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71
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Introduction
Lim Yaik Wah is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the Faculty of Built Environment and Surveying, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM). His areas of expertise are sustainable architecture, daylighting, building information modelling (BIM) and sustainability performance study. He has experience of conducting and leading several interdisciplinary research and consultancy projects in sustainable architecture and BIM. His research findings have been published in leading journals and conferences in the relevant fields. He is currently leading the Building Science Lab, UTM.
Additional affiliations
June 2012 - present
Publications
Publications (71)
The architecture, engineering, construction, and operation (AECO) industry has embraced the combination of
building information modelling (BIM) and computational algorithms to advance digital transformations.
Computational BIM has enabled the development and testing of various BIM-based solutions for the building
industry. This study conducted a sy...
In tropical climates, the thermal performance of air-conditioned commercial building envelopes, particularly offices, is commonly assessed using the Overall Thermal Transfer Value (OTTV).
Designing office buildings in these regions requires meticulous attention to achieve the optimum thermal-daylight balance, which often has conflicting characteris...
Despite the advances of modular construction, the comprehensive understanding of its technical aspects in buildings is still limited, especially during the implementation process. This paper reviews the technical aspects of planning and coordination of modular construction in the building industry. The unclear onsite and practical knowledge need to...
Daylighting in buildings is a critical functional requirement in the tropical
climate. It has numerous benefits, whereas poor implementation is bound to
create high energy consumption and user's discomfort, unlike in the temperate
region. Daylight data for design is fundamental toward achieving optimal
daylighting due to variations for different lo...
Sustainable or green building rating systems were developed in many countries. Green Building Index (GBI) is the rating system developed in Malaysia, which consists of six main criteria. Material and Resources (MR) assessment is one of the main criteria that require the quantification of building materials to calculate the cost of materials and giv...
Energy Usage Index (EUI) is used worldwide as a metric to evaluate and compare energy consumption of sustainable buildings. In Malaysia, EUI is referred as Building Energy Intensity (BEI) and it is adopted by different energy standards and green building rating systems. The preliminary evaluation of BEI in the Malaysian building sector is typically...
Retrofitting building envelope thermal performance is crucial to ensure adequate interior thermal comfort of the building, minimize cooling load rate and, therefore, reduce overall building energy consumption. The retrofit process of an existing building envelope involves the design team selecting the best performing building materials and componen...
In the construction industry, Building Information Modelling is primarily viewed as a catalyst for productivity and innovation. As projects have become more and more complex, there has been an increasing concern about the concept of project complexity. Understanding project complexity and managing contractors need to improve their management level...
Home office workspaces have significantly grown in residential sectors throughout the world. Nowadays, many people worldwide are forced to work from their housing units due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the existing residential buildings were only designed for living activities, not for desk-related tasks. This is more critical...
Daylighting in buildings is a critical functional requirement in the tropical climate. It has numerous benefits, whereas poor implementation is bound to create high energy consumption and user's discomfort, unlike in the temperate region. Daylight data for design is fundamental toward achieving optimal daylighting due to variations for different lo...
The use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) for green retrofitting is a recent development due to its integrated solutions for evaluating and monitoring the environmental sustainability performance of existing buildings. It can be implemented throughout different stages of building life cycle using centralized digital models. However, the actua...
Current technological advancement and the requirement for sustainability-driven practices has birthed increased demands for accuracy in performance and assessment of energy consumption in the built environment. Energy-efficient and sustainable building projects are to large extents dependent on achieving functional solar shading and sufficient dayl...
Current technological advancement and the requirement for sustainability-driven practices has birthed increased demands for accuracy in performance and assessment of energy consumption in the built environment. Energy-efficient and sustainable building projects are to large extents dependent on achieving functional solar shading and sufficient dayl...
A base case model is a more potent dose for applied research; the passive architectural design for sustainability requires optimised experiments. However, experimenting with physical developments require construction and deconstruction until they achieved the optimal scenario. These wastes resources and time; hence, base models' development as usef...
Despite existing research on buildings with Naturally Ventilated Double
Skin Façade (NVDSF) under Malaysian climate, there are yet unanswered questions.
To develop correction factors to calculate overall thermal transfer value of buildings with DSF in Malaysia, this study evaluated the impacts of some design parameters such as window-to-wall ratio...
Green retrofit is considered an effective strategy to improve the sustainability of existing buildings which have high energy usage and carbon emission especially at urban area due to scarcity of land. Nevertheless, the conventional method of analyzing and green retrofitting the existing buildings depends on various disjointed processes and decisio...
The construction industry is one of the most growing sectors worldwide, it plays a great role in boosting the economy. The construction sector in Algeria has recently witnessed an upward growth, due to the Algerian government's vision to develop economic activity and boost the residential construction market. On the other hand, the Algerian constru...
The construction industry is one of the most growing sectors worldwide, it plays a great role in boosting the economy. The construction sector in Algeria has recently witnessed an upward growth, due to the Algerian government’s vision to develop economic activity and boost the residential construction market. On the other hand, the Algerian constru...
