Description
Key Learnings
- Learn about sustainable principles for infrastructure.
- Propose a platform solution to collaborate and identify sustainable work?ows for infrastructure
- Learn how to link Envision Sustainability Guidelines to existing software within AEC Collection and Innovyze.
- Learn about a common data environment solution to collaborate and identify sustainable workflows for infrastructure.
Speakers
- Eve LinWith over 15 years of experience in the AECO industry, Eve Lin is a strategic consultant and sustainability advocate at Symetri, committed to empowering sustainable practices through cutting-edge digital technologies. Her expertise in building information modeling, data governance, performance simulation, automation, and BIM-GIS integration drives innovative solutions for enhanced project workflow and performance. Eve's passion for developing digital twin solutions and integrating AI breaks common industry barriers. By addressing the holistic considerations of the project lifecycle, she catalyzes the transformation of the AECO industry toward a sustainable future.
ELIAS GALVAN: All right. Good evening, everyone. We're here to talk about the democratization of sustainability, a connected data approach for infrastructure excellence. I am Elias Galvan, and I'm here with my colleagues Eve and Alex. So let's start talking a little bit about what we have to present.
Here is a table of content. We're going to start talking a little bit about us, about who is Symetri as well. Then we're going to introduce some concepts in sustainable infrastructure, and then we're going to be talking about three workflows experiments that we're doing that are part of this effort, this solution that is being developed.
And the first one is going to be a sea level rise drainage study. The second one is going to be a embodied carbon reduction study. And the third one is a potable water systems emission analysis, and we're going to end with some final thoughts and Q&A.
So a little bit about us. My name is Elias Galvan. I am a professional engineer in the state of Florida and a doctor in civil engineering. I'm also a Envision Sustainability and Civil 3D certified professional. I have dedicated my professional career for over a decade to the design and planning of resilient and sustainable infrastructure.
Now, as civil infrastructure solutions consultant at Symetri, my passion lies in developing, scaling, and diffusing technology-based solutions for major global challenges in the AECO industry. I have been with the industry leaders that are proactively act in the front line of climate change and sustainable development and digital transformation, such as the city of Miami Beach, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and WSD. I also have led staff capacitation and implementation of engineering applications [? throughout, ?] awarded grant applications, developed impactful scientific publications that led to contributions for the development of policy, in both in my home country Brazil and in the United States.
So this is passing over to my colleague, Dr. Eve.
EVE LIN: Thank you so much, Elias. My name is Eve. I'm honored to present here with Elias and Alex, my colleague. And I have a background in civil engineering, architectural building science, and GIS, as well as SM management. Currently, I'm with Symetri focused on the Enterprise Asset Management part.
But what streamlines all the connected work together is my passion towards sustainability. So you can see everything is connected together. So I think today's topic is perfectly fitting from my background. And I'm pass over to Alex to introduce himself.
ALEX ALM: Yep. And my name is Alex. Like Eve said, super honored to be a part of Autodesk University and working with my colleagues, Elias and Eve. I have a background of 5-plus years in H and H engineering, and that's primarily in hydraulic modeling with water, wastewater, stormwater systems. And I joined Symetri just to work on these kind of sustainable solutions and trying to optimize workflows using this technology that we have available to us.
ELIAS GALVAN: Awesome.
EVE LIN: Thank you, Alex. So let's talk about a little bit Symetri. If you don't know us already, we are a consulting firm, which we continuously expand, provide better leading edge solution for more markets. So we currently have 1,000 employees across the globe, also in seven countries and 33 offices. Next slide, please.
So we are the technology and services team. We enable business to gain a competitive advantage using leading edge technology solution to improve performance. Next slide, Elias. Thank you.
So our focus area, including product design and life cycle on the manufacturer side, as well as on the building and infrastructure side in the AECO industry. We continuously challenge ourselves and our customers to work smarter, and we are proud of our value and what we live by, passion, courage, teamwork, and change. Our services, including several around the [? ages, ?] but with combination of this, our core value have supported us to wide range of services and then to worldwide. So next. Thank you.
Before that, we also have the missions towards we challenge our people to work smarter for the better future. Symetri is committed to driving sustainability in the industry through technology and an expert consulting offering. We make positive impact on the market through a focus on decarbonization. Our technology solution and competence help our customers reduce their environmental footprint and meet our sustainability goals, therefore how can we help you towards your net zero carbon neutral future.
And this is perfectly align what we are talking about today. So before we go into the workflow demonstration, let's take a look into what is the infrastructure sustainability. We are going through the introduction of sustainability challenging our solution. Next slide, please.
So let's look into what is sustainability. So if you look in sustainability development, there are so many different definitions. But the earliest term was coined by the commission that mentioned sustainability development is the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generation. There is not just merely planting the tree or saving the globe.
The Climate Action, not everybody aware of that. But I think the trend that involve multiple components, not just the economic, social aspect, environmental aspect, the triple bottom line that every one will be impacted by this as a result. Therefore there is various standards in the international effort have been established. Various guidelines and certification and design measures for sustainable development.
And while we are talking about the sustainability, it's such a broad terms. And then there is the emphasis on the environmental, social, and economic, three different areas. But it's all interconnected.
So if you see the bottom scribbling underneath it, it's a design problem. It's not only make the design process more complex to another level, so our design process already be complex. Adding the different multi competing criteria, it's making another layer of complexity. Next slide, please.
So I'm not showing any more climate crisis or disaster that impact by the climate changes, and then that's become sustainability. It's a driver. It's become from the drivers to the business imperative.
So here are some statistics, and then to show these drivers are making the business become imperative to have that sustainability as part of the metrics as an indicator. So from the cost saving perspective, there's a 50% saving at least to just improve the energy efficiency for the organization. Regarding the regulation compliance, there is an 83% of the world population is living under the government that have the greenhouse gas emission reduction commitment.
