Big data describes a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications. The challenges of big data include capture (at person, building and district scale), curation, storage, search, sharing, analysis, and visualisation.

What does this mean for Arup? As the amount of data in our projects and in our firm grows and grows, it is becoming clear that we need to take a radically different approach. Meanwhile, colleagues in fields such as advertising, politics, online education, and even Formula One motor racing are busy extracting insight from datasets many times larger than ours.

During the presentations and facilitated discussions that followed, attendees touched upon aspects of big data such as sustainability, privacy, storage, volume, velocity and variety. They looked at how insight from big data analytics could support design by identifying synergies between different systems, as well as how big data might foresee risks on a construction project and manage them before it is too late. And they saw how big data promises to support the management of large physical assets portfolios.

Logo for Apache™ Hadoop®, the open source software project that enables distributed processing of large data sets across clusters of commodity servers

The job of big data specialists Mastodon C, explained the firm’s CEO and co-founder Francine Bennett, is to use algorithms to pick out valuable insight from mountains of what appears to be garbage data. By working with big data, Mastodon C is providing the NHS with insight into how prescribing patterns vary around the UK. The resulting insight is not a generalised statistic but is localised and actionable by doctors – helping them prescribe the best value option. Another Mastodon C’s project, on energy grids, is giving a complete picture of energy consumption. In the past, analysis showed overall trends but the new work is capable of drilling down to the level of individual homes. Fran explained how this emerging field is creating increasing demand for a data-literate workforce. It is also, she acknowledged, creating demand for data centres and she highlighted how the sustainability of big data depends on the location and efficiency of energy-hungry data centres. Giving the example of Island, with its geothermal energy, becoming a preferred location for datacentres.

Did you know that it takes just four data points to accurately pinpoint a person? Most of us have many more than this online. With the potential for big data to reveal more and more personal information, Sam Smith from Privacy International stressed that the people who control the algorithms have a responsibility to ensure privacy isn’t violated. Sam reminded it’s time to check those Facebook privacy settings.

Simon Williams from QuantumBlack talked about storytelling, analytics and visualisation. He believes there’s a revolution underway that could see every business become a big data business. There’s a digital divide opening up between those with data and those without, he argues. QuantumBlack makes race strategy software for Formula One motor racing teams. The more data a team can transmit in real time to its race director, the better their chances of winning. Teams typically have 80-100 different data channels transmitting 2GB of data every lap of the race. So big data helps Formula One race directors take difficult decisions in real time. It also helps the design team improve the performance of future racing cars.

Analytics of Formula 1 race trace © QuantumBlack

Simon concluded with five lessons learnt from his experience with big data.

1. Find a problem that’s worth solving
2. Data is a strategic asset
3. Embrace taboos
4. Be nimble – data changes and degrades over time
5. Be human, create a narrative that helps you present the results

Custom tool © Case Inc.

Having created dozens of BIM models for architects, Steve Sanderson’s company Case Inc.based in New York City wondered if there was a lesson to be learned from all the data contained within these models. As a result, they’ve built their own tools to analyse the models and to display the results in a compelling visual form that’s easy for non-specialists to understand. By analysing the BIM models their clients produce, Case hope to enable their clients to extract valuable insights.  Making big data accessible in this way is vital if the approach is to be used more widely.

HierSynth’s Computational Analysis and visualization Framework, © Arup / Imperial College

Dr David Birch from Imperial College has applied big data to address the mismatch between design and analysis that has emerged in masterplanning. With design tools enabling architects to change the massing of a city at the click of a mouse, there are implications for engineers. A one-week qualitative redesign can easily necessitate a six to eight-week cycle of quantitative work, causing these two aspects of the project to fall out of sync. This risks an architectural iteration going ahead without full analysis and makes it hard to design and analyse on a large scale. To address these issues David created a model of models. HierSynth is a computational framework for representing and automatically analysing hierarchical designs to synthesise design insight. It searches through data sets and runs analysis for factors such as daylight or integrated resource management. HierSynth takes just seconds per building and offers rapid feedback to engineers in an automated building-by-building visualisation. It does this in a fraction of the time it would take an engineer to run each analysis and offers total accuracy. The Digital City Exchange, a crosscutting research project at Imperial College, is now using David’s methodology with real data instead of design data to produce even more accurate results.

David concluded that big data is yet to transform architectural design because, essentially, we have the machinery but not the data we need to feed into the machinery.

DansAR, a performance project by MEDEA as part of the Living Archives Project, is exploring how digital media content can be made accessible and lived by means of augmented reality technologies

With background in ballet and philosophy, Prof. Susan Kozel from MEDEA, Sweden, comes to the topic of big data from a different angle to most other people. She’s spent the last decade exploring the use of sensors to monitor functions such as respiration, heart rate and muscle contraction and making the outputs wearable. From optic representation – where clothes light up according to changes in the data – Susan and her team progressed to haptic representation. This sees small fans mounted in clothing to move and ventilate it according to sensory data from another person, something Susan refers to as clothing for telepathic-impaired people.

To address the privacy issues with using such intimate data, Susan and her team shifted the data sets slightly. Because the outputs were for artistic uses the data didn’t need to be exact and a slight shift immediately made the information anonymous.

Moving on to address the network level, John Park from London Underground talked about representing the underground’s network and assets quantitatively. TfL combines 3D BIM models of stations with 3D scans on stations and tunnels and operational data from Oyster card users. Meanwhile, its customer experience team is working with MIT in Boston to look into new ways of using Oyster card data. John explained how mixing geographical information with data such as train schedules can produce exciting insights. Big data can help TfL produce what it calls journey-shaping propositions – avoiding congestion by using data to identify problem areas on the network and inform passengers so they can opt for a different route.

The tube yesterday, today and tomorrow © London Underground

As well as predicting congestion and adjusting the response accordingly, big data can help TfL with pre-ordering spare parts. By analysing asset, maintenance, weather, supply chain, stock, and historical data TfL can predict exactly how many spare parts it will need and when.

