DEVELOPING AN‘AS PERFORMING’BUILDING ASSESSMENT

The building profession is increasingly becoming more demanding with respect to building environmental perfor-mance.Intentions are to provide best practices into our buildings.In part,this is a response due to the Australian government and other independent organisations that have developed policy on rating tools and performance ranking measures,all with the intention of accomplishing environmentally sustainable buildings.With rating systems endorsing innovative environmental design solutions,it could be asked:Are our buildings re-ally operating as rated?Do we know whether our designs are in compliance with what was calculated or simulated?Is there a feedback loop informing the design process on successes or failures in our designs or mechanical services?While ratings continue to focus on‘by design’or‘as built’rewards,few tools acknowledge perhaps the more cru-cial bottom line:‘as performing’.With the exception of an AGBR(Australian Green Building Rating)scheme on actual annual energy consumption,there appears to be no‘as performing’assessment.Furthermore,practically every building is a prototype(a one-off)and requires commissioning,programming and scheduling of its services.It would certainly appear that as stakeholders(the procurers,owners,facilities managers and users)of the newly built environ-ment,that what we really want to know is actual on-site confirmation of performance.It is the objective of the Mobile Architecture and Built Environment Laboratory(MABEL),to provide such a service.

Research on Two Types of Buffer Zone Impact on Surrounding Office Space Environment in Winter in Cold Climate Zone—a Fieldwork in Architectural Design Institute Building of Tsinghua University,Beijing

Building buffer zone space is not only one of essential approaches for better mental quality of interior building space, but also an important factor that may influence interior thermal comfort and energy consumption. This study aims to analyze regulative advantages of buffer zone to the surrounding functional spaces. Based on a fieldwork test in a typical office building in cold climate zone in Beijing,China,the monitor data show interior physical performance in the Winter. The research selects two types of different buffer zones in the same building. One is a south-faced greenhouse which has large dimension with plenty of vegetation,and the other is a simple atrium in the middle of five floor building with mount of skylights. The factors and their influence to surrounding functional spaces and the whole building are found out from the comparisons of collected data by floor to floor monitor test on both buffer zones at the same time. The comparisons of two types of buffer zones conclude that the greenhouse is more effective to air quality regulation but not so clearly wellperformed to thermal buffering as expected due to the dominate active central heating in the Winter. This fieldwork test results for building performance can be helpful for both architects and engineers in the early phase of sustainable design.

BUILDING PERFORMANCE SIMULATION AS AN EARLY INTERVENTION OR LATE VERIFICATION IN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN:SAME PERFORMANCE OUTCOME BUT DIFFERENT DESIGN SOLUTIONS

INTRODUCTIONA Current green building practice has been largely advanced by an integrated design process.This integrated design process involves multiple disciplines,such as archi-tecture,civil,mechanical,and electrical engineering.The design method heavily relies on utilizing building performance simulation to illustrate how design param-eters affect the energy consumption and quality of the indoor environment before actual design decisions are made(Anderson,2014).The architectural design tools in the integrated design process supersede traditional geometrical exploration instruments,such as Sketchup,Revit,ArchiCad,and Rhino(Negendahl,2015).More building performance simulating tools,such as Ecotect,Computational Fluid Dynamics(CFD),Radiance,and EnergyPlus,have been developed to help architects measure building performance(e.g.,natural ventilation,daylighting,solar radiation,and energy uses)in the design process and attain green building standards such as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design(LEED).The information presented by these tools guide architects at a certain level in achieving green building goals.

Development and Application of Decision Support Model for the Performance Optimization of Office Buildings Based on Grasshopper

With the expansion of the office building area,the energy consumption of office buildings is growing.High⁃performance building design contributes to energy saving and the development of green buildings.However,there is a lack of high⁃performance building tools and the workflow is often time⁃consuming.The building performance simulation,multiple objective optimizations,and the decision support model are the new approaches of high⁃performance building design.This paper proposes a newly developed decision support model,a high⁃performance building decision model named HPBuildingDSM,which integrates the building performance simulation,building performance multiple objective optimizations,building performance sampling,and parameter sensitivity analysis to design high⁃performance office buildings.In this research,the HPBuildingDSM was operated to search for the desirable office building design results with low⁃energy and high⁃quality daylighting performances.The simulated results had better daylighting performance and lower energy consumption,whose UDI100-2000 was 37.94%and annual energy consumption performance was 76.28 kWh/(m2·a),indicating a better building performance than the optimized results in the previous case study.

