Design and Evaluation of an Integrated Visualization Platform to Support Corrective Maintenance of HVAC Problem–Related Work Orders

Abstract

HVAC mechanics need to know various information items about a facility and its building systems to troubleshoot HVAC-related problems. Whether HVAC mechanics can comprehend the situation and pinpoint the problem source in an efficient way is affected by how the required information is provided to them. This research study builds on the hypothesis that the visualization of the required information for HVAC mechanics can improve the time efficiency of the decision making for the troubleshooting process, and there is research needed to understand how much time efficiency can be achieved by visualization. Hence, this study utilizes a user-centered and iterative process to design and implement a visualization platform to support troubleshooting of HVAC-related problems. The final visualization platform is evaluated through user studies with quantitative metrics. The findings show that using the developed platform HVAC mechanics could save more than 50% of the time to identify the cause for a reported HVAC-related problem. The research findings contribute to the existing body of knowledge on the area of information visualization support for facilities management (FM) activities, and can be beneficial for computer-aided FM solution vendors to consider when designing user interfaces for HVAC maintenance tasks.