Andy Kervell from Network Rail explained that the important questions that big data can answer for Network Rail involve the real performance of the network and on which assets it needs data sensors. There are over 3 million journeys every day on Network Rail’s 22,000 miles of track. The organisation’s goal is to produce a national intelligence model that collects, collates, analyses and communicates key information about this vast network. Special trains already travel the country collecting data, and 82% of the existing model is being updated. The result will be a national model that makes explicit information that is currently implicit.

Tunnel lining embedded sensor: pilot implementation © CSIC

Prof Kenichi Soga runs the Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure in Construction (CSIC), which is looking at what sensors the UK needs where in its infrastructure and has processed vast amounts of historical data. CSIC’s work has led to the introduction of sensors in the linings of water tunnels. This and other projects run by the centre will help to establish the optimal design and placing for sensors in infrastructure. The centre’s work will also show how big data approaches can be used to extract insights from the data collected.

Dr Simon Roberts from Arup Foresight has looked at data at a national level through his 4see model of the UK’s economy, which uses data from the national accounts.

Sankey diagram of energy, jobs and economic volumes flows for the UK in 2010 © Arup

4see helps answer difficult questions, like why it’s so hard to reduce carbon emissions, by showing the relationships between different aspects of the economy. It also shows how quickly an economy is likely to respond to particular events or policies. The model uses Sankey diagrams, typically used to visualise energy, material or cost transfers, to show the workings of the economy. This enables Simon to look at both the overall picture and the detail of a particular flow.

Simon stressed the importance of data integrity and having an audit trail – because a model can only be as good as the data you put into it.

Dr Ag Stephens from the British Atmospheric Data Centre talked about an open-source approach to big data. The British Atmospheric Data Centre is one of 32 centres around the world that exchange climate simulation data. This approach brings challenges. Within this collaboration between international data centres, standardisation is crucial, policies are hard to enforce and funding must be sought from a range of sources. These are challenges that will face other organisations entering the big data arena. As an archivist, Ag must also cater to a wide range of users – from non-scientific decision-makers through to expert climate scientists.

As the Oscar-winning effects and animation studio behind Avatar, Framestore is used to handling large amounts of data. Sir William Sargent, Framestore’s CEO, explored how data enables decision-making, highlighting research that shows 90% of purchasing decisions in McDonalds are made when a customer moves from second to first in the queue. With a typical decision made in just 10 seconds, executives running large businesses like Framestore need the right data at the right time. William explained that some 30% of Framestore’s employees are computer scientists and predicted that 25% of his business will be data-focussed within five years. He expects data-rich companies like Arup to become his customers. In his own company, the rise of data means that programmers are now known as artists and there’s no specialist IT department – because IT is everywhere.

Big data can help you become more efficient, William concluded, but it can also help you experience things you’ve never experienced before. Framestore is currently working on a project that enables people to experience the mood of a stock exchange.

The Buildings Practice has commissioned the Foresight + Innovation team to execute a yearlong project to distil critical insights from a wide range of internal experts, external toolmakers, and the full supply chain of building design, construction, and operation into a strategic vision to support the trajectory of the Buildings Practice in the coming decade. Each Arup office globally will be engaged in discussions and events around the topic.

The work will culminate in the creation of a thought piece on the future of buildings, which will help the Buildings Practice manage the exigencies of keeping Arup at the top of the industry for the foreseeable future. The initial phase will include interviews with practitioners in a range of disciplines relating to building design. The insights gathered from these interviews will feed into a series of internal office discussions in every Arup office, as well as regional roundtables with invited external stakeholders. The purpose of each successive phase of the project is to involve members of the global Arup Buildings Practice at all levels of experience in thinking critically about the future of their discipline, and to maximize the firm’s rich network of collaborators by engaging in dialogue about the far-reaching opportunities and impacts of the evolving industry.

Chris Luebkeman and Katherine Prater of Foresight + Innovation in San Francisco traveled to London last week to kick off the project. Chris and Katherine met with Tristram Carfrae, global chair of the Buildings Practice, to discuss the project trajectory over the course of this year, and to identify key internal project partners from the Buildings Practice and beyond in each of the five Arup regions. Chris and Katherine also met with Alistair Guthrie, Arup Fellow, to hear his views on the aims of the project and on the topic at large.

Alvise Simondetti of Foresight + Innovation in London took on a significant role in the project kick-off last week. As chair of the Virtual Design Skills Network and the NeXt_Work initiative, Alvise reached out to both communities to spread awareness about the project and to elicit participation from a diverse group of Arup engineers. Alvise and Katherine conducted over 20 internal interviews last week with Arup specialists with experience in structural, mechanical, lighting, façade, and a wide range of other aspects of building design.

Critical areas of interest that emerged from the interviews included the changing roles of and relationship between engineers, architects, and contractors, as well as strategies for promoting resilient and sustainable building design. The aim is to continue the interview process with internal experts from each region, as well as with external partners, and to track the different insights by topic as well as geographic location.

We look forward to providing further updates as this exciting project progresses. If you are interested in learning more or becoming involved in Arup’s Building Design 2020 project, please contact Katherine Prater at katherine.prater@arup.com for more information.

Background history

Arup is a firm of 9000 staff in 70 offices around the world. It was founded by Sir Ove Arup in 1946. It is best known for iconic buildings that it has engineered such as the Sydney Opera House and the Centre Pompidou, Paris.  More recent projects include London’s Millennium bridge and the National Aquatic Centre, Beijing, known as the Water Cube.  It now has a fully multi-disciplined practice contributing to the design of all aspects of the built environment.

