Application of RFID tracking to the optimization of function-space assignment in buildings

Function-space assignment, which allocates a function for each space in a facility, is one of the most important factors in determining the usability performance of a building. Most architects renovate a building based on their personal perception of how the occupants might use the building instead of quantitatively analyzing their use behaviors. This study developed a function-space assignment optimization model based on the occupants' movement data as tracked by RFID technology. The model mines the movement data by constructing patterns and calculating the relation values between functions. The search for the best assignment is based on the fast messy genetic algorithm (fmGA) with the objective function incorporating the preference of space size and the minimization of the distance for movement required by the occupants during the performance of their daily activities. The proposed model incorporated building-block filtering mechanism in the fmGA problem-solving process to generate enough copies of the good building blocks so more copies would remain for subsequent processing. The paper also describes two experiments that evaluate the performance of the model and compare the performances of the models with and without the building-block filtering mechanism.