Application of a Digitized Fuel Load Surveying Methodology to Office Buildings

This paper discusses application of a new methodology that facilitates fuel load surveys in buildings. The methodology consists of four steps comprising digital inventory, data organization, item matching through computer vision, and fuel load estimation, and is programmed into a digitized surveying application. The present paper applies the methodology to three office buildings and provides the results of surveyed fuel load density. A total office area of 1720 m² was surveyed consisting of 34 closed offices and 161 cubicles within 12 large open plan office spaces. Compartment areas range from 8 m² to 87 m² for closed offices and 24 m² to 345 m² for open plan offices. The measured fuel load density for movable content had a mean of 1115 MJ/m² with a standard deviation of 614 MJ/m². When including the fixed content, the measured total fuel load density had a mean of 1486 MJ/m² with a standard deviation of 726 MJ/m². These values are considerably larger than values found in older surveys and most code provisions. The surveyed rooms had large quantities of paper, which amounted to 54% of the movable fuel load on average. Based on these results, and findings from other recent surveys, it is recommended to collect additional data. The work has established the foundation toward a fully automatized method, relying on an electronic form and a structured database of recorded information. A wide adoption of this method could populate an extensive fuel load database which can then be used to provide design guidelines for fuel load density in codes and standards, for application in performance-based design.