Yimin Zhu

Louisiana State University | LSU · Bert S. Turner Department of Construction Management

Cities consume a large amount of energy and discharge massive greenhouse gas emissions, which are key areas supporting low-carbon development and combating the global warming crisis. Conducting regional impact assessments has been a trending research topic, but not without its challenges; especially, foreground data acquisition and temporal dynamic...

Scientific experiments significantly enhance the understanding of human-building interactions in building and engineering research. Recently, conducting virtual reality (VR) experiments has gained acceptance and popularity as an approach to studying human-building interactions. However, little attention has been given to the standardization of the...

Due to the enormous building stock and high energy consumption of the construction sector, green retrofitting of existing buildings has recently become a critical issue. China has implemented building retrofitting on a large scale based on various norms and standards. In practice, however, the effectiveness of the whole building retrofit program is...

Sustainable buildings are designed to reduce energy use and other environmental impacts and to provide indoor environmental conditions that maximize well-being and satisfaction among building occupants. However, occupants' comfort in and satisfaction with such buildings has been inconsistent. Evidence indicates occupants' expectations of indoor bui...

Restorative environments are known as places where human stress can be decreased through restoration of depleted psychological resources. Since the efficiency of natural environments in restoration is supported by the literature, designing a restorative built environment can be obtained by integrating natural objects into built environments. Howeve...

Occupant's movement in buildings is one of the most essential factors that influence building energy consumption. Understanding the movement of occupants in buildings is crucial for building design and operations. The advances in virtual reality (VR), especially immersive virtual environments (IVEs), offer new and cost-effective alternatives for oc...

Low-income households face long-standing challenges of energy insecurity and inequality (EII). During extreme events (e.g., disasters and pandemics) these challenges are especially severe for vulnerable populations reliant on energy for health, education, and well-being. However, many EII studies rarely incorporate the micro- and macro-perspectives...

Green walls have been used in built environments as a natural element to bring various benefits, thus improving human health and well-being. However, in conventional virtual environments, the visual connection with a green wall is the only way that this natural element could benefit humans. Unfortunately, the impact of such visual connection on hum...

The construction industry is suffering, in part, from a lack of training programs offered to the construction workforce. Unfortunately, most construction training and education research focuses on university student education. Integrating education science theory into construction workforce training has the potential to improve industry training bu...

There are always significant challenges in improving the safety culture by changing and adding additional safety protocols. The unknown impacts of COVID-19 and how it quickly spreads led the industry to institute essential safety protocols. This paper addresses two problem statements. The first problem statement is: what are the additional safety p...

Identification and quantitative understanding of factors that influence occupant energy behavior and thermal state during the design phase are critical in supporting effective energy-efficient design. To achieve this, immersive virtual environments (IVEs) have recently shown potential as a tool to simulate occupant energy behaviors and collect cont...

This paper proposes a visual analytics framework that addresses the complex user interactions required through a command-line interface to run analyses in distributed data analysis systems. The visual analytics framework facilitates the user to manage access to the distributed servers, incorporate data from the source, run data-driven analysis, mon...

Building performance models (BPMs) have been used to simulate and analyze building performance during design. While extensive research efforts have made to improve the performance of BPMs, little attention has given to their robustness. Uncertainty is a crucial factor affecting the robustness of BPMs, in which such effect needs to be quantified thr...

Recent studies have established immersive virtual environments (IVEs) as promising tools for studying human thermal states and human–building interactions. One advantage of using immersive virtual environments is that experiments or data collection can be conducted at any time of the year. However, previous studies have confirmed the potential impa...

The construction industry suffers from a lack of structured assessment methods to consistently gauge the efficacy of workforce training programs. To address this issue, this study presents a framework for construction industry training assessment that identifies established practices rooted in evaluation science and developed from a review of archi...

Workforce training is needed throughout the construction industry to create and maintain competent workers; unfortunately, most construction training and education research focuses on university student education. Integrating education science theory into construction training has the potential to improve industry training, but the status of this i...

Building energy use is highly sensitive to its occupants' energy-related behavior, including their presence and interaction with different building systems. The modeling and simulation of energy-related human-building interaction play an essential role in predicting the actual energy use of a building's operation. The present study provides a syste...

Combining immersive virtual environment (IVE) with a controlled environment is a potential solution for analyzing human thermal experience during building design. Existing studies in this field have not adequately analyzed scenarios involving stabilized comfortable and uncomfortable temperature conditions using both thermal state votes and physiolo...

Biophilic design as a new design approach promotes the integration of natural elements into the built environment, leading to a significant impact on human health, well-being, and productivity. On the other hand, scholars have explored Virtual Environment (VE) to create virtual nature and provide a complex experience of exposure to natural elements...

The building envelope is a key factor affecting the energy efficiency of buildings. Often, building envelope design requires both explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge. In practice, the tacit knowledge embedded in existing envelope design cases is significantly underused. To enhance the application of such knowledge, this paper proposes a case-bas...

The aim of this study is to study the effect of various time dependent data segments on an occupant's environmental sensation and physiological responses in both real environment (in situ) and immersive virtual environment. The study included a series of human subject experiments with 27 participants in a climate chamber. The indoor temperature was...