GPPre:A Python⁃Based Tool in Grasshopper for Office Building Performance Optimization

With the development of the economic and low⁃carbon society,high⁃performance building(HPB)design plays an increasingly important role in the architectural area.The performance of buildings usually includes the building energy consumption,building interior natural daylighting,building surface solar radiation,and so on.Building performance simulation(BPS)and multiple objective optimizations(MOO)are becoming the main methods for obtaining a high performance building in the design process.Correspondingly,the BPS and MOO are based on the parametric tools,like Grasshopper and Dynamo.However,these tools are lacking the data analysis module for designers to select the high⁃performance building more conveniently.This paper proposes a toolkit“GPPre”developed based on the Grasshopper platform and Python language.At the end of this paper,a case study was conducted to verify the function of GPPre,which shows that the combination of the sensitivity analysis(SA)and MOO module in the GPPre could aid architects to design the buildings with better performance.

Plus Energy Buildings:A Numerical Case Study

The feasibility of Plus Energy Building for a sample relevant case is investigated.After a literature review aimed to identify key aspects of this type of buildings,a preliminary evaluation of the thermal performance of a building constructed using conventional material is presented together with a parametric analysis of the impact of typical influential parameters.Solar domestic hot water(SDHW)and photovoltaic systems(PV)are considered in the study.Numerical simulations indicate that for the examined sample case(Beirut in Lebanon)the total annual energy need of conventional building is 87.1 kWh/y.m^(2).About 49%of energy savings can be achieved by improving the building envelope and installing energy efficient technologies.Moreover,about 90%of energy savings in domestic hot water production can be achieved by installing a SDHW system composed of two solar collectors connected in series.Finally,the addition of a grid connected PV array system can significantly mitigate the energy needs of the building leading to an annual excess of energy.

Deep Learning for Multivariate Prediction of Building Energy Performance of Residential Buildings

In the quest to minimize energy waste,the energy performance of buildings(EPB)has been a focus because building appliances,such as heating,ventilation,and air conditioning,consume the highest energy.Therefore,effective design and planning for estimating heating load(HL)and cooling load(CL)for energy saving have become paramount.In this vein,efforts have been made to predict the HL and CL using a univariate approach.However,this approach necessitates two models for learning HL and CL,requiring more computational time.Moreover,the one-dimensional(1D)convolutional neural network(CNN)has gained popularity due to its nominal computa-tional complexity,high performance,and low-cost hardware requirement.In this paper,we formulate the prediction as a multivariate regression problem in which the HL and CL are simultaneously predicted using the 1D CNN.Considering the building shape characteristics,one kernel size is adopted to create the receptive fields of the 1D CNN to extract the feature maps,a dense layer to interpret the maps,and an output layer with two neurons to predict the two real-valued responses,HL and CL.As the 1D data are not affected by excessive parameters,the pooling layer is not applied in this implementation.Besides,the use of pooling has been questioned by recent studies.The performance of the proposed model displays a comparative advantage over existing models in terms of the mean squared error(MSE).Thus,the proposed model is effective for EPB prediction because it reduces computational time and significantly lowers the MSE.

Leveraging Publicly Available Building Energy Data as a Design Firm in the United States

Publicly available building energy data are exploding--thirteen American cities and 14 states now require them by law. This emergence of data nudges building owners and tenants to reduce energy consumption by comparing their usage to that of similar buildings. However, vast untapped energy reductions and deeper physical understandings can still be extracted from these data. This paper extends the energy saving impact and provides key insight into building performance through publicly-disclosed data by describing three initiatives at a large design finn. An internal high performance design reporting program compares projects from around the world and across offices. A case study of 706 buildings in New York City illustrates the value of tracking large-scale patterns to a design firm. Per capita energy and carbon usage is correlated to life expectancy to better inform neighborhood and city design. As more data freely flow out into the public, engineers must strategically engage it.