On the consumer and stakeholder demand side, there are more and more consumers and stakeholders are demand for these criteria as they're choosing the product and services as well as the place they live. And then this is also provided edge of the competitiveness, not just for the building itself but also how we operate and how we use the product, and then that support our lives. And then a lot of financial instruments also be focused on this funding up to $68 trillion.
Lastly, they're reporting 73% of the supply chain impact due to the climate change. So all these implies-- not imply, but directly say that sustainability is no longer an optional, but it's a business imperative.
Let's go to look into why infrastructure is further important on this area. Due to the long span and normal scale infrastructure project, it's become more massive on this scale and have more pronounced impact on the sustainability area, which life saving impact can save lives and play a defining role in economic development underlining its immense significance. It also have the potential for vulnerability.
Also, this holistic approach is needed for sustainability have an immense impact that can balance the present and the future need. So that's why we specifically focus on the infrastructure today. And we're looking into what make the complexity even more complex for the infrastructure project. And what's the current gaps and challenges that we are encounter towards solving the sustainability issue. Next slide, please.
So during the AECO design processes, especially the infrastructure part, there is many stakeholders involvement. One decision need to impact by the other, and there is a competing performance criteria throughout our processes. When you want to achieve another goal, it might compromise or impact the other goal. It's hard to weigh them simultaneously.
There is several top-down standardization guideline to help us to achieve that sustainability goals. However, there is no integrated mapping or bottom-up mapping to help the decision support, and therefore make the design processes or consideration or tool to use is even harder. Lastly, there is a sustainability goal. Might be competing criteria and/or synergetic effect. The domain knowledge lacking of each of our stakeholders, that's hard for us to make the informed decision or do the tool selection, finding the most effective path among these competing and then interrelated data.
To this end, we're thinking about how can we make that connection to connect sustainable goals and then problem solution to a platform that can guide us through. And then this is how we think about our solution can bridge the gap, by connecting the sustainability with the vision. We want to democratize sustainability by providing that connected data at the back end, and then using that dynamic visualization at the front help our audience our user to understand what's the relationship among different goals, and then help them to navigate through different tool and technology that they can apply to solve those criteria as well as help them have the understanding of the impact of what their achievement can be and then push the boundary forward to a next level.
So in order to provide this proof of concept of the tools, then we use the Envision framework as the proof of concept establishment to demonstrate how we make that connected data to facilitate and democratize the sustainability journey throughout your infrastructure project life cycle. So next slide, please. So we would like to go-- next slide, please. Thank you.
First, we would like to this platform is developed to help you-- click. First, Elias need to click one.
ELIAS GALVAN: OK. Sorry.
EVE LIN: Yeah. Thank you. No worries. To understand, to gain a comprehensive understanding of the key sustainability concept. Again, you can see on the right-hand side, we use the Envision framework that there is a different framework established. But the goal is that we can let our audience and users to understand different concepts.
The second is to explore one range of the credits, performance metrics, and the synergy factors among them. The third is to strategize, that we allow our user to develop sustainability strategies and project plan accordingly with the informed decision making. The fourth, to determine that what platform they can use and then do they get the enough tool and guidelines and align with their project and sustainability goals. Lastly, to provide them the implementation solution and workflow effectively throughout and leveraging the AECO technologies.
So to this end, let's see about what is the Envision framework quickly. So the Envision framework is a infrastructure framework that including 64 sustainability resilience indicator code credits organized around five credit categories, as you see here. It is as a mean to guide through the sustainable project and it was developed to provide guidance, initiate systematic change throughout the whole project life cycle of sustainable and resilient infrastructure. So with this framework established and our prototype tool or the solution, this is our proposed workflow to use that tool to find the solution to implement. Next slide, please.
So this is the flow that we lead the user through exploration of Envision categories, understand its subcategories and then each of the credits, understand their credit guidance and how to achieve the credits, and then different credit level of achievement of each credits, and understand what are the measurements and metrics of each credit. And then lastly, the most importantly is to link to that solution software that we can offer, and then not just the software, but the workflow.
And then during that workflow processes, we also make the connection between the software and the credit as well as the synergetic credits that impact each other. So when we select the software or the workflow, we understand which tools make the most important impact or most effectively in every single different project have their different scenarios. So next slide, please.
Here, I'm going to quickly walk you through what the interface looked like. As a reminder, it's working prototypes, but it's showing the intents that it helps you first navigate what is the framework, meaning what is the sustainability goal in the Envision, what are the project types encompassing, and then what are the different paths that you can certify through this process framework and different achievement award level that you can set a target for your project. And here, the second is to navigate different categories.
Yeah, so here is like you can look into different group of the categories and the Envision framework. Each category contain different subcategories as well credits and each credit's different achievement levels. Next, we can explore all the different synergies between credits and their relationship.
So here is a Sankey diagram, so you can see how much weight of each credit, for example, the Climate and Resilience, as well as different visualization here showing. You can see which credit has most weight and different achievement level of achievement, how much credit they can get. So you can have the informed decision when you decide which strategies is most suitable or have the most potential for your project to achieve that certain level.
And once you know, then here is the interface for you to review each detail information about each credit, that you can see the maximum point you can achieve, the intent of the credit, and the measurement metrics and then also where different criteria. And here is the beauty, is that each credit have their synergetic effect for other credit. Once you pursue one thing, there is a way that you can also impact the other performance area. And this is where that visualization and help our user and audience understand that it's not just one thing you are working towards. It's a bigger perspective that it's a synergetic goals that we can moving towards.
The last part is the software solution that we want to provide in the interface is that so once you understand the synergetic effect of each credits, then it link to different software solutions that you can find what is the most suitable one in your project. So in the next few workflow, we will lead each of the workflow by going through the credit, target credit, and then going through different synergetic effect of different credits, and also the workflow, how can we use that workflow and then tools impact to in each of the workflow. So I'm going to give the mic back to Elias and he will show our first workflow.
