A growing awareness has recently emerged on the health benefits of exposure to daylight and views. Daylight exposure is linked to circadian rhythm regulation, which can have significant impacts on sleep quality and cognitive function. Views of nature have also been shown to impact emotional affect and performance. This study explores the impact of optimized daylight and views on the sleep and cognitive performance of office workers. Thirty knowledge workers spent one week working in each of two office environments with identical layouts, furnishings, and orientations; however, one was outfitted with electrochromic glass and the other with traditional blinds, producing lighting conditions of 40.6 and 316 equivalent melanopic lux, respectively. Participants in the optimized daylight and views condition slept 37 min longer as measured by wrist-worn actigraphs and scored 42% higher on cognitive simulations designed to test their higher order decision-making performance. Both sleep and cognitive function were impacted after one day in the space, yet the impacts became more significant over the course of the week. The positive effect of optimized daylight and views on cognitive function was comparable for almost all participants, while increases in sleep duration were significantly greater for those with the lowest baseline sleep duration. This study stresses the significance of designing with daylight in order to optimize the sleep quality and performance of office workers.

Daylighting metrics are used to predict the daylight availability within a building and assess the performance of a fenestration solution. In this process, building design parameters are inseparable from these metrics; therefore, we need to know which parameters are truly important and how they impact performance. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between building design attributes and existing daylighting metrics based on a new methodology we are proposing. This methodology involves statistical learning. It is an emerging methodology that helps us to analyze a large quantity of output data and the impact of a large number of design variables. In particular, we can use these statistical methodologies to analyze which features are important, which ones are not, and the type of relationships they have. Using these techniques, statistical models may be created to predict daylighting metric values for different building types and design solutions. In this article we will outline how this methodology works, and analyze the building design features that have the strongest impact on daylighting performance.

There are many kinds of façade shading designs which provide optimal indoor daylighting conditions. Thus, considering combinations of different types of façade shading systems is an essential aspect in the optimization of daylighting in the building design process. This study explores (1) how the pattern and different characteristics are evaluated by varying façade shading types and considering their impact on daylighting metrics; and (2) the relative relationships between Daylight Autonomy (DA) and Useful Daylight Illuminance (UDI) with changes of the façade shading types, input parameters, and azimuth orientations. A typical high-school classroom has been chosen as a base model, and seven different façade shading types: vertical louver, horizontal louver, eggcrate louver, overhang, vertical slat, horizontal slat, and light shelf have been applied to eight azimuth orientations for the building. As tools for parametric design and indoor lighting analysis, Design Iterate Validate Adapt (DIVA)-for-Grasshopper has been used to obtain DA and UDI for comparison. Based on the simulation, (1) the effectiveness of the installation of façade shading compared to a non-shading case; and (2) design considerations for façade shading are presented. The result shows that there are some meaningful differences in DA and UDI metrics with the variation of orientation and façade shading types, although all cases of façade shading show some degree of decrease in DA and increase in UDI values. The types of shading devices which produce a dramatic decrease in DA values are the light shelf, horizontal slats, horizontal louvers, and eggcrate louvers. On the contrary, the types of shading devices which produce a dramatic increase in UDI values are the light shelf, horizontal slats, horizontal louvers, and eggcrate louvers. In the case of the vertical and vertical slat shading, the improvements of UDI values are significant in the east and west orientations. This demonstrates that the application and design of shading devices in certain façade orientations should be carefully considered for daylight control. Also, the results show that UDI explains relatively well the daylight performance in the case of the installation of a shading device.

In the maintenance domain of the construction industry, digital twins have been actively introduced based on the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution with growing interest in three-dimensional spatial information facility management and disaster response service using digital twin technology. In particular, disasters or abnormal situations in an underground utility tunnel (UTU) can cause serious casualties and property damage since key elements of a city such as power, communications, water supply, and heating facilities are collectively accommodated in a certain underground space. This study established the methodology for implementing an underground utility tunnel through a digital twin. The novelty of this study is demonstrating a sequential procedure of implementing digital twin technology by configuring major layers such as data acquisition, modeling, and service. This methodology can serve as reference material or a training aid for implementing a digital twin of underground facilities or underground utility tunnels in the future; the proposed methodology will be verified when an actual digital twin service is provided.