CABR Gears Up New Infrastructure Construction

The China Academy of Building Research (CABR) has been focused on new infrastructure construction in recent years but has also kept an eye on engineering projects, technology standards, smart platforms and product development as those fields are expanding in China.

Building long-term mechanisms of energy conservation and consumption reduction

With construction engineering a main target, CABR is looking carefully at green building and new energy technology to promote all-round transformation, upgrading and sustainable development in the greening field.

Take CABR's near-zero energy consumption demonstration building for example.

With a passive design and construction, it features an advanced building energy system, renewable energy source applications and smart control resulting in near-zero energy consumption.

The building is capable of making full use of renewable energy sources by meeting heating and cooling needs through solar absorption cooling and ground-source heat pump systems.

The lighting of the building is supported by the integrated thin film battery plates on its southern facade. Light pipes and dome skylight set on the roof are used to collect sunlight, which means that the building needs very limited artificial illumination.

CABR's near-zero energy consumption demonstration building [Photo/sasac.gov.cn]

In addition to extremely low energy consumption, the building also has outstanding performances in indoor comfort and interactive experience.

Data centers today play a big role in new infrastructure, and centralized control construction is highly valued.

The company created standards for a green data center which came into effect on March 1, 2020 and are now industry-wide.

The standards include an assessment system focusing on a data center's features. It involves such aspects as overall plans and design, power supply and distribution, cooling and smart information systems for operation and maintenance. Energy efficiency of IT devices also plays a role in the assessment.

The standard will promote green performance, operational efficiency and expansion capacity in any data center, which will contribute to new infrastructure development.

Building smart engines for industrial development

Technological innovation has always been a priority of CABR.

The National Convention & Exhibition Center (Tianjin) is a carrier of smart exhibition and application systems.

The center was jointly designed by CABR and Germany-based Architecten von Gerkan, Marg and Partners. The two companies contributed jointly to the center's green building.

CABR integrated advanced technologies including cloud computing, the internet of things, big data, artificial intelligence (AI) and 5G into management of the center's basic facility operations and smart exhibition business, meeting sustainable development requirements.

The center has become an engine of economic and social development in Tianjin by pushing forward the city's industrial development strategy as well as transformation of its industrial structure and development mode.

Design sketch of the National Convention & Exhibition Center (Tianjin) [Photo/sasac.gov.cn]

Promoting smart upgrading of platform systems based on information networks

In response to digitalization transformation of China's building industry in recent years, CABR offers a series of technological supports in building information modeling (BIM), the internet of things, cloud computing, mobile internet and AI.

China Building Technique Group Co., Ltd. (CBTGC), a subsidiary of CABR, has been a pioneer in China's data center construction and offers businesses planning and design services as well as engineering and operational and maintenance support.

CBTGC has established cooperation with governments and enterprises covering a wide range of industries like financing, energy, telecommunication, information data centers and education.

The company has taken on construction of e-commerce giant JD.com's JD Cloud (East China) Data Center. The center is designed to have four cloud data center blocks and a comprehensive office building.

With a distributed structure, the center is easily connected to new devices and subsystems and is capable of submitting data for comprehensive monitoring.

The center is expected to work all day round and features an automated fault alarm function.

CABR, together with Esri China Information Technology Co. Ltd., won the bid for the construction of the CIM platform and its application at China-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City on June 15 of this year.

The project intends to realize cross-department and trans-disciplinary smart applications of urban data.

Based on that data, the project will build up a three-dimensional urban space model and information complex, which will offer data for scientific management of the city.

Such a management mode is a main part of a smart city.

CABR will continue in full swing in high quality development of advanced technology applications to support the building industry through consulting, design and planning, engineering and supervision, examination and certification, software and informatization as well as materials and facilities.

A view of the China-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City [Photo/sasac.gov.cn]

(Executive editor: Wang Ruoting)