Report on the FORUM8 hands-on experience seminar attended by construction IT journalist Ryuta Ieiri. We will introduce the new products and various UC-1 technology seminars. The report will cover product overview and features, hands-on content, case studies and applications, Ieiri comments and proposals, and future prospects of the product.

At Forum8's annual event "Design Festival" held in 2020, Mr. Yasushi Yamamoto, Counselor, Office for Promotion of National Land Resilience, Cabinet Secretariat, gave a lecture titled "Recent Efforts for National Land Resilience". In this seminar, he introduced the contents of the lecture and explained the efforts and effects of national land strengthening in Japan in an easy-to-understand talk.

The 1959 Ise Bay typhoon, which caused the largest number of deaths and missing persons since the Meiji era (1868-1912), became the starting point for disaster prevention measures and triggered the enactment of the Basic Act on Disaster Management.

The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of 1995 caused a massive fire that spread through the city and collapsed an elevated highway bridge, resulting in a great deal of human and material damage. The lessons learned from this disaster have led to the strengthening of earthquake resistance of infrastructure and the recognition of the importance of "self-help" and "mutual-help", and the concept of "disaster mitigation" was firmly established.

In the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, a tsunami with a run-up height of over 40 meters was generated, and many people had difficulty returning home. From the lessons learned, it was recognized that there was a limit to the number of disaster prevention measures that could be implemented based on infrastructure development alone. The disaster prevention effects of national land strengthening are predicted to be very high. For example, the probability of a major earthquake in the Nankai Trough and an earthquake directly under the Tokyo metropolitan area is predicted to be 70-80% within the next 30 years. In the case of an earthquake directly under the Tokyo metropolitan area (directly under the southern part of the city center), it is estimated that about 175,000 buildings will collapse and about 11,000 people will die due to the collapse, assuming that the seismic retrofitting rate in Tokyo in 2008 was about 87%. Increasing the quake-resistance rate to 94% will reduce the number of collapsed buildings to 98,000 and the number of deaths to 6,100, and increasing the quake-resistance rate to 100% will reduce the number of collapsed buildings to 27,000 and the number of deaths to 1,500.

▲Source: Assumption of Damage and Countermeasures for Earthquakes Directly Beneath the Tokyo Metropolitan Area (Final Report) (2013 Central Disaster Management Council WG on Countermeasures for Earthquakes Directly Beneath the Tokyo Metropolitan Area)

In fact, when Typhoon No. 21 hit Osaka Bay in September 2008, the tide level was 36 centimeters higher than the previous highest tide level of the second Muroto typhoon in 1961, but the area of inundation, which had previously been about 3,100 hectares, was reduced to zero.

While the cost of maintenance of beaches and river levees was about 130 billion yen, and the cost of maintenance and management after 1965 was about 20 billion yen, the damage if storm surge countermeasures were not implemented is expected to be about 17 trillion yen. From these figures, we can see that the cost effectiveness of national land fortification is high.

▲Comparison of flooded area and number of houses between the Second Muroto Typhoon in 1961 and Typhoon No. 21 in 2008.		▲Comparison of the amount of damage that could have been prevented by storm surge countermeasures in Typhoon No. 21 in 2008 and the cost of maintenance and upkeep (two sources: Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, "River Project Overview 2019")

Forum8 has been an early provider of solutions for national infrastructure enhancement, ranging from planning and design using BIM (Building Information Modeling) and CIM (Construction Information Modeling) to strengthen social infrastructure, to analysis, simulation, and visualization of damage using VR (Virtual Reality). Our solutions range from planning and design using BIM (Building Information Modeling) and CIM (Construction Information Modeling) to strengthen social infrastructure, to analysis, simulation, and visualization of damage using VR (Virtual Reality), as well as "i-Construction" promoted by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.

Forum8 has been holding a contest called the National Resilience Design Award (NaRDA) since 2014 to support engineers who are working on national resilience.

Forum8's BIM/CIM, VR, analysis, simulation software, and cloud computing are used to evaluate the earthquake resistance of social infrastructure, reinforce it, and simulate damage.

▲The 8th National Resilience Design Award ceremony held at Shinagawa Intercity Hall on November 19, 2021.		▲Seismic Study of Existing Steel Pipe Arch Water Pipe Bridges," which received the Grand Prize of the 8th National Resilience Design Award (New Japan Consultant Co., Ltd.)

"National Land Resilience" is an initiative to prepare for natural disasters in advance and minimize the damage. As part of its "IM&VR/ National Land Resilience Solutions," Forum8 offers the real-time VR system "UC-win/Road," the design and analysis solution "UC-1 Engineer's Studio," and the BIM/CIM software "Allplan series, etc., according to the phase of the project.