ELIAS GALVAN: All right. Thank you, Eve. That was really, really nice. It was really interesting to see the synergy between the credits.
So now I'm going to jump into some workflows. Let's link those credits to applications that are existing. They are the market and can help solve this emerging sustainability issues that we have.
So the first one is going to be-- we're going to be talking about a sea level rise drainage study. This is mostly focused on Works ICM and Civil 3D. So in this example, we have a drainage improvement and roadway design project, and the objective is to reduce the impacts of climate changes on infrastructure. The design phase of the project is designed in the analysis. The target persona will be a civil engineer or hydraulic modeler, and we're focusing on acquiring visions of climate and resilience credits.
So as everybody must be a little bit familiar with the vulnerabilities of climate changes, low lying areas have their own specific issues. And that is mostly correlated with sea level rise. For example, in Miami, where I live, we are in an average height of 3 to 4 feet above sea level. That makes us very vulnerable for this sort of events.
So one of the most problems, one of the main problems that you may encounter in this low lying areas is not sufficient capacity for available-- not available surface drainage capacity, tidal and storm surge backflows, which sometimes reverses the function of the drainage system. We have excessive in previous areas, which increases the demand for drainage due to the urbanization process. We also have high groundwater table, which is normally very highly permeable, which sometimes may cause a phenomenon called sunny day flooding in which, independently of the weather, water raises from the ground. And also we need to consider limitations in maintenance and also undersized pumping systems without redundancy, which meaning that sometimes if your system does not have redundancy, it may stop in the case of emergency.
So let's look at this analysis, this use of the tool. Here we have one of the credits, the CR 2.1. Here we will mark the credits that we're going to be working on. These are all the Climate and Resilience credits and how they relate it to other credits from other disciplines.
And this we're going to mark the specific tools that we're going to be using, which is Civil 3D, InfoWorks. And these tools are correlated to the credits. So we know which tools and how to use those tools depending of the credits, for each of the credits, Envision credits.
So in this case, as I showed, we have direct credit contributions. So this workflow can directly contribute to the CR 2.1, which is avoiding unsuitable development; CR 2.2, assess climate changes vulnerability; CR 2.3, evaluate risk and resiliency; and CR 2.5, maximize resiliency. And we also have some other credits that are, let's say, interact.
We're not going to be covered in this workflow, but this credits might be a product from this type of workflow, which is the LD 2.2, plan for sustainable leadership; 2.2, planning for sustainable communities; leadership 1.3, provides stakeholder involvement. And then back to the Climate and Resilience, we have the CR 2.4, establish resilience goals and strategies, and improve infrastructure integration. So back to each one of those credits, we need to understand that it's not only about tools. We also need to develop a research applied to the tool and then develop the required documentation for the Envision certification process.
So for that, considering the CR 2.1, we can use Civil 3D and ICM to show that the project intentionally improves the structures in areas prone to frequent flood, and that can actually lead up to a restorative level. In terms for CR 2.2, assess climate change vulnerability, by advancing this the workflow here presented, we can show that ICM and Civil 3D can determine the vulnerability to climate changes by modeling flood risk to the community, and this can lead up to a conservative conserving level.
CR 2.3, we evaluate risk and resilience. By advancing this workflow, we can use ICM and Civil 3D to identify, evaluate, and act on projects' vulnerability of hazards, in this case, mostly flood or storm surge. This can take up to a conserving level. And in terms of maximizing resiliency with this workflow, we can show that the project is taking a comprehensive approach to complementing resilience and strategies. And this workflow can take you up to a improved level.
So on that note, not only Civil 3D and InfoWorks are tools that can be developed that are going to be deploying this workflow. Here are two other tools that we identify in these workflows. And we can categorize them by some more detailed applications, such as Civil 3D and Google can help us out, finding the more very granular solutions. And then when we get into ICM, we get into more broad level. And then when you think about the application of discussions with stakeholders and also storage, we get into a more broad and management level.
So this is the suggested workflow that we proposed. First, we start by understanding the local areas restrictions. As you can see in this image, there are different levels of restrictions in the US. And normally the more granular, the more restrictive these guidelines will be.
They can be complementary to each other, but sometimes they can present different fines. So that's why it's important to know which one you're going to be using for your design. In the example that we're going to be showing a little bit, we're going to be working in an island neighborhood in Miami-Dade County. And therefore, we're going to be using parameters from the county or the city.
These are the second step would be export. We need to locate and find the relevant data that we're going to be using for the modeling, which can include topography, which is a river bottom, buildings, land covers, soil type, drainage systems, background imagery. So all this can be gathered from usually GIS repositories that are available by your county, state, or sometimes even city. And we can always use also Google Earth to understand the system, to understand the local drainage, the local utilities and the location of them. But also need to keep in mind that further information about the utilities is usually information that you can only get with your utilities companies and land owners.
And then we'll get into the third step, which is define. For this specific study, we're going to be using only the sea level sea level elevation that was gathered from the county. We're going to be using 1 foot for current value and 3 feet for projection.
For range, we're going to be using current values of 6 inches. We're going to be using type 3, 10 years, 24 hours. That's the standard for southeast Florida, and the projection value of 8.75. And then we're going to be using a level of service of defined by the county, which it was currently 3.45 and now it's assumed to be 6. So this is the minimum [? crowd ?] elevation of the road for new projects, currently.
And so when we get this data into the model and we're going to be developing three different scenarios. The first scenario is the existing conditions with existing infrastructure, current climate, and current sea level rise and sea level. Then we have a second scenario with existing infrastructure plus climate changes. And we have the third scenario, which is improved infrastructure plus climate changes.