Indoor environmental quality (IEQ) plays a key role in determining occupants’ productivity at work; however, the analyses in the interconnected factors among building physical, attitudinal, social and demographic components in one study are lacking. To link this research gap, this study investigates these interconnected factors’ influence on occupa...

Existing building performance models (existing BPMs) often lack the capability for addressing human-building interactions in future buildings or buildings under design because they are mainly derived using data in existing buildings. The limitation may contribute to discrepancies between simulated and actual building performance. In a previous stud...

Biophilic design is a popular form of sustainable building design because of its potential to contribute to human health and wellbeing. While many design processes are now mediated by computer technologies such as immersive virtual environments (IVEs), the reliability of IVEs to create the same benefits of biophilic designs as in-situ is yet to be...

Many new tools for improving the design and operation of buildings try to realize the potential of big data. In particular, data is an important element for occupant-centric design and operation as occupants’ presence and actions are affected by a high degree of uncertainty and, hence, are hard to model in general. For such research, data handling...

Building performance models (BPMs) such as building energy simulation models have been widely used in building design. Conventional BPMs may not be able to effectively address human-building interactions in new buildings still under design. The lack of such capability often contributes to the existence of building performance gaps, i.e., difference...

Recently, it has been widely accepted by the research community that interactions between humans and cyber-physical infrastructures have played a significant role in determining the performance of the latter. The existing paradigm for designing cyber-physical systems for optimal performance focuses on developing models based on historical data. The...

Recently, it has been widely accepted by the research community that interactions between humans and cyber-physical infrastructures have played a significant role in determining the performance of the latter. The existing paradigm for designing cyber-physical systems for optimal performance focuses on developing models based on historical data. The...

Building design involves the optimization of factors affecting building performance such as building functions, comfort, safety, and energy. Building performance models (BPMs) help designers to evaluate and optimize such factors. However, the lack of design capabilities to validly describe human-building interactions for buildings under design may...

Immersive virtual environments (IVEs) have been widely used as multipurpose tools in many research areas. As design tools, IVEs have shown the potential to observe human-building interactions for buildings under design. IVEs allow researchers or designers to understand human-building interactions and refine building functions to optimally fulfill d...

Given the high rate of motor vehicle fatalities in work zones in the U.S., this study proposes the use of a virtual reality (VR) as a tool for studying safety in construction work zones. This testing environment makes possible to oversee the critical safety situations and attenuate the necessary future design adjustments. Besides, VR application in...

Building performance models (BPMs) are often used to estimate, analyze, and understand the performance of future or non-existing buildings during designs. However, performance gaps between prediction from BPMs and actual building still exist. Obviously, occupant behaviors are one of the major factors which cause the performance gaps because of seve...

Building energy simulation plays an increasingly important role in building design and operation. This paper presents an open computing infrastructure, Virtual Information Fabric Infrastructure (VIFI), that allows building designers and engineers to enhance their simulations by combining empirical data with diagnostic or prognostic models. Based on...

Route Choice Models predict the route choices of travelers traversing an urban area. Most of the route choice models link route characteristics of alternative routes to those chosen by the drivers. The models play an important role in prediction of traffic levels on different routes and thus assist in development of efficient traffic management str...

Route choice models are essential to predict traffic levels and to provide real-time traffic information. Yet, developing predictive models that are sensitive to the contextual factors are rare or impossible with the conventional type of data collection. This study proposes the use of virtual reality (VR) for generating context-aware and high-fidel...

Building performance discrepancies between building design and operation are one of the causes that lead many new designs fail to achieve their goals and objectives. One of main factors contributing to the discrepancy is occupant behaviors. Occupants responding to a new design are influenced by several factors. Existing building performance models...

Once a critical infrastructure is disrupted, it needs to be restored as soon as possible in order to minimize the influence of the disruptions on the economic development and social well-being of a society. Components of critical infrastructures are usually geographically distributed and the time required to travel between disrupted components cann...

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether a particular context factor among the variables that a researcher is interested in causally affects the route choice behavior of drivers. To our knowledge, there is limited literature that consider the effects of various factors on route choice based on causal inference.Yet, collecting data sets tha...

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a mature and widely used tool for quantifying environmental performance in the building sector. Temporal variations in building characteristics over their long life cycles significantly influence LCA results. Therefore, in recent years, dynamic LCA (DLCA) has become an emerging research field. However, DLCA research i...

Millions of migrant construction workers (MCWs) worldwide make significant economic contributions to their host countries or regions but often suffer poor housing conditions. It is therefore important to explore new ways to improve housing conditions for MCWs. Based on the concept of sustainable design, the authors propose a semicustomized design f...

Building energy simulation plays an increasingly important role in building design and operation. In this paper, we present an open computing infrastructure, Virtual Information Fabric Infrastructure (VIFI), that allows building designers and engineers to enhance their simulations by combining empirical data with diagnostic or prognostic models. Ba...