The phases are (1) design discussion, (2) geotechnical and survey data confirmation, (3) general drawing (model) creation, (4) structural check (reinforcement interference), (5) drawing, diagramming and simulation, (6) design verification, (7) quantity calculation, cost estimation and bidding, and (8) construction and i-Construction.

▲Forum8's national land resilience solutions are provided for different purposes.

Solutions are also provided by type of construction, including (1) steel structures and concrete, roads, (2) urban and regional planning, ports and airports, railroads, (3) soil and foundations, rivers, erosion control, coasts and oceans, (4) electric power civil engineering, tunnels, construction planning, construction equipment, set metal, construction environment, and (5) IT-related and others.

These "phase-specific" and "construction-type" solutions cover the warp and weft of national land resilience like a thread, and the features of these solutions are that they can exchange data in "IFC format" and "LandXML format" among themselves to realize flexible countermeasures.

Experience Contents On September 28, from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., the "Resilience Design BIM Analysis Support Experience Seminar" was held in the form of an online seminar via Zoom. The lecturers were Mr. Masayoshi Yanagi of Analysis Support Group, Mr. Jun Nakamura of UC-1 Development Group 1, Mr. Daisuke Hiraki of Analysis Support Group, and Mr. Konosuke Kawahara of Analysis Support Group. In the first 20 minutes or so, an overview of the National Land Resilience Strategy and Forum8's BIM solutions were explained, followed by hands-on experience with the building energy analysis software "DesignBuilder," the BIM/CIM software "Allplan," the 3D VR simulation software "UC-win/Road," and the integrated content creation software "Shade3D. First, we practiced "DesignBuilder". Here, we made a 3D model of a two-story building and performed energy analysis and thermal fluid (CFD) analysis.

▲Resilience Design and BIM Analysis Support Hands-on Experience Seminar 　 was held online on September 28.

In order to prevent global warming, which is the cause of floods and other catastrophic events, it is important to improve the energy efficiency of buildings and reduce CO2 emissions, which can be called a fundamental measure to strengthening the nation.

In addition to the external shape of the building and the size and location of the windows, the material and thickness of the insulation in the walls, the specifications of the floors and walls, and the solar radiation from the sun can be analyzed, and the heat generated by the windows, walls, and people in the building can be tabulated to determine the heat balance and the amount of ventilation required.

In the CFD analysis, air conditioning vents were installed in the room and the air velocity and temperature distribution in each part of the room were obtained by 3D analysis. The results were exported to 3DDXF format for use in the next Allplan exercise.

▲The two-story building model that was the subject of the energy simulation.		▲Heat balance analysis results		▲CFD analysis was used to determine the air velocity and temperature distribution in each part of the room.

In the following Allplan practice, the 3DDXF data from earlier was loaded into Allplan and edited for texture assignment, etc. Then, using another building model, BIM modeling of facades, etc., 3D reinforcement, and quantity calculation were performed.

▲Texturing and editing in Allplan		▲The curved surface of the steel bars.		▲Facade modeling

The next step was to practice using UC-win/Road. The buildings created in Allplan were placed on top of the terrain model where roads were placed, and walk-through landscape study, sun and shadow simulation, and sunshine calculation using the environmental assessment plug-in were conducted.

▲Design study by walkthrough with UC-win/Road		▲Sunlight simulation with different time settings in UC-win/Road.

Shade3D, an integrated 3D content creation software, then read the UC-win/Road data in "3DS format" and set the roof material to more realistic data for high quality rendering.

Finally, we imported the CIM model of the bridge pier in IFC format into the "BIM/CIM Design Verification Tool", checked the interference between reinforcing bars, and based on the results, avoided interference in the design stage.

▲Rendering of the roof with realistic materials in Shade3D.		▲Practical training on interference checking and avoidance using BIM/CIM design verification tools

Ieiri comments and suggestions

Preventive maintenance" in the areas of national land resilience and maintenance of structures is extremely cost-effective compared to the methods of restoration and reconstruction after damage has occurred.

However, it is difficult for the general public to understand the necessity of such measures, since they are taken before any damage occurs in front of their eyes, and there is a risk that they will tend to be neglected.

In such cases, solutions such as Forum8's UC-win/Road and F8VPS (Virtual Platform System) are very effective in helping people to imagine what the situation would be like in the event of damage. In the future, VR-related systems will be an indispensable solution for "front-loading" in the disaster prevention field.