by climate change to Earth's ecosystems, human health, and the global economy are self-evident, and the building sector has contributed significantly to the creation of this problem. For two decades, the construction industry has attempted to mitigate its environmental impact by adopting green building strategies. However, due to...
Article
Implementing machine-learning models in real applications is crucial to achieving intelligent building control and high energy efficiency. Over the past few decades, numerous studies have attempted to explore the application of machine-learning models to building energy efficiency. However, these studies have focused on analyzing the technical feas...
Article
Full-text available
Occupant behaviors are one of the most dominant factors that influence building energy use. Understanding the influences from building occupants can promote the development of energy–efficient buildings. This paper quantifies the impact of different occupant behavior information on building energy model (BEM) from multiple perspectives. For this pu...
Article
Full-text available
Deteriorating levels of indoor air quality is a prominent environmental issue that results in long-lasting harmful effects on human health and wellbeing. A concurrent multi-parameter monitoring approach accounting for most crucial indoor pollutants is critical and essential. The challenges faced by existing conventional equipment in measuring multi...
Article
Full-text available
The existence of indoor air pollutants—such as ozone, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter, and total volatile organic compounds—is evidently a critical issue for human health. Over the past decade, various international agencies have continually refined and updated the quantitative air quality guide...
Article
Full-text available
Clay brick is a commonly used building material in China. Due to the enormous land destruction and excessive consumption of resources, such as materials and energy in the manufacture of clay brick, it is important to study its overall sustainability, i.e., in terms of impact on the environment, services, and economy. In this study, emergy analysis...
Article
In developed countries, buildings are involved in almost 50% of total energy use and 30% of global green-house gas emissions. Buildings’ operational energy is highly dependent on various building physical, operational, and functional characteristics, as well as meteorological and temporal properties. Besides physics-based building energy modeling,...
Article
Full-text available
The Chinese cement industry produced 2150 million metric tons of cement in 2014, accounting for 58.1% of the world’s total. This industry has a hugely destructive effect on the environment owing to its pollution. The environmental impact of cement manufacturing is a major concern for China. Although researchers have attempted to estimate impacts us...
Chapter
Cities are facing unprecedented growth with an increase in population and urbanization. The United Nations estimates that the global population will increase to 9.3 billion by 2050, which is an increase of 30% compared to the population in 2011 (UN, 2015). As development in dense urban areas continues, the scientific community must continue to obse...
Article
Full-text available
Building energy simulation programs are used for optimal sizing of building systems to reduce excessive energy wastage. Such programs employ thermo-dynamic algorithms to estimate every aspect of the target building with a certain level of accuracy. Currently, almost all building simulation tools capture static features of a building including the e...
Article
Full-text available
In developed countries, buildings are involved in almost 50% of total energy use and 30% of global annual greenhouse gas emissions. The operational energy needs of buildings are highly dependent on various building physical, operational, and functional characteristics, as well as meteorological and temporal properties. Besides physics-based energy...
Technical Report
Full-text available
Cool Roofs are a technology that is applied to a roof that is designed to reflect (reflect) more sunlight and absorb less heat than a standard roof. Both properties are measured from 0 to 1 and the higher the value, the cooler the roof. In 2019, the UPI cool roofs team has succeeded in getting a grant through the Million Cool Roof Challenge as much...
Technical Report
Full-text available
Part of Cool Roof project to find the impact in building occupant. This measurement was conducted in October, 2019 in Tangerang, Indonesia. There are 120 respondents involved with this project Current situation, indoor temperature = 36C, higher than outdoor temperature = 34C
Technical Report
Full-text available
Cool Roof project in Indonesia
Conference Paper
Almost 50% of global energy consumption is associated with buildings, among which buildings operational energy account for a major share. Buildings operational energy needs are highly dependent on the envelope and space functionality characteristics, as well as climate properties, which is expected to change over time. While managing buildings ener...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Global warming is expected to increase of 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052. This may lead to an increase in building energy consumption. With the changing climate, cities, communities, and university campuses need a more dynamic forecasting model to predict their future energy demands to mitigate risks. Although many building energy prediction models ha...
