Socio-Ecological Visual Analytics Environment “SEVA”: A novel visual analytics environment for interdisciplinary decision-making linking human biometrics and environmental data

Abstract

Current architectural design practice is limited in its consideration and understanding of life-cycle energy flows which comprise multiple phases, from material resource extraction, construction, building occupation within the built environment, and after demolition. Furthermore, bioclimatic environmental flows interact with the buildings, particularly at the building envelope, making it a rich interface for shaping energy flows towards buildings that are energy self-sufficient with clean on-site energy resources. The buildings we inhabit directly affect the greater built environment which is an inherent part local ecosystems that compose part of larger ecologies at global scales, ultimately affecting the overall biosphere. As a result, the buildings we construct, directly and indirectly, affect our economies, the health, and well-being of our societies and our natural environments. This paper explores the development of a computational framework that allows designers to visualize, understand and evaluate their design choices in terms of their environmental implications and ecological efficacy. The framework for design analysis offers a more comprehensive ecological analysis than existing sustainability assessment tools by collecting live environmental and human biometrics towards considering the entire comfort cycle. Working with SEVA, Socio-Ecological Visual Analytics, platform a web tool designed to allow for interactive feedback in real-time. This research is proposing to investigate the visualization of human data as a metric to analyze the well-being of the environment, which is an inversion of received perspectives. This paper will use a case study, assessing a built environment unit tracking the environmental conditions, building systems performance and the user human biometrics, demonstrating the qualitative and quantitative environmental impacts of the building design on the users.