Computational Building Information Modelling (BIM) is a design paradigm grounded on the use of BIM-based rules and algorithms for data extraction and management, to meet the design objectives and user needs. This design approach has been applied in many aspects and disciplines within the building industry, such as spatial, geometrical, and structur...
Despite having abundance of daylight in tropical climate, many high-rise offices do not exhibit good daylight condition. Economic profits have led to the blooming of deep open-plan design which causes non-uniform daylight distribution especially in the deep area. Light pipe (LP) provides a solution to transport daylight into the interior. Daylighti...
Daylighting is required to enhance visual comfort;
whereas its illumination provides renewable functional interior
lighting for specific programmes. Hence, this study examines the
levels of daylight illumination for teaching and learning in two
lecture theatres each located at the Federal University of
Agriculture Makurdi (UAM) and Benue State Univ...
In buildings, natural ventilation is for human comfort; for odour removal, body and the structure cooling. A previous study revealed that libraries in Nigeria could not function efficiently without artificial ventilation and lighting. Artificial ventilation, aside from economic disadvantages, it is not reliable and anti-sustainability while natural...
In recent years, BIM is widely accepted by the construction industry due to its practical function and visualisation. Promotion of BIM adoption becomes overwhelmed in Architecture, Engineering and Construction industry because of its capability to improve the project quality, enhance collaboration and decrease the disputes across disciplines. Howev...
Building information modelling (BIM) is a current and newly emerging technology in Jordan. Yet, there is a lack of studies in the recent research which explored the current flow of BIM use inside architectural practices in Jordan. An essential step toward effective use of BIM, and facilitating its implementation in the architecture sector is undert...
Construction is at the highest impact in North African countries. It has seen significant growth over the last 5 years and offers interesting opportunities for all players in the industry. Algeria believes that the construction sector is the real engine of growth, it has supported the infrastructure growth and offers more facilities to foreigner in...
There has been several concerns relating to the handling and management of accumulating volume of data generated using Building Information Modelling (BIM), effectively and efficiently. The use of BIM enabled tools such as Revit, has become a generic practice for professionals to create detailed BIM models. Even with these tools, the design process...
Daylight quality and quantity in Nigeria Universities display a serious condition in
ensuring the visual comfort of students and lectures. The study focuses on the
adequacy of sustainable lighting levels for teaching and learning. Daylighting is
needed in buildings for human comfort; its illumination provides functional interior
lighting that is su...
Building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) energy has now become one of the most significant renewable energy alternatives for providing natural daylight and clean energy. As such, this study was conducted for the first time in Algeria to experimentally evaluate the BIPV window energy and lighting energy savings of a typical office building under the...
The fire has contributed positively to man development from time immemorial till today. But it also has its own negative aspect; people had lost virtually all they had in a single fire incidence including their life. It is in light of this negative side of fire that the fire service was established to prevent and extinguish fire and other emergenci...
Building envelope plays an important role to protect a building from external climatic factors while providing a comfortable indoor environment. However, the choices of construction materials, opening sizes, and glazing types for optimized sustainability performance require discrete analyses and decision-making processes. Thereby this study explore...
Daylight quality and quantity in Algerian schools show serious problems in ensuring visual comfort of students and teachers. Some problems are due to window design, which leads to excessive amount of sunlight penetration into the classrooms. The consequences are glare and heat gain. This study investigates the effective glazing pattern for classroo...
Concrete Usage Index (CUI) is one of the very used sustainability criteria related to building
materials available in the Malaysian and the Singaporean building standards. Often, CUI
assessment is achieved either by manual calculation or semi-automated methods based on
Material Take-off functionalities provided by the BIM tools. Both of these metho...
In recent times sustainability design has received a rapid attention, courtyard as one often refers to a microclimate modifier, played an important role in the concept of sustainability. However, studies show that there are various ways to check the performance of courtyard, such ways include field measurement and simulations. This is to enhance th...
As one of the many paths to achieve a sustainable built environment, the Malaysia uniform building bye-law with the new amendment stipulates that the OTTV of a building envelope with a total air-conditioned area exceeding 4000 m2 should not exceed 50 W/m2. Although, the existing formulae provided for calculating OTTV is only applicable to a traditi...
The extensive impact of construction on the environment and the increasing demand for greener buildings have pushed forward the building industry to adopt new approaches for sustainable building design. In the light of this issue, many countries developed their own green rating system for building sustainability assessment and rating. However, the...
Currently, home-based computing workspaces have developed substantially all over the world, especially in Malaysia. This growing trend attracts computer workers to run a business from their residential units. Hence, visual comfort needs to be considered in addition to thermal comfort for home workers in their residential working rooms. While such r...
Decision-making (DM) at the early building design stages is essential to optimise sustainability performances. Nevertheless, the current methods of optimising building sustainability are complex as they involve multiple design variables and performance objectives. With the development of building information modelling (BIM), complicated buildings c...
Recent studies have emphasized the importance of the courtyard microclimate to the building and the need for a comparative study on their typology in other to ascertain the best alternative. Also emphasizing that the architect choice of the courtyard typology to be adopted in his architectural design schemes should be based on performance rather th...