Arup Foresight

Foresight is a multi-disciplinary research team founded and led by Dr Chris Luebkeman, with representatives in London, San Francisco, New York and Melbourne.  The team conducts and designs workshops on key issues affecting the future of the built environment based on the Drivers of Change initiative: www.driversofchange.com.  It develops foresight and innovation capability within Arup and conducts research into virtual design.  From time to time it organises TEDx events and it is also involved in Arup’s public exhibitions programme: www.arup.com/phase2 globally. The London team has the tradition of regularly employing a student as an industrial trainee.  The internships are for a minimum of six months and a maximum of one year.  N.B. All candidates will need to have EU citizenship or relevant permit to work and reside in the UK BEFORE applying for the internship.

Requirements

·                      Excellent visual design and graphics skills and a thorough knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite (including InDesign, Photoshop and AutoCAD).

·                      Good organisational skills, the ability to multi-task.

·                      Fluency in written and spoken English and the ability to write clearly and correctly.  (Though not a requirement, proofreading skills would be advantageous.)

·                      Experience of developing content for websites  and of writing concise copy as well as good knowledge of social networks such as Twitter, Facebook etc.

·            He or she MUST be interested in Futures research and sustainability.

·           Video skills and website editing would be useful.

Tasks

The intern will  help organise Foresight workshops and co-design materials for workshops and other presentations . The intern will also be expected to contribute news items to the Drivers of Change website: www.driversofchange.com , and help monitor  how the site is being used. From time to time the intern will be required to design other printed material such as posters, leaflets and presentations. The intern will also provide assistance with exhibitions and other public events such as TEDx talks, including preparing mailing lists, sending out invitations, and assisting with the management of events.  General admin assistance to the team, including taking minutes at team meetings and updating various databases in Excel are also part of the intern’s day-to-day tasks.

Basic Salary

Salary will be in the region of £19,000 per annum, including public holidays.

 Hours of work

Like other Arup staff, the intern will be expected to work  for 37.5 hours per week.  There is no entitlement to payment for overtime, but if the intern is asked to work overtime, he/she may arrange time off in lieu.

Holidays

22 days per annum (pro rated).

If you are interested in applying for this internship, please send a full CV with a cover letter by email to info@driversofchange.com . Architecture and design students wishing to send samples of their work should please restrict attached files to a maximum of 10Mbs.  Please bear in mind that we are looking for candidates who have a strong interest in the work of Arup’s Foresight team.  Deadline for receiving applications is Friday 31st May and telephone interviews with shortlisted candidates will be arranged in June.

Some of the cards we used at the workshop as a tool to explore relevant drivers of change relating to the future of the manufacturing sector

We have just delivered a report on the Future of Manufacturing to the year 2050, based on the outcomes from three international workshops that we designed and facilitated for the UK Government Office for Science. The workshops explored the drivers shaping the future of global manufacturing and their implications in terms of regional risks, challenges and opportunities. The events took place in Berlin, Washington DC and Singapore. They were attended by delegates from across numerous manufacturing sub-sectors, government and academia. Private sector corporations that participated included Dow Chemicals, Siemens, Lockheed Martin, EADS, Daimler, Rolls Royce and Daimler. Our report will feed into GO Science’s broader research paper, to be published in the Autumn 2013. Their findings will support a growth strategy for the manufacturing sector in the UK.

Alvise Simondetti visited his alma mater, MIT, last week to attend a conference on “The Science of Digital Fabrication” at the Center for Bits and Atoms, organized in partnership with the Executive Office of the President of the United States. The event was an opportunity to bring together leaders from research and governmental sectors to discuss the future of digital fabrication from the perspective of a variety of scales, methods, and applications.

Digital fabrication technology originally arose out of MIT in the late 1940s with their development of the first computer numerical control (CNC) milling machine. This invention initiated a growing variety of subtractive manufacturing processes, or machines that would take a large piece of raw material, and methodically remove areas with tools such as lasers, waterjets, and wires, to achieve the final design. Additive manufacturing, or the deposition of material to form the finished product through processes such as 3D printing, has been gaining attention recently also due to the potential to produce less waste than reductive processes.

The workshop took place on March 7^th, and was divided into three briefing areas: Materials and Mechanisms, Processes and Workflows, and Policy and Programs. Attendees then broke into working groups to further discuss and develop specific areas of interest. The event concluded with the 7^th annual Goldstein Lecture, given this year by Swiss architect Matthias Kohler.

Materials and Mechanisms

Neil Gerschenfeld, head of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, opened the Materials and Mechanisms briefing session. Neil’s research focuses on the relationship between digital and analog processes, and the emerging feasibility of “personal fabrication,” providing non-technical users with the skills and technology to produce objects to suit their specific needs. He began with a provocative insight, that 3D printing will be the “microwave of the future kitchen,” in other words, that it will be integral to the future of the field, yet just one small piece of the transition from analog to digital fabrication. Current digital fabrication technologies include subtractive methods such as CNC routing, laser, and waterjet, as well as additive techniques such as extrusion deposition, granular materials binding (sintering, electron beam melting, and plaster-based and plastic-based 3D printing), lamination, and light polymerization. Jo Newton, founder of TechShop, provided the additional insight that digital fabrication will follow a similar trajectory as desktop publishing: beginning as a service offering of specialized shops, and ultimately transitioning into a ubiquitous element of everyday experience.

Materials and Mechanisms session

The session focused on digital fabrication at the nano (DNA), micro, meso, macro, and mega (houses) scales. It was insightful to have a collection of cross-disciplinary and cross-scale industry leaders gathered together to share their experiences, as many “lessons learned,” including tools, processes, and metaphors, could be applied across the different scales.

A segment of the conversation focused around digital fabrication being the “next industrial revolution,” which will increasingly involve the production of dynamic, interactive objects, or programmable material with properties that adapt to accommodate specific needs. The possibilities of digital manufacturing allows for a departure from the production of systems of thousands of static components (ex., an airplane wing), and a movement toward the design of the materials themselves with specific intrinsic properties. For example, digitally pre-organizing a material to contain varying degrees of porosity in different areas can modify the material’s buckling properties. This will enable the holistic design of objects more similar to the wing of a bird, combining information and responsiveness with the materiality of an object. This revolution in total, rather than elemental, fabrication will enable electronic transistors or RFID tags, for example, to be manufactured directly into materials, resulting in the production of truly smart objects.