Article
Occupant behaviors are one of the dominant factors that influence building energy use. Traditional building energy modeling programs use typical occupant schedules that often do not reflect actual situations. Robust occupant behavior modeling that seamlessly integrates with building energy models will not only improve simulation performance, but al...
Article
When managing the energy performance of a portfolio of buildings over time, climate change can be a threat as it can cause significant changes in energy use patterns. This paper uses artificial intelligence techniques to develop an AI-based forecasting tool, Campus Energy Use Prediction (CEUP) that can help managers to forecast campus future monthl...
Conference Paper
As the growing demand for building new housing units hits the record, significant pressure from stockholders investing in the construction industry has been challenging the authority having jurisdiction (AHJ) to issue the construction permit in shorter time. As a result, some government entities throughout the state of Florida have adopted an onlin...
Article
The 21st century is witnessing a fast-paced digital revolution. A significant trend is that cyber and physical environments are being unprecedentedly entangled with the emergence of Internet of Things (IoT). IoT has been widely immersed into various domains in the industry. Among those areas where IoT would make significant impacts are building con...
Book
Community research, case studies, and schematic design proposals for a new cultural arts center in the Newtown neighborhood of Sarasota, Florida. University of Florida students and faculty in collaboration with New College of Florida, The Ringling College of Art and Design, Newtown Alive, and the City of Sarasota develop a civic program for a new c...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Studies have shown the influence of building occupants on building energy use. However, current building energy simulation tools lack dynamic and realistic occupant information inputs in modeling. The development of a robust occupant behavior model that can generate occupant schedules for use in building energy simulation algorithms will have the p...
Article
Accurate building energy prediction plays an important role in improving the energy efficiency of buildings. This paper proposes a homogeneous ensemble approach, i.e., use of Random Forest (RF), for hourly building energy prediction. The approach was adopted to predict the hourly electricity usage of two educational buildings in North Central Flori...
Article
Broadly speaking, building energy use prediction can be classified into two categories based on modeling approaches namely engineering and Artificial Intelligence (AI). While engineering approach requires solving physical equations representing the thermal performance of systems and components that constitute the buildings, the AI-based approach us...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Building sustainability has been studied and addressed over many scales in architecture. Nevertheless, it is still controversial to define and evaluate sustainable buildings. The current discourses of building sustainability downplay systematic aspects of human-dominated environments, thereby revealing little about the general nature of building sy...
Article
The authors present preliminary study in pursuance of developing a flow network-based methodology of building performance evaluation, as current efficiency-centered methods do not fully account for the complex building performance in which nature, economy, and humans are inseparably involved. Based on the principle of entropy, this study defines bu...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
In this paper, we propose a predictive maintenance scheme for centralized HVAC systems by autonomous monitoring and analyzing their acoustic emissions. Our proposed solution allows a building to be retrofitted to monitor its HVAC without having to modify the existing infrastructure. Our approach is to employ an energy-efficient, low-cost, and distr...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Building occupants are one of the most dominant variable factors in building energy consumption. However, current building performance simulation engines incorporate occupant information as simple, static profiles, which lead to discrepancy in actual energy use as occupants interact with building systems in an active manner, i.e., occupant behavior...
Article
In an effort to complement energy-efficiency oriented methods of environmental building study, this research seeks to understand building as a metabolic thermodynamic network, and investigates performance and sustainability with system-level principles and biological indicators. This approach introduces two system evaluation metrics: (i) solar emjo...
Chapter
This chapter first introduces the concept of sustainability and its dimensions, and then focuses on the assessment of sustainability, its current practices, and the existing limitations and shortcomings. It also provides a complete list of smart cities' definitions from perspective of various stakeholders. The chapter further discusses how the conc...