So explore, we need to-- in this project, we're going to be using approach of raising roads. But in this table, as you can see, there are many other approaches that can be used for a more integrated and holistic design. Besides raising roads, we can raise infrastructure, such as from housing to critical infrastructure. We can add seawalls, backflow preventers, pump stations, pump stations with water quality components.
We can also, in terms of blue/green infrastructure, we can add urban tree canopy, detention and retention ponds, and exfiltration trench, recharge drainage wells, rip-raps. And also back to blue/green solutions, we can add mangrove restorations. And here, on the right side of the table, we see how this solutions can help on the different-- for water quantity, water quality, and storm surge protection.
And then the last step is to put all this information into Civi3D, ICM, and find a cloud solutions to allow collaboration. And then we get into reading the results. So let's get into practice time.
Just as a reminder, we're going to expect this is just a demonstration. We expect that users are familiar with ICM and Civil 3D. We're going to be covering only the fundamental parameters, but you need to keep in mind that there are many other parameters that can be added to a modeling approach like this.
And also, when you're considering, this is not meant to be a design instruction, it's just an application of this principles. And also need to keep in mind that the sea level rise projections parameters are just a reference. And when you're doing this for your county, in a practical example, more research needs to be developed.
So I'm going to minimize this and I'm going to start showing a coastal flood exposure mapper. This can serve as a initial solution for to understand how sea level rise is impacting your project area. This is a free app made available by NOAA.
So here you can understand a compound layers for a composite layer for coastal flood hazards. You can turn it off and toggle between different elements, such as high tide flooding, so you can identify which areas are susceptible to high tide flooding. Here, it also tells you the FEMA flood zones. Here, you can see a storm surge vulnerability, depending, and you can pick on the bottom which hurricane category you're going to be referring to.
Here, on the right, you can turn the legend on. And back to sea level rise, you can pick the elevation for sea level rise and understand how it affects your project site. So with that in mind, I will jump to Civil 3D.
This is a project that I developed that shows this is the existing conditions. As you can see, on the elevations table, for most of the roads, there's a specific-- so let me just-- this is the project site. We see it's an island. It's very isolated.
We have a main road and five vertical roads that connect the main street. And I'm going to go back to the elevation banding. And as you can see, most part of this road is on the red side, which is less than 2.76 feet, or 3.26. Those are very low roads.
And you have a little bit higher areas on the residential side. So with that in mind, I created this corridor. This is a-- I'm using, as I mentioned, the design criteria of a minimum 6 feet for the crown of the road and I modeled the whole area. These are the profiles that I'm going to be using.
And finally, here I have the final surface with the elevated roadways. Now you see the most part of the roads are on the blue zone between 6 and 6.5. And in the intersections areas are higher because we want to avoid flooding in intersections areas. So we are trying to convey all the water to the middle of the street and then from there collect to send back to the Bay.
Also, another item that I wanted to show is that it becomes challenging when you're doing a project like this because your road starts to get in into private areas because you need to do the harmonization process. And this is where it becomes very challenging to implement such approach because there's a lot of need to coordinate with the private properties.
So now let's go to our model in ICM. I exported the final ground as a TIFF file, and here we have a few results. This is my existing network. Here's my existing network. As you can see, all the pipes, they are conveying-- they're draining the water to the Bay.
And same here, this is completely made up network. It's just for really this example. And then I created a new proposed network with bigger diameters.
And as you can see now, the water is-- I'm collecting the water in the middle of the blocks. So this is the lower point, and then it's conveying to the Bay. And also added a higher diameter as well.
So a few items to remember when you're doing this sort of simulations is that we need to make sure that our system is a 2D connected system. So my main hose, the node types that I'm using for the main hose, I need to select the flow type 2D so it connects to my 2D zone. And then my outfalls are needs to be set as a outfall 2D so it connects to the 2D zone.
Back to my links, I need to make sure that all the links are connected. And this is a bulk pipe that I'm just using for this example, I'm using roughness type of many and the roughness of 0.013.
Also, when you're developing my model, I created my initial conditions of 3 feet. And then this is my initial conditions 1 foot, which is the current conditions, and this is the sea level rise conditions. And then here we also have the rainfall, which is type III 24 hours, 6 inches, which is current conditions, and 8.75in for future conditions projected. I'm using a 10-year return period. This is what is indicated for residential areas with no critical infrastructure.
So now let's get into the modeling process, the modeling setup. So in my existing network, I created a 2D zone. I made sure that my buildings are-- I created a void on the building area so it doesn't consider those buildings when it is modeling the rainfall. And the maximum triangle area, I use 225, but you can refine this further depending the purpose of the project.
And I'm using dry boundary type. And my Manning's roughness, my Manning's conditions is 0.015. This is from the [INAUDIBLE] manual for low developed residential areas.
And so once I created 2D zone, I created a polygon, I set as a 2D zone. I need to make sure that once I select it, I go to Model, Meshing, 2D Mesh Zones, and then I generate my mesh. I picked my voids and I picked my grounds and here, and there we have a solution.
And I did the same thing for the proposed network. Here I have a proposed network with-- and then I also have a different option, a different scenario, which, as you will see, one of the problems with raising the roads is that the residential areas start to taking a lot of the water from the rainfall. So it's needed to find ways to connect this water to the system and have this pumped or drained to the Bay.
All right. So let's take a look in the results. So here, actually, this is how I set up the run. I just pick the existing or proposed network. I just drag my rainfall event to the rainfall event frame, same thing for initial conditions 2D, and then the max projected height as well. So the examples are-- so this is our results that we obtained.
And let me just close. So here, once we get the model ready, we can just select-- we can check different hours, how the flood is going to develop or the flood is going to develop first, and then how it's going to drain. So here we have the results. These are the worst scenario, the max results for the existing conditions, existing infrastructure, 6 inches rain and no sea level rise.
