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Interoperability approaches have attracted much attention in the AEC/FM industry with the increased interest in Building Information Modeling (BIM) studies since 2000’s. Especially, the integration of BIM with GIS is crucial for areas, which need detailed information on buildings and their surroundings. Automated code compliance checking against zoning codes is an area that requires both zoning data and building design data. In an ideal automated zoning code checking process, building codes should be retrieved from the responsible authority, data regarding the neighborhood the project is located in should be retrieved directly from the local municipality’s GIS, and the building project should be supplied by the designer as a BIM file. The checking process should be able to work with a combination of GIS and BIM data and generate a compliance report. Although recent BIM-GIS integration efforts have been successful in some areas, BIM-GIS integration studies in the context of automated zoning code compliance checking are limited, and the data interoperability problem in this field still needs to be addressed. This paper intends to (1) provide a critical review and analysis of the current BIM and GIS integration studies for building permit processes, (2) present the opportunities that the implementation of integrating BIM and GIS might bring to the automated zoning compliance checking domain and (3) identify promising integration approaches for future efforts.

Psychoacoustic parameters are mostly used for determining the sound quality of mechanical sounds. They have also started to be used for evaluating soundscapes of open areas and enclosed spaces. This research aims to find out the relationship between the psychoacoustic parameters and acoustic comfort in non-acoustic enclosed public spaces, specifically in eating establishments. Both on-site measurements and laboratory listening tests were conducted for five eating establishments. During on-site measurements, a simultaneous questionnaire study was also carried out. Subjective and objective data were comparatively evaluated. Listening tests were based on auralizations with calibrated simulation models. This provided a research model, that allows control over the acoustic environment without having to make real changes in the physical elements of the eating establishments. The auralization sound files were presented to listening test participants with headphones and they evaluated soundscapes with different psychoacoustic properties. As results, better acoustic comfort was found to be related with higher sharpness, lower reverberation time, lower loudness and lower roughness values for the examined parameter ranges.

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Noise in eating establishments has been studied in architectural acoustics literature. For evaluating acoustics in these spaces, researchers predominantly investigate sound pressure levels and reverberation times. Yet, noise in eating spaces originate from a wide variety of sources and is hard to describe and evaluate with only sound pressure levels and reverberation times. Better metrics for acoustics in closed public spaces are needed. Psychoacoustic parameters of loudness, sharpness, fluctuation strength and roughness are promising metrics that have been used by many recent studies evaluating noise annoyance. However, unlike the established metrics such as reverberation time, no set of recommended values exist for these parameters, yet. The aim of this study is to investigate noise in eating establishments through psychoacoustic parameters and understand both the noise characteristics and the metrics themselves. This paper presents a set of sound recordings during lunch hours in two eating spaces in Izmir Institute of Technology. The entry and egress of occupants have been tracked manually, while sound levels have been measured and the noise has been recorded for psychoacoustics analysis. The relationship between the number of occupants and psychoacoustic parameters has been investigated through these objective measurements. The relationship between the number of occupants and sound levels is discussed in the light of the Lombard effect.