Simulating multi-agent narratives for pre-occupancy evaluation of architectural designs

Simulating and evaluating the impact that a building design might produce on its prospective occupants is a key challenge in architectural design. Prior work demonstrated the capabilities of narrative-based modeling to coordinate the collaborative behavior of virtual occupants. In this work, we aim to demonstrate the scalability and applicability of narrative-based modeling to support the pre-occupancy evaluation of alternative design options in complex real-world hospital facilities. To do so, we developed a narrative-based pre-occupancy evaluation platform that extends pre-existing narrative-based capabilities with (a) a newly developed library space, actor, activities, and narrative entities that support the simulation of real-world human behavior patterns while accounting for the impact that a building design produces on how the patterns unfold, and (b) a newly integrated evaluation module able to generate and visualize numerical data-logs and spatiotemporal data-maps of key performance indicators in hospital settings. We applied the platform to conduct a comparative pre-occupancy evaluation of two different architectural designs for an outpatient ophthalmology clinic. Results demonstrate the scalability and applicability of narrative-based modeling to help design stakeholders visualize and analyze how design decisions may impact future building operations in outpatient clinics.