A critical insight from this session is the need to balance complexity with efficient design processes. For example, the design of jet fighters is increasing exponentially in complexity. Whereas the last generation of jet fighters took two years to design, and the current generation takes about seven years, it is projected that the next generation will take 20 years to fully design, due to the need to evaluate adaptable/programmable materials within a range of possible scenarios. In this example, digital fabrication is creating, rather than solving a design challenge, as technology will have leapfrogged these jets by a wide margin, rendering them obsolete in advance of their completion. The solution can be found in the mapping of the human genome: open innovation is necessary to reconcile complexity with efficient design.

MIT digital fabrication workshop

Another insight from the Materials and Mechanisms session was that, for the first time in history, design is moving into spaces where we lack the ability to intuitively solve the problem at hand. While increased automation is allowing a drastic increase in the complexity and sensitivity of our designs, we are becoming increasingly reliant on technological solutions to solve the problems that the same technology is creating.

Other speakers in this session included Saul Griffith, inventor, who presented on the history of the technology, Joe Jacobson, head of the MIT Media Lab’s Molecular Machines research group, who spoke on fabricational complexity, Ned Seeman, inventor of the field of DNA nanotechnology, who described his research on self-assembly of nanoelectronics, and Skylar Tibitts, director of MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab, who gave examples of his self-assembling objects using magnets and applied kinetic energy. His self-assembly research is of particular relevance to Arup because of its application at the mega-scale of the built environment.

To conclude the session, Larry Sass, professor in the Department of Architecture at MIT, made the critical point that in order to enable a more fluid design and fabrication process, the same set of “instructions” must work both at the scaled level for prototyping and ultimately at the full scale for final construction. When design specifications are scalable from model to completion, the act of prototyping becomes an integral tool in the design process itself.

Processes and Workflows

This session provided techniques for increasing the fluidity and efficiency of design processes and workflows. This fluidity can be achieved by using automated extraction of design parameters from object functionality, as well as novel scanning techniques, which directly capture the information required in the manufacturing process, increasingly sophisticated functional representations that that enable direct fabrication, and a departure from methods of data communication that inhibit speed and complexity.

The Processes and Workflows briefing session provided some interesting insights on the state-of-the-art of 3D scanning, printing, and folding, as well as the optimization of various fabrication and motion control techniques. Wojciech Matusik, professor at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, spoke about his research on simulation and optimization. He gave the example of computing kinematic movement for animated movie characters, and detailed the process for fabricating physical characters using an automated design process to characters with a similar range of articulated movements.

Philip Withers, professor of materials science at the University of Manchester, explained his research on applying computational tomography (CT) scanning outside of the medical realm. Traditionally, 3D scanning has been limited to surface scanning, but CT scanning provides the added benefit of volumetric assessment, or “seeing through” an object. He has applied this methodology to fossils embedded in rocks, enabling an accurate 3D reconstruction of the skeleton of dinosaurs.

Philip Withers speaking on volume scanning

Matthew Keeter, grad student at the Center for Bits and Atoms, opened a discussion on design representations and interfaces by examining the weaknesses of CAD/CAM workflows. He explained that many of our current design tools rely on boundary representation (B-REP), which identifies objects based on the limit between surfaces, but has difficulty producing smooth fabrication output. Functional representation (F-REP), or the description of an object based on a single function, has the ability to produce more accurate 3D objects, yet it was abandoned in the 1970s due to the inability of then-current computing technology to manage the complex screen representation and renderings. Computers are now able to handle F-REP, enabling direct fabrication of designs. Software such as Rhino are keeping up to speed with this trend in representation with the development of F-REP plug-ins.

Additional presentations included Sanjay Sarma, who spoke about a sophisticated method of path planning which computes an optimized “line of sight” for an undercut to create efficiencies in fabrication. This is another example of research that was abandoned in the 1990s due to limitations of technology, and is now providing opportunities for the future. Nadya Peek spoke on motion control and the development of a global network of FabLabs. Informed by her global experience with FabLabs, she challenged the usage of methods of communication with machines which are constrained by antiquated simplistic g-code, and stressed the necessity for the industry to embark into more sophisticated communication of  data. Jennifer Lewis spoke on high-precision multi-nozzle array printing, which can print using multiple materials simultaneously. She noted that this allows users to print “function as well as form,” which can be illustrated through applications such as the fabrication of materials with embedded computing technology. The current array capacity is 8×8 nozzles, or 64-bit, with 128-bit under development and 256-bit projected for the near future. Multi-nozzle array printing will likely undergo an exponential increase in speed and material complexity in the coming years.

Policy and Programs

The third session featured representatives from different governmental agencies, with the intent of sparking synergies and maximizing the potential for federal involvement in emerging research and technology. John Slotwinski, delegate from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), provided a compelling argument that the standards with which we choose to measure new technology play a role in the development trajectory. For example, if we measure digital fabrication technology by speed, we may limit the growth of other aspects, such as precision or complexity. He also spoke on material choices, noting that NIST has decided to prioritize metal as opposed to polymers as a promising material for digital fabrication.

Paul Eremenko, from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), challenged the design/build/test/redesign workflow that designers and engineers currently use. He explained that design complexity is projected to increase sevenfold in the coming years, and that we will no longer be able to afford this extended design process. A higher level of abstraction is required for future design processes. Similarly, the example of BBC’s innovative usage of semantic technologies (use of metadata and automated tags) to arrange news stories automatically across multiple websites, which drastically reduced the number of reporters necessary to fully cover the Olympic games. As complexity rapidly increases, such design process optimization will be crucial for the integrated workflow of multidisciplinary project teams at Arup.