Chapter
This chapter discusses the state of building- and urban-scale sustainability assessment systems and what questions the concept of smart ecology for cities addresses, and describes a novel means of accounting for urban ecosystem services using a case study site. Ecosystem services are included in the form of carbon sequestration, PM10 removal, and o...
Chapter
Full-text available
This chapter proposes a Smart Audio SEnsing-based Maintenance (SASEM) system that has a single unifying intellectual focus, that is, enabling predictive maintenance of building equipment by autonomously monitoring and analyzing their acoustic emissions. Through SASEM, it aims to develop and mature the science of using acoustic signals for system as...
Book
Provides the foundations and principles needed for addressing the various challenges of developing smart cities. Smart cities are emerging as a priority for research and development across the world. They open up significant opportunities in several areas, such as economic growth, health, wellness, energy efficiency, and transportation, to promote...
Article
Full-text available
The third decade into 21st century is expected to be a very crucial phase for cities and human life particularly when 70% of the population will be living in urban settings. This has created a strong need for transitioning cities toward sustainable communities. As a result, several neighborhood sustainability assessment tools have been developed wo...
Article
Full-text available
Heat transfer analysis was performed on typical roofing assemblies using HEAT3, a three-dimensional heat transfer analysis software. The difference in heat transferred through the roofing assemblies considered is compared between two cases—without any steel fasteners and with steel fasteners. In the latter case, the metal roofing fasteners were arr...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The purpose of this article is to study the impact of seven different window systems on overall energy consumption of educational buildings. In particular, four of the windows are non-traditional liquid crystal base, namely 1) Tunable, 2) Broadband Type 1, 3) Broadband Type 2, and 4) Broadband Type 3. For the purpose of simulation, a LEED Gold cert...
Article
This study evaluates the sustainability of net-zero energy building (NZEB), in terms of ecosystems development on a global environmental scale, with ecological indices and metrics. Employing Howard Odum's ecosystems theory and emergy (spelled with an “m”), authors attempt to associate building energy consumption with thermodynamic networking of ene...
Article
Building energy use prediction plays an important role in building energy management and conservation as it can help us to evaluate building energy efficiency, conduct building commissioning, and detect and diagnose building system faults. Building energy prediction can be broadly classified into engineering, Artificial Intelligence (AI) based, and...
Article
Windows are one of the main sources of energy loss in buildings. Many types of smart windows have been developed to reduce energy consumption. However, these windows cannot control visible light and near-infrared (NIR) light independently. This study introduces a new photonic crystals glazing (PCG) system that can be dynamically controlled to achie...
Article
The accuracy of energy estimation using building energy models is contingent on user inputs. Depending on the situation, energy models may use plug-load densities that are unsubstantiated for the specific building type and space conditions. A common standard in the literature lists plug-load density for educational facilities as 1 W=square foot ðsf...
Conference Paper
During roof construction, although necessary codes may be complied with, several thermal bridges and/or other anomalies are common place that may affect envelope thermal effectiveness. Typically, while reroofing metal deck systems, old fasteners are removed and the new ones that are mechanically fastened do not use the holes created by the old ones...
Article
Using artificial intelligence (AI) models, cost effective electricity meter, and easily accessible weather data, this paper discusses a methodology for improved prediction of hourly residential space heating electricity use. Four AI models [back propagation neural network (BPNN), radial basis function neural network (RBFNN), general regression neur...
Article
Typical Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies of Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTP) too often focus exclusively on either upstream or downstream impacts while failing to connect this to a scale appropriate for integration in building assessments. A solution to this problem would offer a framework of tools to map the full scope of WWTP impacts, both u...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
At the outset, there is no question that building energy use is largely influenced by the presence and behavior of occupants. Among other, the key to realize energy use reduction while still maintaining occupant comfort is to seamlessly integrate occupant behavior in energy simulation tools with capabilities that would optimally manage building ene...
