Building Information Modelling (BIM) Effectiveness in Performing Life Cycle Assessment of Building

The scope of this project is to study the effectiveness of building information modelling (BIM) in performing life cycle assessment in a building. For the purposes of the study will be used “Revit” which is a BIM software and Tally which is an LCA tool integrated in Revit. The project is divided in six chapters. The first chapter consists of a theoretical introduction into building information modelling and its connection to life cycle assessment. The second chapter describes the characteristics of building information modelling (BIM). In addition, a comparison has been made with the traditional architectural, engineering and construction business model and the benefits to shift into BIM. In the third chapter it will be a review of the most well-known and available BIM software in the market. In chapter four life cycle assessment (LCA) will be described in general and later on specifically for the purpose of the case study that will be used in the following chapter. Moreover, the tools that are available to perform an LCA will be reviewed. Chapter five will present the case study that consists of a model in a BIM software (Revit) and the LCA performed by Tally, an LCA tool integrated into Revit. In the last chapter will be a discussion of the results that were obtained, the limitation and the possible future improvement in performing life cycle assessment (LCA) in a BIM model.

The secret life of software applications

One of the most undervalued problems by smartphone users is the security of data on their mobile devices. Today smartphones and tablets are used to send messages and photos and especially to stay connected with social networks, forums and other platforms. These devices contain a lot of private information like passwords, phone numbers, private photos, emails, etc. and an attacker may choose to steal or destroy this information. The main topic of this thesis is the security of the applications present on the most popular stores (App Store for iOS and Play Store for Android) and of their mechanisms for the management of security. The analysis is focused on how the architecture of the two systems protects users from threats and highlights the real presence of malware and spyware in their respective application stores. The work described in subsequent chapters explains the study of the behavior of 50 Android applications and 50 iOS applications performed using network analysis software. Furthermore, this thesis presents some statistics about malware and spyware present on the respective stores and the permissions they require. At the end the reader will be able to understand how to recognize malicious applications and which of the two systems is more suitable for him. This is how this thesis is structured. The first chapter introduces the security mechanisms of the Android and iOS platform architectures and the security mechanisms of their respective application stores. The Second chapter explains the work done, what, why and how we have chosen the tools needed to complete our analysis. The third chapter discusses about the execution of tests, the protocol followed and the approach to assess the “level of danger” of each application that has been checked. The fourth chapter explains the results of the tests and introduces some statistics on the presence of malicious applications on Play Store and App Store. The fifth chapter is devoted to the study of the users, what they think about and how they might avoid malicious applications. The sixth chapter seeks to establish, following our methodology, what application store is safer. In the end, the seventh chapter concludes the thesis.