So here we have the worst case scenarios for scenario for proposed conditions. This is existing conditions, a rainfall of 8.75in and the sea level rise scenarios. You can see this is clearly a more-- there's more flood than the existing, so that means that you can obtain very quickly and understand what's the difference between these two scenarios.
And then here we have a proposed conditions with the new roadway, the designed roadway. And as you can see, all your roads are free of flood rate. One of the challenges were achieved, but now you have flood on the residences, the flood that was actually before in the streets.
So this is the main challenge we need to-- I would say, I think this is the main challenge that we need to consider when we're developing this sort of approach. And there are many ways of doing that. We can add pumping system. We can connect this systems to-- it's the modeling needs to be improved a little bit, but you can add 2D inlets to simulate, and then connect this rainfall this flood to the system and then pump it out to the Bay.
Another very common approach is just to add a pumping system. That's usually the most common approach, also increase the sea walls to avoid coastal flood and also storm surge, and mostly storm surge protection So this is what I wanted to show to everyone. This is the workflow from Civil 3D to ICM. And of course, you can export these results back to Civil 3D and adjust your modeling based on these parameters.
EVE LIN: I think that's a very detailed descriptions. And then you can see how we, from the credit exploration, understand how the synergy, and then we're going through the detailed steps about applying those software tool. So next, we're going to-- the second scenario is talking about the embodied carbon reduction and how can we find a solutions and then find the most effective way in the different design stages and the purpose with our solution platform.
Next slide, please. Elias? Thank you.
So this project, we're using a train station renovation project, for example. And the objective is to reduce embodied carbon. And then this project phase is during the design and procurement stages, and the persona is a design engineer and architect. So the target credit is to reduce the net embodied carbon of the envisioned framework, and then the focus of the application is Revit, tallyCAT, and EC3. And then we will walk you through the process why and how we choose that.
So by going through the eco connect prototype solutions, we first explore the synergies of that credit that we're targeting for. And we understand, by targeting that specific credit, we want to see the credit details, what is the interpretation of that credit, so we understand that it's not just for the upfront carbon cost. And then here we also understand the reduced net embodied carbon and also related impact other area.
And then by select the target credit, we know that several tool options are available to achieve that credit, then how are we going to move from there, so next step. Before we understand what tool to choose from is that we need to understand the credit interpretation. So based on the Envision framework, it was considered the whole life cycle, project's whole life cycle, not just from the raw material. So this is the boundary condition that's set up by the ISO standards for the different calculation methodologies. So there is a different life cycle stages from the product development, for the raw stage, the retract of the raw material, construction, transportation, embodied carbon emission, all the way through the operational maintenance, and as well as the end of life.
So there is a embodied carbon, as well as there is a operational carbon emission. So for this specific credit, we're focused on the embodied carbon, as you consider it throughout the whole project life. But because this is during the design and procurement stages, then we can find what are the tools available for this stages. So we go to next slide.
So these are the summary tables of different tools available as an example. So for infrastructure project, there is a free tool available and also like building server platform services, platform available, as well as Excel spreadsheets available for each of the designers. And based on what your goals is, and then certain tool can support the LEED rating. Some tools can support the Envision rating, some are not.
So you can see that we are seeing different technologies, what they support, if they support different use phases. And because we are at the early stage of design and a procurement stages, and just trying to understand what are the performing perspective with available tools at hand. So we choose the EC3 connection and the tallyCAT. So EC3 is a tool, that free, easy to use platform allows for benchmark assessment and reduce the embodied carbon. It's a develop hosted by the building transparency.
And then they develop another tallyCAT, which is a free access plug-in for Revit. Enable user to access the power of the data of building transparency and embodied carbon for construction calculator, which stands for the EC3 directly from Revit. So that way, during the design phase, if you are utilize the Revit model and then you have this free connection tool, then you can find the connected EC3, the environmental product declaration information from online, which can help you to do the informed decision making without making further adjustment or submission for the LEED Envision rating.
But if this is another case, if you want to do it for the operational phase of the consideration or consider other phases of the life boundaries, then that might be your best tool selection. So let's go to the next slide. So then leads you to what are the basic life cycle assessment workflow.
So this is not related tool specific, but it's all applied to all tools, that a simplified way is that you need to collect the first building materials, information, quantity takeoff. And then if you want to do the life cycle assessment, for certain calculation standards require you to input operational carbon information. But for some other criteria, for example, Envision-specific credit, this one we are talking about, they separate the embodied carbon and operational carbon. So this is where we don't need to consider.
But in order to understand the synergy, you might want to do the trade-off study to see if that can both reduce the embodied carbon as well as reduce operational carbon at the same time. Then we will have the check the result and do the comparative study and a report. So let's go into the workflow of the tallyCAT. But before that, let's talk about how the synergy work between Revit, tallyCAT, and EC3. Next slide, please.
So as I mentioned earlier, tallyCAT is a free plugin in the beta stage that allow to connect what's the retrieve information from the Revit in terms of material quantity and material property for to certain degree, and then connect that to the EC3, which is a platform that allows you to do the carbon assessment, and then so what's that workflow look like. Next slide, please. So the overall workflow we can separate to seven steps. Then you first connect and then export, refine, evaluate, visualize, explore, and report.
So we first see connected. We said we first need to connect it to the plugin. So you can see here is the plugin interface. Later on, we'll show you how that actually work. And then so once you can create a free account on the building transparency and then install on the Revit and support up to the 2024 version, and then you can log in.
And then second step is to export. So this is where you define what are the components in Revit you want to export for the analysis. And then currently, it has a restriction of certain criteria that can be explored only. But this is where you can use that specific tallyCAT 3D interface to filter out the elements. But if you have certain element that is not supported, it won't be included in the analysis. Next step.