Paul Eremenko speaking on design complexity

A critical insight from LaNetra Tate (NASA) is that seven out of nine of their research centers are currently engaged in research relating to 3D printing. Digital fabrication techniques hold dramatic opportunities for construction processes in space: because certain 3D printers are capable of using dirt, sand, and other materials from the surrounding environment, only the printer itself and the bonding agent would need to be transported to enable large-scale construction trials on the moon, as early as 2014.

Other speakers included Kelly Visconti, (DOE), who posed the question of how much energy is embedded in manufacturing processes. She noted that wind turbines, made of thousands of components, have difficulties recuperating their embedded energy, but that digital fabrication brings with it the opportunity to positively impact the waste and energy intensity of manufacturing. A representative from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) discussed geoprinting of infrastructure, including the benefits in emergency situations, such as hurricanes and other natural disasters. DHS was also aware of the potential threats of digital fabrication, such as the possibility of printing components for illegal weapons, or the modification of DNA for harmful purposes.

The final three speakers were introduced as the “sausage makers,” or those who were getting their hands dirty on the front lines, making change happen. Dale Dougherty (Make) posed the critical question of what the tipping point will be to enable widespread adoption of the technology. Ensuing discussion proposed that the tipping point will be the establishment of 3D printing as a service, coupled with an intuitive interface that is able to auto-check designs for critical requirements such as stability, rigidity, or watertightness. Vincente Guallart (chief architect of Barcelona) spoke of the importance of bringing manufacturing back to the local level, and the possibilities associated with open innovation. Together with the mayor or Barcelona, he championed the first FabLab to be implemented outside of MIT several years ago, and proposed that a distribution of digital fabrication centers around the city, each with a specific city-related task, will hold great opportunities for empowering people to devise their own solutions to municipal needs. Congressman Bill Foster concluded the proceedings of the day by thanking participants for gathering to discuss the future impacts of digital fabrication. In 2010, Bill proposed the National Fabrication Network Act, a revolutionary idea to empower all Americans with the opportunities created by access to digital fabrication tools.

Vincente Guallart speaking on digital fabrication in Barcelona

Goldstein Architecture, Engineering, and Science Lecture

The concluding lecture, “The Design of Robotic Fabricated Architecture,” was given by Matthias Kohler. He spoke about the expanded usage of robots in architecture beyond traditional applications such as increasing safety, efficiency, and economy. The global accuracy that automation brings to the construction process is well beyond feasible human replication, and could even absorb much of the human error along the way. One example that he outlined was the laying of bricks offset at a one-degree angle to produce a complex, textured surface.

How might digital fabrication impact your life?

Let us know: twitter.com/arupforesight

For the full program of events and speakers, please visit: http://cba.mit.edu/events/13.03.scifab/index.html

Chicago skyline, credit: Edward Blake

Chris Luebkeman and Francesca Birks’ visit to the Chicago office in February was an event in a larger initiative to promote interaction with regional Arup offices across the globe. Francesca, based out of New York, acts as the Foresight + Innovation regional lead for all offices within Arup’s Americas Region. The team has designated links to each of the five Arup regions, including Stuart Candy, lead for Australasia, Shu-Wei Wu, link for East Asia, Josef Hargrave, link for Europe, and Marcus Morrell, link for the UK, Middle East, and Africa.

The visit was organized to increase the visibility of the F+I team within the Americas, as well as to support the Chicago office with client outreach. Over the course of the visit, Chris and Francesca worked closely with Arup Chicago to organize a series of presentations and meetings with Arup colleagues, collaborators, and current and potential clients.

Chris gave a presentation during the visit on “Designing for the new normal in the next decade” at the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects. The event (below) was well-received, and sparked interesting conversation about the future context, needs, and expectations of the built environment.

Chris presenting at Chicago AIA, credit: Ronnie Gensler

Another component of the visit was a meeting with Canon Design, following up on work done with Canon on the Campus of the Future in previous years. Conversation included a consideration of the changing shape of campuses, including the integration of physical space and service offerings with the local community, and the tension between digital and physical knowledge sharing, learning, and collaboration.

Additional activities during the visit included conversations with the Chicago Architecture Foundation on Drivers of Change, and the development of future youth-oriented design tools, as well as the Delta Institute on energy performance of buildings, Rebuilding Exchange on community design, Urban Lab on future collaborations, and the Chicago government on sustainable urban planning.

The visit confirmed that the Arup Chicago office is a site for hard work and inspiring design ideas, and the Foresight + Innovation team looks forward to continued engagement and collaboration with the Chicago team. If members of an office in any of the five Arup regions are interested in organizing a similar event, please contact your designated F+I regional link (above).

Image credit: Climate One (http://www.climate-one.org/upcoming-events/sharing-economy)

Climate One hosted a two-part panel this evening at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. In the first segment, on the “Sharing Economy,” panelists discussed expected shifts in the current paradigms of production and consumption through a variety of lenses, such as waste management and consumer attitudes. The second segment, “Borrowed Wheels,” looked more closely at the application of a sharing economy to mobility, in the form of ride sharing.

Part 1: Sharing Economy

Sharing Economy at Climate One

Andy Ruben, co-founder of Yerdle, opened the conversation with the insight that our closets and our garages will become the distribution centers of the future. He used the example of his young daughter joining a soccer league, and needing shin guards. Currently, our first thought is to purchase new shin guards from the store, even though a dozens of girls one year older will have outgrown their still-usable shin guards. What’s missing?

Lisa Gansky, author of The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing, suggested that data accessibility is the gateway to achieving a successful sharing economy, allowing us to form the connections necessary to know who has excess, and who is in need. She gave the example of victims of Hurricane Sandy in New York, who creatively used the wedding registry on Amazon to communicate their needs with the local community. Andy commented that social media is breaking down the traditional requirement of having to choose between trust and access in our sharing capabilities, allowing users to connect with targeted groups for specific purposes.

