Anticipating building-related complexities ensuing from occupants' behaviour is a major challenge in architectural design. Conventional building performance simulation tools model occupancy in a highly aggregated form, abstracting away the impact of dynamic spatial and social factors on occupant behaviour. To address this issue, we propose a multi-agent system that accounts for these aspects in process-driven facilities, such as hospitals. The approach involves modelling 'narratives', rule-based scripts that direct occupants' movement and shared activities. A scheduling mechanism employs Operations Research techniques to dynamically coordinate the narratives' execution. We demonstrate the method by simulating dayto-day operations in a typical hospital setting, involving scheduled procedures and unscheduled adaptations due to dynamic social and environmental conditions. The process involved collecting data using field observations and interviews with experts, modelling narratives, and simulating them to produce use scenarios that can be visualized and analysed by design stakeholders.
We present a computational spatial analytics tool for designing environments that better support human-related factors. Our system performs both static and dynamic analyses: the first relates to the building geometry and organization, while the second additionally considers the crowd movement in the space. The results are presented to the designers in the form of numerical values, traces and heat maps displayed on top of the floor plan. We demonstrate our approach with a user study whereby novice architects have tested the proposed approach to iteratively improve a building accessibility in real-time with respect to a selected number of static and dynamic metrics. The results indicate that the users were able to successfully improve their design solutions and thus generate more human-aware environments. The usability and effectiveness of the tool where also measured, yielding positive scores. The modular and flexible nature of the tool enables further extension to incorporate additional static and dynamic spatial metrics. CCS CONCEPTS • Computing methodologies → Visual analytics; Modeling and simulation; • Applied computing → Computer-aided design; Architecture (buildings); • Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in visualization;
Authoring behavior narratives for heterogeneous multiagent virtual humans engaged in collaborative, localized, and task‐based behaviors can be challenging. Traditional behavior authoring frameworks are either space‐centric, where occupancy parameters are specified; behavior‐centric, where multiagent behaviors are defined; or agent‐centric, where desires and intentions drive agents' behavior. In this paper, we propose to integrate these approaches into a unique framework to author behavior narratives that progressively satisfy time‐varying building‐level occupancy specifications, room‐level behavior distributions, and agent‐level motivations using a prioritized resource allocation system. This approach can generate progressively more complex and plausible narratives that satisfy spatial, behavioral, and social constraints. Possible applications of this system involve computer gaming and decision‐making in engineering and architectural design.
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