Some useful details about work space creation

Determining the right size and number of various work spaces such as lecture halls, faculty offices, labs etc. is a critical activity when planning for infrastructure creation of an institute. I had an opportunity to help in this activity at my university recently. When doing my homework on this task I found the following points to be useful which I'm noting here for other's reference:

  1. When determining the number of classrooms of different capacities, it will be useful if you have some data about class enrollments. That is, whether you are likely to have many classes with 30-40 students enrolled or you are likely to have most of the classes between 60-80 students enrolled for the course?
  2. For better utilization of space it is advisable to co-locate the same size rooms.
  3. You should plan for having movable furnishings (chairs etc.) in classrooms instead of fixed. This will allow you to "reconfigure" the room for different usage and capacity tuning.
For example, Fig. 1 below shows the classroom size and number situation at Stanford after they "right-sized" the classrooms.
Fig. 1 (Source: Stanford University Instructional Space Master Plan).

Similarly, for other types of work space specifications I've found the following documents/resources useful:
  1. Stanford University Instructional Space Master Plan (PDF). This is a good document to refer to for understanding masterplan level issues and recommendations when planning for academic zone facilities.
  2. Stanford Land, Buildings and Real Estate documents library (http://lbre.stanford.edu/lbre_doc-library) has a good collection of documents covering guidelines about various aspects of land and buildings. It covers from horticulture to signage to interiors.
  3. Stanford University Space and Furniture Planning Guidelines (PDF). It talks about sizes and dimensions of different types of offices, labs and classrooms etc. in a university.
  4. West Virginia University Space Guidelines 2013 (PDF).
  5. Rowan University Space and Furniture Standards (PDF). This too is similar to #3 above, but from a different university. It is a more concise one and shows diagrams of the offices, classrooms etc. with typical recommended furnishing etc. 
  6. New plinth area norms for General Pool Residential Accommodation (GPRA) in India. (PDF)


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Implementing a secure contact tracing system

Contact tracing means identifying people who have been in close proximity to each other for a certain duration of time. In recent days the COVID19 pandemic has brought this topic into the attention of governments trying to contain the outbreaks of the disease. However, there have been widespread concerns about the user’s data and privacy being compromised via the contact tracing app. The following report provides a useful database and analysis of the currently available apps that do contact tracing: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/05/07/1000961/launching-mittr-covid-tracing-tracker/ As can be seen from the above report, a large chunk of those apps are considered invasive and do not clearly outline how they actually work, and what they do with the potentially sensitive data that they capture from the user’s device. A possible design for a transparent and secure contact tracing solution The Bluetooth and GPS enabled smartphones carried by the population are the most commonly used d
Read more

Data leakage possibilities with Aadhaar based e-KYC systems

Image
A recent incident in July 2017  that involved alleged data theft through a KYC app has added to the confusion and concerns in the minds of users about security and confidentiality of their biometrics and other PII data that are maintained by UIDAI . I am a bit skeptical about how PII is handled by various agencies who collect and transact with such data in our country. The concern about having my biometrics and other data lifted was at back of my mind when I was giving my fingerprint at a mobile phone shop for taking a new data connection last week. It was not until a friend asked me for some clarifications about internals of biometrics based authentication systems that I paid close attention to various possible leakage points in Aadhaar based eKYC/authentication  applications.  The overall architecture and process steps involved when using Aadhaar APIs for performing, say, authentication of an Aadhaar card holder are explained in its API documentation . For the sake of und
Read more

Opprtunities for improving security in GoI apps

Image
Recent nationwide lock down due to COVID19 situation has forced me to try using some of the apps designed by various agencies of the central and state governments in India. It is heartening to see that we have done some serious work towards adoption of digitization of several services. The apps that I tried using included: BHIM by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.org.npci.upiapp&hl=en_IN Aarogya Setu by NIC (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nic.goi.aarogyasetu) Interestingly, both of these apps came into being in response to a crisis situation. The BHIM system came into limelight after the November 2016 demonetization event. Aarogya Setu is believed to be an app for tracing COVOD-19 contacts of the people who may be infected by the virus. Lets talk about the BHIM app first. It seems to have matured today, and has a wide user base. The permissions required by BHIM app for its functioning are listed here unde
Read more