The topic arose of how a sharing economy would impact current business models of manufacturing, distribution, and retail companies. Billy Parish, founder and president of Solar Mosaic, advised that we can expect to see shifts in business models from “goods providers” to “service providers” across the board. Andy added that many reused goods may be in need of repairs or upgrading, and that “fix-it cafes,” or businesses that specialize in extending the service life of existing goods, is a promising emergent business opportunity.

A question was raised by the audience about how to measure the success of a sharing economy, in place of metrics like GDP. Lisa answered that the production of waste will become increasingly expensive, and that waste-saving measures will be a partial indicator of a successful future economy. Andy suggested that consumer loyalty will be another measure, reminding the audience that current consumers, equipped with mobile phones, can stand in one store while purchasing the same item online at a cheaper price from a competitor.

Another question from the audience was whether a sharing economy would compete with the manufacturing revolution of 3D printing and mass customization of consumer goods. Consensus from the panel was that sharing and customization are two new possibilities for consumption, and that neither will completely replace the current system, but will provide consumers with a range of alternatives.

Part 2: Borrowed Wheels

Borrowed Wheels at Climate One

The audience learned from Susan Shaheen, co-director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at UC Berkeley, that over 1 million people in the Americas are currently using car sharing services. Sunil Paul, CEO of SideCar, explained that car sharing and ride sharing platforms have been successful due to the trust that people have in social media, and the security mechanisms that ride sharing platforms have put into place, such as background verification, insurance, GPS tracking, and rating systems. In fact, he reported that 71% of San Franciscans feel safer with SideCar than with a traditional taxi.

Susan made a comparison between car sharing and apartment sharing, conveying that current insurance provisions are designed to accomodate a model of single, permanent ownership. She gave the example of a student from MIT, who made her car available through a car sharing platform, and is now potentially liable for the costs associated with a severe accident that occurred while it was lent out, which exceeded the platform’s insurance maximum. Susan was confident that insurers could be innovators, but cautioned that regulatory advances will not be able to keep pace with innovation if they are passed state-by-state, rather than at the national level.

Rick Hutchinson, CEO of CityCarShare, closed the evening with remarks on the opportunities for efficiency in urban infrastructure with the adoption of car sharing programs. The audience learned from Sunil that the average sidewalk costs $1 million per mile to build, with new roads being exponentially more expensive still. Autonomous vehicles were mentioned briefly, and Susan noted that car sharing platforms will be optimal testbeds for automated technology due to the relatively low investment for users to gain access to the newest models in a shared economy. Rick mentioned that parking will play a large role in future discourse on urban mobility, and that all new commercial and residential construction in San Francisco above a certain size will be legally required to have parking spaces devoted to car sharing. Read Foresight + Innovation’s thoughts on autonomous vehicles and urban parking.

What do you think about a “Sharing Economy?”

Let us know: twitter.com/arupforesight

Outdoor tracking has been around for a while now, allowing the tracking of moving vehicles, packages and people in outdoor areas. There are a big number of location-based applications and services today, which allow mapping of cities and including points of interest and other information.

Tracking and mapping people movement in indoor spaces has been a challenge for a long time, as the GPS signal is quite weak inside of buildings. A further difficulty is the fact thatbuildings are three-dimensional spaces requiring a more advanced technology for mapping and representation. Some teams are entering this field today, developing new technologies to do just that, sometimes utilising mobile data and WiFi signals. However, the element of interaction between people and buildings is still a largely untapped field of exploration and innovation.The ability to map the use of indoor spaces holds great opportunities for building engineering, resource management, security, optimisation of retail spaces and more.

Mapping retail spaces

Path Intelligence, a venture-capital backed company founded by in 2004 with the aim of creating Web Analytics,identified the opportunity to passively and anonymously monitor the signals from the mobile devices we all carry to analyse consumer behaviour in retail environments.They designed the so called FootPath technology to capture pedestrian activity information and combine it with reporting tools that provide data on how consumers are navigating through retail spaces, how long they stay, or the total number of shoppers that enter the store in a given time frame. One of the interesting insights is that 80% shoppers spend between 20-40 minutes in a store without actually buying anything. The technology is used by shopping centre operators, retailers, transport hub managers, and sports or entertainment providers on a subscription basis as a tool for understanding the experience of their spaces.

Tracking in virtual environments

A prototype tool being used with a joystick interface to test the proposed signage. The lines of coloured spheres are traces of other virtual users, with colouring of the spheres indicating walking speed.

Arup developed a virtual design tool to optimise the proposed and existing wayfinding signage and CCTV installations of a large underground station. The tool allows users to navigate intuitively through the virtual 3D space using a joystick interface, while the system logs the routes that users take through the space and the points where they search for clues, providing invaluable feedback to the designer. The intuitive interface enabled users without any technical expertise in 3D modelling to create accurately placed signs for a much more effective navigation through the space. The wayfinding design team was able to find concerns with 48% of the signs in the signage detailed design package and amend 28% reducing considerably the need to rework following installation.

New tools – Capturing people movement with active RFID

Tracking SmartGeometry 2012 attendees

Hundreds of traces of user journeys through the model are accumulated and represented by this wayfinding visualiser. Colour coding indicates areas where users slow down or stop

Francesco Anselmo and the Arup team at the Light Lab recently developed a system to explore people’s behaviour inside buildings. The project was initially started as an artistic study investigating how to make invisible information such as environmental sensing or energy use visible through light. However, the sensing system developed could be applied more widely to help to understand how people use physical spaces. The technology was first built and tested in partnership with students from the Chelsea College of Art and Design during a Penguin Pool networking event at Arup, with the aim to track the movement of people during the event.

The system was further improved during the SmartGeometry 2012 workshop at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute New York state and the Mapping People in Space workshop as part of the Pause Digital Festival in Melbourne.

Tracking components

This people tracking solution is made of two components –fixed receivers placed around the building and mobile emitters carried by people. The mobile components send messages to the fixed ones at regular intervals. While continuously measuring the distance between the two components, the system can provide data about the position of people in space. The collected data can be represented using visualisation techniques, or be linked to a data logging system.