Accomplishment of green building design requirements and the achievement of the targeted credit points under a specific green rating system are known to be a task that is very challenging. Building Information Modeling (BIM) design process and tools have already made considerable advancements in green building design and performance analysis. Howev...
The use of the courtyard as an architectural design element is applicable in almost all building typologies in all regions of the world due to its microclimatic potentials for passive and low energy architecture. But despite its abundant advantages, research effort towards its examination in buildings is very scarce. Therefore, this study examines...
One of the most significant current discussions in the built environment, architectural practice, theory, and procedures is “Passive Design”. It is becoming very difficult to ignore the issues of passive architectural design strategies in buildings. Recent studies emphasized the need for passive architectural design strategies and the application o...
Due to fast development of computer services and online capabilities, home-based computing workspaces have increased all over the world. This developing trend has recently spread in Malaysia, persuading people to work from their houses. Hence, providing indoor visual comfort for home workers by means of daylighting in their residential units is as...
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations are becoming more popular in the study of air flow and air temperature within and around buildings unlike in the past while CFD is predominantly used in the Engineering industries. From the study of thermal comfort in both building spaces to that of pedestrian walking along the boulevard, CFD provides...
Many high-rise offices in tropical regions do not have good quality of daylighting despite having abundance of daylight. Due to large glazed façade without external shading device, the office spaces receive high indoor illuminance with non-uniform distribution and glare problems. Thereby, efforts are needed to look into effective internal shading w...
Nowadays, many researchers – especially engineers and architects – apply daylighting simulation tools during the building design process to investigate daylighting performance for a range of purposes. However, International Commission on Illumination (CIE, from the French name of the organisation, Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage) sky model...
Due to the arising concern for sustainability in built environment, numerous green building certification and rating systems are available throughout the world including Green Building Index (GBI) and GreenRE which were introduced in Malaysia in 2009 and 2013 respectively. However, the current methods of measuring, analysing and documenting the gre...
Nowadays, high-rise residential apartments (HRRA) are developing very fast in major urban areas in Malaysia. However, the layouts of these apartment units seem to be too typical and lacking certain contextual socio-environmental considerations. A residential unit accommodates more than just rooms. There are distinct spaces with various Use-Territor...
Daylight has known to bring benefits for human, psychologically and physiologically. It also provides better indoor environment quality and thus increase the performance and productivity of office workers as stated by Paevere (2009). However, due to economic reasons, the current practice of using deep open plan building has cause a dent to having d...
There is a rising concern for sustainability in the built environment. Therefore, numerous sustainable building certification and rating systems are developed throughout the world. However, the current methods of measuring, predicting, and optimising the sustainable building design have relied on a number of disjointed analyses to meet the discrete...
There are increasing numbers of Building Information Modeling (BIM) software available nowadays which change the working methods in Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry. From the stages of building design development to post-occupancy management, BIM plays an essential role in collaboration among multi-discipline professions, t...
With increasing concerns towards energy performance of existing buildings, as the biggest users of energy in the building industry, implementing appropriate green retrofit measures for lower energy consumption is crucial. Designing for better daylighting is one of the applicable strategies to achieve higher energy efficiency with low primary operat...
There is a rising concern for sustainability in the built environment. Therefore, numerous sustainable building certification and rating systems are developed throughout the world. However, the current methods of measuring, predicting, and optimising the sustainable building design have relied on a number of disjointed analyses to meet the discrete...
Daylight is dynamic, thus there is no one common solution for all scenarios. It is more critical in tropical climate where the sky is predominantly intermediate; with inconsistent clouds formations which will influence the presence of direct sunlight and daylight availability. In this study, the potential of dynamic internal shading devices for imp...
As daylight is dynamic, there is no one common solution for all scenarios. Understanding of sky conditions is the fundamental to effective daylighting. It is more critical in tropical climate where the sky is predominantly intermediate with inconsistent presence of direct sunlight (DSL). Thereby, daylighting performances of several light shelf conf...
Terraced houses account for 44% of the existing urban residential buildings in Malaysia. However, these houses have very constrained use of natural ventilation and lighting due to openings with small window-to-floor ratio. The deep plan design causes gloomy indoor spaces, low air change rate and poor indoor air quality. Hence, the sustainability of...
In tropical climate, there is actually abundant quantity of daylight but yet to be utilised. The excessively high and unpredictable external illuminance could cause non-uniform indoor illuminance distribution and visual discomfort. In order to improve daylighting quality in contemporary high-rise open plan offices, proper de-sign of internal shadin...
In Malaysia, terraced houses have been rapidly constructed since 50 years ago and account for 44% of the existing urban housings. However, these houses have very limited use of natural ventilation and daylighting due to openings with small window-to-floor ratio. The deep plan design causes gloomy indoor spaces, low air change rate and poor indoor a...
Problem statement: In recent years, daylighting simulation tools have been increasingly used by many architects, engineers and researchers to evaluate the day lighting performances of building design. Most of these tools employ CIE sky models for simulation. However, the accuracy and applicability of these tools for tropical sky are doubtable. The...