So after you export, you can then go into that, open to the EC3 platform and refine your selection. There is an initial mapping happening during that process. That's where you can further refine and analysis.
So the next step is that you can evaluate using the platform that provide you a benchmark baseline cases of the material of the majority of the ranges and then choose a tool or the material are selected, and then see if that's meet your requirement. So we'll further illustrate that in the live demo session. And then it provide different visualization tools to let you understand what are the achievable impact or reduction that you can achieve, and then which material contribute the most. Then after the visualization, you can also further explore different data available provided by the EC3 platform.
Lastly, after you're done the analysis, it provide a detailed reporting, the quantitative measurements for you send out for the further procurements or different standardization or rating certification processes. So let's dive in to what the tool and platform actually look like.
So here you can start by logging in through that tallyCAT platform, and then this is where you sign in. And then once you sign in, you have a building transparency account and just allow you to sign in. And then doesn't matter which project, you will first create a tallyCAT view. That's showing where you can open the Manage Scope screenshot and then show you what are the categories that you can export to.
And then there is also different exporting details that you can select from. And you can use the visibility graphic in the Revit platform to select the material or the categories of the families you want to export to. And then once you hit the Export button, it will directly send this information to your EC3 account, and then you can open that EC3 account.
They create a database link. So whatever you connect to the EC3, if later on you do the material mapping to a certain product, it can remember for the later use. So here, we open the EC3 platform. So because we haven't created a project and you can see this project created directly by Revit, this is where you start to input the building classification information.
For this purpose, when you put this information in, EC3 can provide you some benchmark value for you to compare to the similar categories of the buildings or infrastructure. So even you don't have this information in, EC3 can still give you the global warming potential or embodied carbon emission result. But when you have more information, it's help you to do that.
And then also allow you to put operating carbon information in here just for reference. And here you can see the scope that EC3 cover is mainly from A1 to A3, and then A4 and A5 are currently under development. And here, once you go into each of the material for refinement, you can type in specific area or criteria as a filter criteria. Then EC3 will automatically give you a range of the material within that selection and show you where are the baseline, where are the lower range and the higher range. So this is where you can set the target if you don't want to use the baseline that provided by the EC3.
And then from there, you can also select different material by looking into their material by select it and then select the alternatives, and then make the comparison of all your selection. But you can also look into what are the details information for each of the material with their EPD information. So it provides a sorting and then analyzing.
And here is that it shows you what information directly from Revit is being mapped to a certain EPD, which is the Environmental Product Declaration. For the material you haven't mapped, this is where you can work on the EC3 platform, find a material that is suitable for you. So we go through the similar process that, for example, that we go through and then select and we can apply it by multiple material.
Then after we've done the first round of the mapping, then this is where we can just open different graphic results that EC3 provide. So this is a Sankey diagram that's showing the potentials. It also provide the mass Sankey diagram of the total from the tallyCAT, what are the most weights of each material. It also provide a charts that specifically for the LEED certification, which the EC3 haven't supported Envision yet, but hopefully it will soon sometime soon. And then this is another waterfall chart that you can utilize to analyze your data.
So after seeing the potential, this is where we can further explore by looking into different materials. And then there is a different material selection properties that you can look into. So you can find and compare material in the EC3 platform by selecting the material types.
And then the same way going through the process, for example, the ready mix or the masonry CMU unit. And here is I will use the CMU unit, and you can advance to the next step. And then you can see, currently, the material category that offer that on the EC three database. And then they update their database constantly. And once you type in the criteria, then it will show the range of material you can select from.
And then here you can explore what those data means. It has the keynotes show you the measure units, most [? match ?] EPD, what are the baseline categories. So as long as you select a material that lower than baseline, it can help you achieve the reduced carbon emission. So this is a really helpful tool.
So for the further exploration, you can do the comparison and for different calculation methods if that's not for the United States. We usually use the tracing method and then the other European country using other. So it allows you to compare that collection of the material from different manufacturers. So you can see the manufacturer's general performance, so maybe you can filter by manufacturer next time if you found that manufacturer is closer to you.
And then you can also find the exploration between different plant that offer that specific material. And then that can narrow down your search. Yes, the first time, it's a comprehensive processes. You need to go through each of the materials, but those mapping can be saved and then you can save as a collective material that you often use, and then so it can become a really handy procurement tool for your construction project and infrastructure project.
So we also offer different reporting methods. So here is a screenshot showing you the building element details that help you for the reporting purpose.
So here, I'm wrapping up with this process. But again, the reason why we select this tool is because the previous setting is for the design and procurement stage, so we don't necessarily need to have a paid product. But we can use it as a free tool available that offer for different category.
You don't necessarily need to have the Revit model. If you are looking for a certain material, you can just come in to the ec3 platform and do that. But the benefit of that Revit model is to give you that quantitative takeoff that you can streamline that process. So I'm going to hand over to Alex for the next demonstration.
ALEX ALM: Thank you, Eve. Super informative, really, really great presentation. And in this step of the workflow, now we're getting into potable water systems emission analysis. And really kind of the idea behind this analysis is showing how our connecting tool to synergize these credits so we can identify some softwares where you wouldn't necessarily think they could apply to certain credits, but actually they do apply and it can help you optimize and work a little bit more efficiently.
All right. So our project here, like I said, is going to be this emission analysis of a potable water system. Our objective is to quantify carbon emission reductions from a project. The example project we have is going to be we're constructing kind of two bridges across a channel and thinking about connecting two parts of the system of the potable water system with two new mains and kind of seeing how those new mains are going to affect basically the carbon emissions of running our system.
Just to hit on the people involved, this kind of relates to civil engineers or hydraulic modelers. The credit we're targeting here is 1.2, reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We're also going to touch on 1.1, which relates to what Eve just presented on, which was the embedded carbon. And the application we're looking at here is InfoWater Pro.