At SmartGeometry, we studied the density of people around the various research clusters, identifying which parts of the buildings were more visited and for longer time and which clusters were less populated. The PauseFest experiment also showed how people interacted with space at different times of the day, highlighting the mobility of activity based workers and the space usage pattern during a working day.

The talk involves three stories: his own story, including the discovery that BBC stuffy outward look hides a world of technology innovation inside, the BBC story and the story of video and audio broadcasting technology.

The CTO remit at BBC is tremendously broad. From mobile broadcasting, to digital archiving to IT procurement for staff (including the move to Salford/Manchester). John is responsible for the technology and systems (hardware, software and services) that deliver the BBC’s broadcast services, keeping the BBC live and on air 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Unexpectedly, we learned that once the Television Centre is emptied of people by April it will take another staggering three years to empty the technology! John is also overlooking the overall BBC technology strategy defining the BBC’s technology direction and working with suppliers to provide insight into the BBC’s future requirements for technology and services, including business applications, desktop, information security, technology infrastructure and software projects. Furthermore, John’s group is behind the BBC’s rich archive, one of the largest multimedia archives in the world.

BBC Archives

All VHS and Betamax tapes are being digitized to save them from humidity. However, there is not enough life into the heads and all players appear to have been purchased on eBay. This is why BBC is now collaborating with IBM to rebuild tape players heads.

Workflow efficiencies

It used to take a BBC custom developed trucks 8 hours and a technical operator to arrive at the scene, set up the satellite link and beginning the broadcast. The journalist now can drive their van, push a red button to deploy the satellite dish and broadcast nearly instantaneously and upload on the move, which is crucial to avoid being spotted and targeted in sensitive deployments. The mobile studio not only deploys the satellite dish, which automatically fixes onto the satellite, but it also sets up an immediate WiFi zone around the van, which enables the reporters to operate on modern mobile media without a technical crew.

BBC Olympics recording

All online content for the coverage of the London Olympics 2012 was auto-generated. Athletes pages, nation pages, etc., were updated automatically with the help of tags that use semantic web technology.

There are three things keep CTO awake at night: the first is a cyber attack that takes BBC off air. The second is the lack of necessary skills in the UK. It was noted that he was poached from Yahoo! And the third is the competition not from Sky, but from giants such as Amazon and Google. Similar to the hotel industry, the BBC historically developed, introduced and dictated the technology to its user. This included colour TV, etc. This is now changed with users throwing challenges at the BBC such as Facebook etc… BBC is partnering with Ford as it sees the car as the new platform to complement and support the provision of traffic and navigation services. The aim is to provide real-time traffic information and traffic forecasts to help drivers save time every day.

Digital Asset Management technology

Life series, first broadcast in 2009, took four years to produce, traversed 150 global locations, and involved 2,000 days filming and 3,000 hours of high definition footage. This technology enables the director of the series to search within seconds for, let’s say, “an image of a lion hunting in the dry season in the Serengeti”. Each image is tagged with ‘What is it?’, ‘Where is it?’, ‘What’s it doing?’ in addition to qualitative data. More in this article.

Autodesk University 2012

Autodesk University 2012

Keynote speach: Carl Bass

Carl Bass, CEO of Autodesk, began the conference with the delivery of a keynote speech. His presentation was delivered to a live audience of 15,000 people in Las Vegas, and was also broadcast through Autodesk TV. The future of design tools featured prominently in Bass’ keynote. Many of the trends he outlined related to the near future of design tools, such as cloud-enabled, integrated, and collaborative online tools and services, such as the newly-unveiled Autodesk Fusion 360. The ideas he raised were largely in alignment with Alvise’s own work on design tools of the longer-term future. This presentation was a good indicator that opportunities may exist for future collaboration between Arup and Autodesk regarding the future of design tools.

AU 2012 Executive Briefing

Executives Briefing: Jon Pittman

Jon Pittman, VP of Corporate Strategy at Autodesk, discussed the three current megatrends: products are being replaced by services, big data is being monetized in exchange for freeware services, and design tools are becoming less differentiable in terms of functionality, resulting in the increased importance of experience as a competitive selling point.

1. Products versus services

These three megatrends are informing Autodesk’s emergent and future business, research, and product development strategies. Autodesk’s core business practice, the sale of discrete, permanent software packages is beginning to be replaced by software that is accessed through the cloud by way of a subscription-based sales platform. This new strategy as presented by Pittman was an interesting insight for Alvise, because Autodesk was formalizing the approach that Arup has taken for many years: that designers should use the most appropriate tool to achieve the specific task at hand.

The implications of this shift are enormous. Subscribers would be allowed access to every piece of software that Autodesk has developed on an as-needed basis without needing to actually own any of them. Another significant implication of this movement toward subscription-based software consumption is the need for total integration between all of a company’s software acquisitions. Designers of the future will need to be able to smoothly navigate between all services available through their cloud-based subscription.

Models for transactions will also change as an effect of this shift toward subscription-based usage. The back end of the sales process is becoming increasingly automated, reducing the need for human transaction actuators. “Low-touch” relationships will play an increasing role in a provider’s interaction with its subscribers. These mini-relationships, based off of automatic computer-aggregated data specific to the customer, could customize the user’s experience by providing advice and information specific to usage and purchase history. An insight gained from this model is that low-touch relationships are much less expensive to maintain than traditional client relationships, and can be extremely effective in certain capacities.

2. Big data and freeware

Another critical insight gained from this session was the increasing prominence of freeware. In many cases, companies are discovering that the development and maintenance of a relationship with customers, and the associated big data that is able to be collected as a result, is more valuable than the profit margin attained from the sale of a product or service. Companies such as Facebook and Yelp are emerging within this new realm of big data collectors, hosting platforms such as social networking services in exchange for the rights to aggregate usage- and profile-based data, and sell it to companies that specialize in analyzing and monetizing that data. “Knowing what people want” is proving to be a valuable asset in a wide range of applications. Amazon is able to promote its own sales by providing customers with product recommendations for related items, based off of an algorithm that tracks which items are typically purchased together. Such uses of big data can be highly functional, from the perspective of both the provider and the consumer, at minimal cost per actuation.

