Lifecycle Models for Mission-Ready Sustainable Facilities: SMART Resource Utilization Architecture

Published Nov. 20, 2012
The Lifecycle Model for Mission Ready Sustainable Facilities incorporates monitoring and control systems for buildings, allowing for more accurate performance analysis and facilities management.

The Lifecycle Model for Mission Ready Sustainable Facilities incorporates monitoring and control systems for buildings, allowing for more accurate performance analysis and facilities management.

For Efficient Performance Analysis and Facility Management

Buildings are most expensive in the operations and maintenance (O&M) phase, and O&M costs increase annually as these buildings age. Data and building information models (BIMs) that could improve efficiency are rarely incorporated into O&M procedures, as there is very little interoperability between the design, engineering, business process systems, and facilities management of buildings. As a result, the U.S. capital facility industry loses billions of dollars each year from ineffective building O&M. 

Saves Money throughout the Facility Lifecycle

Led by ERDC’s Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL) in Champaign, Ill., Lifecycle Models for Mission Ready Sustainable Facilities is a cross-laboratory research and development project. The project leverages the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) Building Controls Domain model to establish a cross-domain facility Life-Cycle information exchange (LCie) model. The project also integrates the LCie model into business tools to enable better building management across the entire facility life cycle. The IFC model contains over 700 entity types including electrical heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC); structural and mechanical domains. In a recent release, the IFC includes property sets for monitoring and products such as sensors, actuators, controllers, alarms, and unitary control elements such as thermostats. 

Provides Comprehensive Analysis for Accurate Performance Evaluations

Data from supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems are critical for evaluating the performance of a facility. Accurate facility performance analysis requires the fusion of data across all control domains. Current specifications for multiple, individual, and customized building SCADA systems however, focus only on individual domains such as HVAC, electrical and security.

The SMART Resource Utilization Architectureis a building information fusion framework that enables “plan VS check” analyses of buildings as they are used. This framework offers information across all of the necessary building domains, including electrical, heating, HVAC, structural, and mechanical elements. 

Features

The SMART Resource Utilization Architecture framework consists of the following components:

  • Building Automation Modeling information exchange (BAMie) IFC model view definition (MVD) (balloted January 2013 as a Building Smart Alliance standard) — Specifies how the IFC model may be used to represent SCADA product information, network addressing, performance history, device configuration and physical/logical connections.
  • Specifications for predictive and analytical functions that derive usable intelligence from the SMART Resource Utilization Architecture framework.
  • Architectural design of an integration platform for combining IFC models, networked sensor readings, signal processing algorithms, reports, and user interfaces.

Success Story

Lifecycle Models for Mission Ready Sustainable Facilities supports efficient facility management by the DOD, the majority stakeholder in the US federal capital facility industry and responsible for approximately 560,000 facilities worldwide. These advances in efficiency have increased interoperability between design, engineering, monitoring, and management, allowing industry stakeholders to save countless financial resources.

 

ERDC Points of Contact

Questions about SMART Resource Utilization Architecture?

Contact: Chris Bogen, Ph.D.
Email: Chris.Bogen@usace.army.mil
Phone: 601-634-4624

Questions about Lifecycle Models for Mission Ready Sustainable Facilities?

Contact:  William E. East, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE
Email: Bill.W.East@usace.army.mil
Phone: 217-373-6710


Intro to the OHWM Manual

Video by Jared Eastman
Introduction to the Interim Draft of the National Ordinary High Water Mark (OHWM) Manual
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Engineer Research and Development Center
Jan. 30, 2023 | 24:23
Introduction to the Interim Draft of the National Ordinary High Water Mark (OHWM) Manual for Rivers and Streams.
More