And so now here we have our tool, looking at reducing the greenhouse emissions credit and what goes into that and the level of achievements there. And here we have the synergy of the tool, again, just kind of looking at how this credit can relate to other credits and other things you can tackle when you're looking at that credit. And now the tools relate, you can see InfoWater Pro relating to that reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which typically you wouldn't think of as something you would use InfoWater Pro for or do this type of analysis, but it does have the capability and it can really help you work more efficiently when you understand how to set it up and how to use it.
Cool. So again, just kind of the project here and credits covered. Typically, like I was saying, for InfoWater Pro, this is kind of more if you see on the leadership side, the LD 2.3, planning for long-term monitoring and maintenance. All your resource allocation credits related to water, that's kind of ideally or typically where you would think InfoWater Pro is going to help you get these credits. But when we looked at the synergy in our kind of Envision tool here, we saw that it can help us with these CR credits.
And then just here on the bottom right, it's just kind of an overview of our study area looking at possibly constructing two bridges and building those lines across and connecting two sides of the system that previously were unconnected. So this is our basic workflow here. Step 1, like we said, is going to just be selecting the software. We're going with InfoWater Pro here because we saw that it had these additional capabilities that we typically wouldn't expect, and we're going to see if they can help us work more efficiently to achieve these credits.
Next step is going to be setting up the model. And here we're going to look at how kind of, if you do some of the back end work and create and collect this data and put it in the model, how it can help save a lot of time and effort in the future. And a big example here is kind of with Eve's LCA analysis. When you do that, you can find out the LCA for different types of pipe materials. And once we have that, we can put it in the model and then quickly generate, basically just by drawing pipes, you can see the car the embedded carbon, basically, just from creating those new pipes.
The next step is going to be simulating, and that's basically we have our network and creating our scenarios and setting up the model to get the results you want, and then running those simulations. And then after we have ran the model and done our simulations, we're going to take those results, look at the results, and analyze them and then see in step 5 if we can come to a conclusion on did this software help us work more efficiently, did it help us achieve these credits, was it able to assist us in getting these Envision credits accomplished.
So then the slide here, we kind of have just a little video demo going through the process of setting up this carbon emissions sustainability analysis within InfoWater.
So we'll jump into the software here and this is our model in InfoWater Pro. You can see, it's basic network. We have our treatment plant, we have our two high service pumps, we have a tank here, and then obviously our pipes and our demand nodes. So like we said before, the key to this project is going to be the sustainability analysis. So the example we have here today is the city wants to build two bridges here, and they're thinking about connecting these two sides of the potable water system together.
And just for this example, we're thinking the project manager in charge of this is worried about the Envision credits, if we connect these parts of the system, how is that going to affect our credits. Is it going to be a negative effect in terms of sustainability? Is it going to help us? So obviously, we can do our whole hydraulic analysis with the software, but then we can also look at the carbon emission and the greenhouse gas piece of the puzzle within InfoWater Pro.
I will say that this model is-- all of this data, everything here is completely made up. This is just me tracing along basically the streets and adding pipes and nodes, and then inputting demands and data. Everything's just kind of made up. None of this is real it's just for purposes of the example of the presentation.
So we know our project here. They want to build these bridges and connect the system. Obviously, we can do the hydraulic analysis. But let's look at the kind of sustainability side.
So in our Operations tab, in our Simulation Options, this is kind of where you can set up what your model results to look like. So basically, you would come here, create a new option, which we've already done here. And we have a new one here called Sustainability. So if we open this up, you can see the settings.
These are all the settings that you can have for your [INAUDIBLE]. General is just going to be your basic pressure and flow results. InfoWater has water quality, some other types of results are not going to get into here. We're going to focus here on the sustainability aspect.
So you can see there's kind of two sections here, the carbon footprint factor and computing pipe material carbon footprint. Carbon footprint factor is basically how many pounds of CO2 your system produces for 1 kilowatt hour of energy. This data you can find. I know eGRID is super helpful. That's the EPA, kind of just has an assessment of how much emissions your local energy plant produces when producing energy. So you can find these factors on eGRID, the EPA, and input those values.
Where a little more the back end work that we were talking about before comes up is defining these material carbon footprint curves. And basically what this is, if we click that box, is basically our pipe material we can have a curve where basically the x is going to be the diameter and the y is how many pounds of CO2 per foot does it take in the life cycle of this pipe. This is a little more back end. This kind of relates a little bit to Eve's presentation previously in doing those LCA analysis. So if you have done an LCA analysis for pipes you can put in these factors.
And we can open up the curves just so you can get an idea of what they really look like. So we have our ideas, our pipe materials, our axes, our diameters. And then our y is basically the carbon footprint per foot of this pipe for each material.
So we have these curves in the model and it's super handy because when we select a pipe, when you're working in your model, ideally all of your pipe should have a material associated with it. And so that curve can easily be applied to that material. And we'll see when we build these pipes kind of how easy and quickly it kind of computes that data.
So we've been over our kind of proposed projects here. We have the two bridges. So now we've kind of gone over this sustainability analysis piece and how this is all set up. So now we can go ahead and we can run our simulation.
First, we've already set up these two scenarios. We have our base network, our 2020 sustainability, and our 2030 sustainability. 2020 is basically going to be our base with the sustainability results and 2030 is our future proposed conditions also with the sustainability results.
So when we're setting up a run, we'll click this guy. It's just going to be on the Standard tab. And then from our simulation options, we just want to make sure we have the sustainability options selected. And you can see here our reference and up here, this is going to be for the 2020, basically our base, but with these sustainability options. So we can go ahead and run the model, click OK, change tabs here.