3. Function versus experience

A third trend in current design tool development is a decreasing emphasis on differences in functionality between products, and an increasing emphasis on user experience. Many products on the technology market are capable of accomplishing the same objective tasks, as evidenced by the recent explosion of the tablet computer and android markets. An analogous example is dining at a restaurant: in this scenario, achieving proper nutrition is nearly taken for granted, and the differentiators between restaurant venues is almost entirely based on the subjective experiences that are cultivated within each option.

As such, the “consumerization of information technology” is a critical current issue, marking a transition from top-down to bottom-up IT models. Historically, IT has been approached from a top-down perspective, where a company’s CIO and top management plays a large role in determining the technological experience of every employee of the company. The millennium generation, in contrast, is increasingly bringing their own devices to work, thereby taking control of much of the experiential aspect of technology usage.

This trend of consumerism in the IT market is being expanded into the software realm by Autodesk by way of their 123D suite of programs. This freeware offers a simplified interface for an intended audience of non-technical users. However, the 123D suite offers many of the same set of functional capabilities as the more complex, expensive software programs; the difference resides predominately in the experience.

The Future of Design: How the Masters Create in 2025

Alvise Simondetti @ AU 2012

Alvise was invited to speak in a session entitled “The Future of Design: How the Masters Create in 2025.” He was one of seven speakers in the session, representing Arup alongside futurists and designers from companies working within a wide variety of different industries, such as software, transportation, biotechnology, and animation. Other speakers included representatives from Intel, Tesla, Adobe, Dreamworks, Singularity University, and Byologyc. The presentation was attended by over 300 people, and was broadcast live through Autodesk TV. One of the speakers, Trevor Haldenby, founder of Byologyc, is an Arup Foresight + Innovation alumnus, and has recently worked with the F+I team on the Future of Gamification. Alvise’s presentation conveyed his current research regarding experiential foresight and the future role of design tools for engineers and architects. It was based around the theme of the design of the built environment, and contained research relating to the concept for a universal pop-up hotel.

Full coverage of the panel is available here.

Design Computation Symposium

1. Peter Martens, BEMO

Peter Martens from BEMO Systems, Germany showcased 96-axis machine that was designed to pass aluminum coils through a system of wheels to form exacting shapes that satisfy complex geometric specifications. This technology was used, for example, to cover 30,000 square meters of free form surface for a project in Taiwan, led by Mecanoo, based in Delft. This presentation revealed an interesting question about whether structural constraints of materials and fabrication technology should limit the form of a building, or whether the form of a building could inspire the creation of new tools for alleviating existing structural constraints.

SCI-Arc Robot House

2. Sci-Arch Robot House – a realtime 3D printer

SCI-Arc presented a platform for animation-based fabrication. The project involves the use of multiple robot actors that are controlled within the Esperanto plug-in for Maya software. This technology allows for “character rigging,” or the coordination between the animation of virtual robots and the real motion of physical robots in the studio, governed by digitally triggered pneumatics. An emergent trend is the usage of this software as a physical platform. One such example is a realtime 3D printer, involving the development of a fixed virtual model, which is ultimately sent to a 3D printer. The difference between realtime 3D printing and traditional 3D printing technologies is that the printer itself would be mounted onto the robots, enabling the design to be modified in real time. During this presentation, Alvise initiated a conversation about the possibility of an “undo” command in the 3D printing process. The radical speculation was well received by the team as a necessary consideration for future research.

3. Kreysler

Kreysler specializes in the fabrication of large-scale Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC) machines. Reportedly, the team’s best project was when the fabricator was hired by the client, Stanford University, to consult with the architects and engineers from the inception of the project on issues such as theirmal expansion. This model illustrates an extremely effective departure from the typical, siloed relationships between teams working on the same project. During the presentation, Kreysler provided an additional insight that two-dimensional drawings have very little relevance in the current and future workflow of designers and engineers.

4. SJET at MIT, Skyler Tibbits and Arthur Olson

Skyler TIbbits and Arthur Olson of SJET conducted a demonstration on self-assembly. Their research includes work on right- and left-handed patterns of attraction, also known as molecular chirality, which allows for self-correction of errors between simultaneous assemblies of different distinct elements.

Microsoft Meeting, Seattle, WA

Microsoft Paint

Subsequent to his attendance and participation in the Autodesk University conference, Alvise met with Microsoft in Seattle. He met with Habib Zargarpour, Creative Director at Microsoft Game Studios, to discuss game analytics. One theme of the conversation was that the design-publish process could be seen as a game that is not yet optimized. If different environments, from the scale of buildings to the scale of entire cities were configured into navigable gaming environments, then designers could more easily analyze feedback gathered from real users navigating around the environment. One insight gained from this conversation is that Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games are beginning to make use of real-time analytics, which allow the designer to fine-tune the gaming environment in real time to optimize the users’ experiences.

Another technology on the horizon at Microsoft is the usage of computational fluid dynamics in software development. For example, the latest version of Microsoft Paint allows users to mix colors at varying intensities dependent on pressure input from the user onto the tablet surface.

Conclusion

While the insights gained from Autodesk University and a selection of meetings with top tech companies were disparate and wide-ranging, several key themes emerged. Technology is rapidly changing some industries and business models in a way that we can barely recognize them. It is only a question of when, not if Arup industry will be affected,

Arup needs to carefully consider how to make the most of currently available technologies. Additionally, how can Arup seize the lessons learned from current technologies to provide input about the necessary capabilities of the technology of tomorrow? How can we foster innovative, cross-disciplinary, collaborative thinking that takes advantage of the skills and structure of our firm, so that we can emerge on top of new technological developments?