Fall 2022 Special Topic Courses

AREN 5830, Building Energy Systems II

This is an introductory course for new graduate students entering the Architectural Engineering Program (AREN) but without general Civil or Architectural Engineering background. This course is part of a two-course set with AREN 5001: Building Energy Systems I. This course covers two parts: (1) building thermal science, which will present the fundamentals and applications of heat transfer and flow mechanisms in buildings (including heat transfer principles, heat transfer through envelope and fenestration, heat transfer via ventilation and infiltration, solar heat transfer, building load calculation, thermal comfort, and indoor air quality); (2) building material science (including wood science, cement chemistry, embodied carbon, fundamentals of life cycle assessment, and mechanisms of carbon sequestration). The course will prepare students with general knowledge and skills that are required by advanced technical courses offered by AREN.

AREN 5830, Illumination 2

Applies the principles studied in Illumination 1. Provides further study in architectural lighting design methods. Uses lighting studio work to develop a broad knowledge of lighting equipment, design methods, and their application in a series of practical design problems in modern buildings.

CVEN 5830, Data Science for Energy and Building (to become AREN 5030)

Establishing hands-on skills along with understanding of underlying mathematical concepts of current machine learning approaches including: ordinary least squares, quantile, logistic, and local regression; unsupervised methods including principal component analysis and clustering; tree-based models such as regression trees and random forests; kernel-based methods such as support vector and Gaussian process regression; Bayesian inference; as well as shallow and deep neural networks. Numerous examples and case studies applicable to thermal/building/renewable/district energy systems will be used.

CVEN 3837, Advanced Autocad

The course focuses on computer-aided drafting and design (CADD) in the civil engineering environment using the latest release of the AutoCAD Civil 3D software packages. The course will begin with a reintroduction to the software, basic tools and techniques, along with concepts in general CADD standards related to civil engineering. Creating and modifying advanced Civil 3D objects will be at the core of the early potion of the course. The focus will then shift to topics, tools, and techniques for civil engineers using AutoCAD Civil 3D It will include terrain surface modeling, horizontal and vertical alignment design, subsurface pipe design, and the development of construction plan sets using common industry standards.

CVEN 4837 Special Topics: GIS for Civil & Environmental Engineering Systems (CMU Course)

This course intends to teach students to collect and analyze data in a GIS using ESRI's commercial software (ArcGIS Pro). Students will also learn about the use of freely available GIS software to conduct some basic analyses. Students will also learn to collect and analyze topographic data using GPS surveying equipment and Trimble Business Center Software. This includes development of 3D terrain models. This course also teaches students to conduct photogrammetry to create 2D aerial imagery maps using drones and 3D object and terrain models using handheld cameras and drones. Students will also implement advanced GIS techniques and analyses including watershed delineation and hydraulic model development.

CVEN 5831, Advanced Construction Materials

Introduces material science of engineering materials including the relationship among internal structures and mechanical properties of various materials; discusses in details three construction materials: steel, Portland cement concrete, and asphalt concrete. The detailed discussions include classification and composition, mechanical and durability properties, and standard testing methods of the three construction materials.

CVEN 5836, Infrastructure Asset Management

This course focuses on the fundamentals of infrastructure asset management, combining engineering principles, business practices, and economic theory to facilitate a more organized and logical approach to decision-making. A framework for asset management will be discussed in detail, including the importance of asset valuation, maintenance needs assessment, and performance monitoring and prediction. Other topics covered in the course will include: decision support systems, life cycle cost analysis and optimization, data analysis in infrastructure management, and sustainability. Although the concepts introduced in this course are applicable to different infrastructure systems, a special emphasis will be given to transportation projects.

CVEN 6833, Advanced Data Analysis

Lots of data everywhere, but little knowledge! We face this conundrum in the age of big data. The objective of this course is to provide a good exposure to a variety of statistical learning techniques - both traditional and modern – to help extract knowledge from data. Examples from hydrology, hydroclimatology, environmental engineering and construction safety will be presented - the techniques are general in nature so that they can be easily applied to data analysis problems from any other fields. The course will have a significant hands-on component on the powerful data analysis tool R1 (http://www.rproject.org)