Route Choice Models predict the route choices of travelers traversing an urban area. Most of the route choice models link route characteristics of alternative routes to those chosen by the drivers. The models play an important role in prediction of traffic levels on different routes and thus assist in development of efficient traffic management str...

We propose a human avatar representation scheme based on intrinsic coordinates, which are invariant to isometry and insensitive to human pose changes, and an efficient pose transfer algorithm that can utilize this representation to reconstruct a human body geometry following a given pose. Such a pose transfer algorithm can be used to control the mo...

Construction project managers (CPMs) of contractors experience a great deal of stress. In this study, the authors used job burnout as a core indicator of the chronic psychological stress of CPMs. Based on the job demand-resource model, a theoretical framework was proposed to investigate the causal path of job burnout of CPMs, especially the role of...

From the view of slack resources, profitability is crucial for a firm to implement eco-innovation. Nevertheless, existing studies that investigate the relationship between corporation’s profitability and eco-innovation, rarely examine corporation’s profitability as a driving factor of eco-innovation. To fill this gap, the authors conducted an empir...

It is widely accepted that the prediction of building energy performance is strongly related to the occupancy parameters. Currently, existing buildings and laboratories are the main sources for collecting occupancy related data. However, using such data for predicting the energy consumption of future buildings can create a considerable amount of un...

Occupant energy behavior is a major factor affecting the energy performance of buildings, but its impact is difficult to predict during design. Although a significant amount of research has been done based on empirical and lab experiments, the performance gap of buildings, i.e., the design energy performance vs. the actual energy performance of bui...

At a dynamic construction site, conversations convey vital information including construction activities, operation status, and task performance. Even though because of information security, recording the entire conversations of a construction project is currently somewhat restricted, establishing a framework to capture and analyze construction con...

Occupant behavior data is an important factor to advance more accurate building energy simulations. To date, this type of data has been mainly collected using the field (in-situ) observations or chamber experiments. However, occupancy data is more uniquely relevant to the context from which the data has been collected. Furthermore, in-situ observat...

This paper contributes an inclusive review of scientific studies in the field of sustainable human building ecosystems (SHBEs). Reducing energy consumption by making buildings more energy efficient has been touted as an easily attainable approach to promoting carbon-neutral energy societies. Yet, despite significant progress in research and technol...

Construction project managers (CPMs) of contractors encounter a great deal of stress. The authors used job burnout as the core indicator of CPMs' chronic psychological stress. An occupation-oriented job burnout scale was developed based on MBI-GS. Then, a structural equation model was developed to investigate the cause and effect of job burnout amo...

In the domain of building science and architectural design, the immersive virtual environment is being commonly adopted due to its convenience and cost-effectiveness, especially for research relevant to occupant behaviour in a building indoor environmental control. The goal of this study is to investigate whether such an immersive virtual environme...

It is well known that higher consumption of energy generated by fossil fuel leads to more greenhouse gas emissions, known to cause global warming. Especially, recent studies show that occupant behavior is a major factor affecting the energy consumption of buildings. While building energy simulation software may predict the overall energy consumptio...

Traditional Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methods are used to conduct building environmental impact assessment (EIA) with little consideration of influential factors that vary in time and of variation in occupancy behaviors. Because the life cycle of a building is quite long, such details have significant influence on the accuracy of evaluation resul...

Many studies have investigated the impact of global warming on energy consumption. In this study, the morphing method and EnergyPlus (E+) software were used to investigate the impact of climate change on commercial building energy use under the A2 medium-CO2. emission scenario. The study simulated electricity and gas consumption of nine types of co...

A computer simulation based on the structure-behavior-function (SBF) theory is developed and tested to study its impact on teaching construction estimating. While students eventually excel at estimating, grasping basic estimating concepts often presents a challenge to many students when they start learning estimating. It requires students to have a...

To support students developing a better understanding of the complexity of construction processes, the authors proposed an experimental learning environment called Case-based Active Knowledge Environment (CAKE) and tested it against a conventional learning environment. CAKE was developed based on the structure–behavior–function (SBF) theory. Two se...

With the increasing interest in relationships between built environments and ecosystems, the environmental impacts of the construction industry have been a subject of many studies. Based on the results of previous studies using construction systems modeling and life cycle assessment, the authors treated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as an addition...

To better understand the environmental performance of columns and assist construction designers in achieving a balance between structural requirements and environmental protection, this paper assessed and compared the EI of columns constructed with two concrete types (CFST and RC) and three cross-sections (circular, rectangular and square) under di...

Recently many studies have shown interest in understanding the relationship between different project objectives in the context of sustainable development in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. However, those studies were mainly focused on the relationship at the building level. The authors of this study argue that a bet...

Construction projects have project conditions that change over time, like the availability of resources. These changes have the potential to influence the selection of construction methods, which in turn significantly affects the chance of successfully accomplishing project objectives, such as the time of completion, cost, and sustainability. In ad...

The main purpose of this paper is to determine a procedure or methodology for validating the effectiveness of immersive virtual environment (IVE) applications to studies of occupant behavior. In recent decades, IVE experiments have become increasingly popular in various fields of study such as healthcare, education, science and engineering. They ha...