Conference Paper
Buildings play a major role in total annual energy use worldwide. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the energy performance of University of Florida (UF) buildings and assess the effects of selected Energy Efficiency Measures (EEMs) on their energy performance. For this study, a set of buildings were identified based on a space functionality...
Conference Paper
Building energy usage prediction plays an important role in building energy management and conservation. Building energy prediction contributes significantly in global energy saving as it can help us to evaluate the building energy efficiency; to conduct building commissioning; and detect and diagnose building system faults. AI based methods are po...
Article
Full-text available
In recent years, a new generation of power grid system, referred to as the Smart Grid, with an aim of managing electricity demand in a sustainable, reliable, and economical manner has emerged. With greater knowledge of operational characteristics of individual appliances, necessary automation control strategies can be developed in the Smart Grid to...
Conference Paper
Household refrigerators are cyclic appliances whose operations comprise of disturbed and undisturbed cycles. While disturbed cycles are due to the interference of human activities, undisturbed cycles often occur late at nighttime and until early morning when there is less or no interference from building occupants. Better understanding of the opera...
Book
Full-text available
The laws of thermodynamics—and their implications for architecture—have not been fully integrated into architectural design. Architecture and building science too often remain constrained by linear concepts and methodologies regarding energy that occlude significant quantities and qualities of energy. The Hierarchy of Energy in Architecture address...
Article
Full-text available
In order to achieve a material and energy balance in buildings that is sustainable in the long run, there is an urgent need to assess the renewable and non-renewable resources used in the manufacturing process and to progressively replace non-renewable resources with renewables. Such progressive disinvestment in the non-renewable resources that may...
Conference Paper
In recent years, leading sustainability rating systems have extended the sustainability certification beyond buildings by introducing neighborhood level rating systems. The rationale is that sustainable buildings start with suitable site location and how well they integrate with their neighborhood. This paper discusses a Geographic Information Syst...
Article
The purpose of this article is to assess the viability of blanket sustainability policies, such as Building Rating Systems in achieving energy efficiency in university campus buildings. We analyzed the energy consumption trends of 10 LEED-certified buildings and 14 non-LEED certified buildings at a major university in the US. Energy Use Intensity (...
Article
The message from the yearly CES consumer electronics extravaganza was clear: the list of gadgets that can be connected to the " internet of things " is growing rapidly. These smart­ home technologies have the potential to save homeowners energy – but that may not be the primary feature attracting consumers. Smart home gadgets include gadgets connec...
Article
Net zero energy is a topic that is trending in the construction industry. A part of the net zero movement garnering the most attention is K-12 public school construction. Alachua County's Meadowbrook Elementary School (K-5) is a high performance school which can achieve net zero energy status with some proven and effective practices. In this paper,...
Conference Paper
Buildings play a major role in total annual energy use worldwide. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the energy performance of University of Florida (UF) buildings and assess the effects of selected Energy Efficiency Measures (EEMs) on their energy performance. For this study, a set of buildings were identified based on a space functionality...
Conference Paper
Energy efficient building design demands a complete understanding of building envelope heat transfer along with airflow behavior. Although existing building energy modeling tools provide 2D heat transfer analysis, they fail to execute full-scale 3D heat transfer analysis and lack proper integration with Building Information Modeling BIM tools. This...
Conference Paper
Increased focus on energy cost savings and carbon footprint reduction efforts improved the visibility of building energy simulation, which became a mandatory requirement of several building rating systems. Despite developments in building energy simulation algorithms and user interfaces, there are some major challenges associated with building ener...
Article
Traditionally, building rating systems focused on, among others, energy used during operational stage. Recently, there is a strong push by these rating systems to include the life cycle energy use of buildings, particularly using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), by offering credits that can be used to achieve higher certification levels. As LCA-based t...
Article
Sustainability suggests that society should live within the limits of nature and the resources that are locally available. However, the ecological footprint of society, particularly developed countries has been enormous, necessitating the import of enormous quantities of energy, materials, and water and the export and disposal of equally enormous q...