And now we ran the model and now the results are here. So we can take a look. Now we have our Report Manager open. You can do [INAUDIBLE] and you'll see there's all these kind of sustainability options here for our results.
So you can go ahead and look at sustainability energy loss. This is going to be the total energy loss in our system. You can see there's nothing for wall. Wall is going to be basically your head losses, and where this really shows up is in your pressure reducing valves. You'll see this is typically a really big area of energy loss.
This system we have here, this example doesn't have any valves. So all of our energy loss is really coming from our tanks and our bulk, which is basically our high service pumps. So you can see the distribution here.
The other thing we can look at is our pump sustainability graph. Drop down here and see we have energy loss table, our daily carbon footprint, which is basically by hour, how much pounds of CO2 per day is being generated by the hour and then our total for the entire day. So running this one pump, the total carbon footprint for the day in terms of pounds of CO2 is about 780 pounds of CO2 for running this pump.
And this is all based on our energy options and our simulation options. So this should vary a little bit based on location and then, obviously, the efficiency of your pump as well. But for this example, this is what we have here for our base analysis. So we can go ahead and close this, and now we can run our future analysis.
So we have our simulation sustainability options set up here. You can go ahead and run, and now we have those results as well. So again is our Report Manager. You can remove all of these new [INAUDIBLE]. You can see here already, if we open up this one to compare, in our original base model, most of our energy loss is coming from our tanks, obviously, but the distribution is about 12% to 87%. In our proposed analysis, it's a little bit split more towards more energy loss coming from our tanks than our pumps.
And the difference here between these scenarios is basically these. So we [AUDIO OUT] areas of the system is added to pipes, about 550 [? length ?] feet, and 590, almost 600, [? length ?] feet. So about 1,1100 feet of pipe we've added to the system.
So we can also look at our pump carbon footprint. So you'll see now we're down to about 652. So you can see, adding these two pipes has made some type of difference. We saw in our total energy loss the distribution is a little bit different. More of our energy loss is coming from our tanks now and we see now our pump is doing generating over 100 pounds less of CO2 per day from adding these two pipes.
The other thing to look at here is kind of we set up our pipe material curves, so we can look at that data here, too. Our material here, right now, we have them set to HDPE. And here you can see in the results the material carbon footprint. And this is basically just applying that curve that we had to the length of the pipe.
So now, just as an example, if we changed our pipe material, let's say the original plan for this project was to use ductile iron. We can go ahead and run this model again. And pipes, we can see here how the carbon footprint from material has gone way up. So we can do this [AUDIO OUT]
--while 35,000 before, now it's 76,000 pounds of CO2. That includes typically in your LCA analysis, like Eve was covering, creating the material, transporting, storing, installing the material. That's where all of that is coming from.
So now we can try to see-- we know we have this reduction in carbon emissions generated from our pump. We can try to figure out where exactly that's coming from. So if we remove all these, we saw that we have more energy loss coming from our tank. So let's go ahead and look and see if there's any difference with our tank.
--graph here, we can see this is the pattern for-- this is our 2030 scenario with these pipes installed. So we can [AUDIO OUT] a comparison graph here. And so now we can see, OK, so in our proposed scenario, it looks like the tank is kind of filling a little bit more during the day, but we're using that. This is kind of-- you can think of it like potential energy being stored in the tank and we're able to use that here at night, assuming our demand is increasing here.
And so in our 2020 scenario, it looks like that tank is filling here more, so it looks like our pump is probably having to make up for this demand here. [INAUDIBLE] one of these nodes and just look at the demand pattern you see here. So yeah, see we have a demand spike here. [INAUDIBLE].
So now let's go ahead and look at our pump operation and just see if we can see this difference in the [AUDIO OUT]
Graph. So here's our flow for our pump and our proposed scenario. You can open another graph here.
So it looks like in our proposed scenario, our pump is looks like it's pumping a little bit harder when it's pumping, but maybe it's pumping for less time. So if you're just looking at this graph, it's kind of, if you didn't have that sustainability analysis kind of to tell our pump is pumping harder, but it's pumping less, how does that offset.
Well, what's really nice, like we've been showing, is with this sustainability tool InfoWater, we can directly see the carbon footprint of our pumps and the software calculates everything pretty simply and the results are pretty easy to read. So now we've done our sustainability analysis and we're at the analyze part of the conclusion part and see how does this really affect our Envision credits here.
So Yep that was the demo video there, kind of showing the workflow using InfoWater Pro to do that sustainability analysis and look at the carbon emissions. And I took some of that data from that analysis and put it here into these tables. So we can see there was pretty significant reduction in carbon emissions, and also we can look at the embedded carbon there and see the reduction there.
And then on the left here, we can see how that applies to those credits. And how we started this workflow, the whole point is just to see how the Envision tool can help us identify software that maybe we wouldn't think of using for certain analyses, and how we can meet these credits and do it in an efficient way that is easy to understand and just makes it easier for everybody to hit these credits.
EVE LIN: Thank you, Alex, for the wonderful demonstration and show us some of the hidden capability of InfoWater that we didn't aware of. And that's really impressive and how can you use that as a synergy to connect different credit in Envision. Next slide, please.
Yeah, so some final thoughts. We presented a framework of prototype solutions that with the intent to connect the guidance of the sustainability to the technology and the methods. And then how can we connect human ingenuity scale the technology to solve today's humanity's many challenges. And I think we really believe the solution is to that connected data.
We have too much information and too many different tool solutions, all very innovative, but that connected data is not very supportive to support our decision making process. And it's not just for the sustainability arena, but also for our next step of the advancement. So we are really honored and glad that we have this opportunity to share our thoughts. And we're passionately continue to make that platform more thorough and then provide more information with the workflow and the guidance and hope to serve more people.
So if you want to connect with us you can reach out. And thank you so much.
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