Conference Paper
Net zero energy is a topic that is trending in the construction industry. A part of the net zero movement garnering the most attention is K-12 public school construction. Few state governments have established initiatives to incorporate and implement net zero strategies in school design and construction. There are over 15 net zero schools in United...
Technical Report
Full-text available
Including an Overview of ENERGY STAR ® Target Finder TM , ASHRAE Std 90.1, ANSI/GBI 01-2010 and ASHRAE bEQ Green Globes for New Construction (NC) advances the environmental performance and sustainability of buildings using seven assessment areas, namely Project Management, Site, Energy, Water, Resources & Materials, Emissions, and Indoor Environmen...
Conference Paper
Past and ongoing research efforts toward seamless integration of building design and analysis have established a strong foothold in the building community. Yet, there is lack of seamless connectivity between Building Information Modeling (BIM) and building performance tools. D-BIM Workbench provides an essential framework to conduct integrated buil...
Article
Approaching a Net Zero Energy (NZE) building goal based on current definitions is flawed for two principal reasons - they only deal with energy quantities required for operations, and they do not establish a threshold, which ensures that buildings are optimized for reduced consumption before renewable systems are integrated to obtain an energy bala...
Article
Magnetic motion trackers have been widely used for tracking user head / hand pose information owing to their advantages such as size, occlusion-less tracking environment and high sample rate. Yet, issues such as latency and jitter leave magnetic tracker technology unfavorable as compared to other tracker technologies. While latency is due to tracke...
Article
Eighteen K-12 schools including 9 elementary, 2 middle, and 7 high schools are assessed for actual plug-load densities. Using case study buildings, benchmark plug-load densities for K-12 schools under two new categories -classrooms with and without computers were established. For the same case study buildings, four existing approaches -NREL, COMNET...
Article
Energy analysis is an integral component of sustainable building practices. Energy analysis coupled with optimization techniques may offer solutions for greater energy efficiency over the lifetime of the building. However, all such computations employ the energy used for operations to benchmark and develop optimal solutions. This paper used emergy...
Article
Measurement science is vital in evaluating environmental impacts to assess sustainability. There are several types of frameworks, analytical tools and metrics that have been developed to assess the achievement of sustainability. The purpose of such frameworks, tools and metrics is to evaluate impact to the environment at different scales depending...
Article
The notion that raw materials for building construction are plentiful and can be extracted "at will" from Earth's geobiosphere, and that these materials do not undergo any degradation or related deterioration in energy performance while in use is alarming and entirely inaccurate. For these reasons, a particular building, like an organism or an ecos...
Conference Paper
This paper presents the development and implementation of an Energy-based Decision Support System (EDSS) that will enhance the selection process of replacement building features. EDSS includes dynamic databases that utilize data/web mining concepts, Knowledge Base System (KBS) and a thermal simulation engine. The system allows decisions to be made...
Article
This paper discusses a framework for integrated Augmented Reality (AR) architecture for indoor thermal performance data visualization that utilizes a mobile robot to generate environment maps. It consists of three modules: robot mapping, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation, and AR visualization. The robot mapping module enables the modell...
Article
Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) simulations are used to predict indoor thermal environments and assess their response to specific internal/external conditions. Although computing power has increased exponentially in the past decade, CFD simulations are still time-consuming and their prediction results cannot be used for real-time immersive visual...
Article
This paper presents an interactive speech and gesture recognition-based, immersive Augmented Reality (AR) model designed to visualize and interact with buildings and their thermal environments. The paper introduces a Human–Building Interaction (HBI) model that allows for the efficient exploration of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) data sets in r...
Article
This paper describes a decision support evolution model using Genetic Algorithm (GA) as the evolution algorithm and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) as the evaluation mechanism. The model is integrated with a visualization module to allow users to interact and select form instances as the design evolves. The advantages of such an evolutionary dec...