Developing a Building Environmental Assessment System for Slovakia

In the previous time the requirements of environmental safety, suitability and responsibility of buildings have increased. The criteria of sustainability are included in building environmental assessment systems and tools used in different countries. The aim of building environmental assessment is a sustainable building design, which demands the cooperation among civil engineers, architects, environmentalists and other experts from different areas of building environmental assessment. The existing systems and tools were the basis of the new system development available in Slovak conditions. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the building environmental assessment system （BEAS） which was developed in Slovakia. Significant models used world wide in relation to environmental assessment of buildings, were compared on the basis of their covered. The summary of sustainable building assessment systems will be presented in this paper. Developing a building environmental assessment system for Slovakia is also introduced in the paper.

A STUDY ON THE APPLICATION OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TECHNIQUES FOR PREDICTING THE HEATING AND COOLING LOADS OF BUILDINGS

The prediction of the heating and cooling loads of a building is an essential aspect in studies involving the analysis of energy consumption in buildings. An accurate estimation of heating and cooling load leads to better management of energy related tasks and progressing towards an energy efficient building. With increasing global energy demands and buildings being major energy consuming entities, there is renewed interest in studying the energy performance of buildings. Alternative technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques are being widely used in energy studies involving buildings. This paper presents a review of research in the area of forecasting the heating and cooling load of buildings using AI techniques. The results discussed in this paper demonstrate the use of AI techniques in the estimation of the thermal loads of buildings. An accurate prediction of the heating and cooling loads of buildings is necessary for forecasting the energy expenditure in buildings. It can also help in the design and construction of energy efficient buildings.

A FRAMEWORK FOR APPLICATION OF SYSTEM ENGINEERING PROCESS MODELS TO SUSTAINABLE DESIGN OF HIGH PERFORMANCE BUILDINGS

Building owners,designers and constructors are seeing a rapid increase in the number of sustainably designed high performance buildings.These buildings provide numerous benefits to the owners and occupants to include improved indoor air quality,energy efficiency,and environmental site standards;and ultimately enhance productivity for the building occupants.As the demand increases for higher building energy efficiency and environmental standards,application of a set of process models will support consistency and optimization during the design process.Systems engineering process models have proven effective in taking an integrated and comprehensive view of a system while allowing for clear stakeholder engagement,requirements definition,life cycle analysis,technology insertion,validation and verification.This paper overlays systems engineering on the sustainable design process by providing a framework for application of the Waterfall,Vee,and Spiral process models to high performance buildings.Each process model is mapped to the sustainable design process and is evaluated for its applicability to projects and building types.Adaptations of the models are provided as Green Building Process Models.

ARCHITECTURE AND HIGH PERFORMANCE BUILDING AT GEORGIA TECH:TEACHING DESIGN+TECHNOL OGY IN THE ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXT

Integrative approaches to architectural design+environmental technology pedagogy are essential in educating future generations to respond to impending building energy use challenges.This paper will describe new approaches to incorporating building physics and building technology in the design studio via a diverse cohort of students and faculty,with strong emphasis placed on the development of innovative architectural strategies operating at the intersection of urban demographics,house and housing design,building performance,and sustainability.The United States Department of Energy reports that our buildings account for forty percent of all energy consumed nationally.Our focus on high performance buildings at the Georgia Tech College of Architecture aims to reduce that percentage and meet the rising demand for design and building performance professionals to evaluate the environmental impact of design decisions.Continuing a twenty-five-year trajectory of research leadership,Tech students and faculty are leading the way in digital design,building simulation,engineering,and construction integration.Over the past four years,students from various schools across campus have been working together in a seminar and design studio setting to expand 21st century housing options.Changing urban demographics,sustainability targets,and alternative energy requirements are investigated through smartly researched and elegantly designed housing and public space propositions.The move from an ecologically aware architecture towards an architecture immersed in the emerging debates about carbon footprint and energy consumption is in part driven by increasing international concern over resource availability and delivery.Through reduced costs of alternative energy capture,higher efficiencies,rapid evolution of upstream technologies and applications and more robust software platforms along with growing social,political and economic debate,the definition of sustainability is evolving - moving to transform integral parts of archi-tectural practice and education from a primarily aesthetic and assembly oriented tra-jectory to a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between design thinking and building performance.

AN EVALUATION OF INDOOR ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY AND OCCUPANT WELL-BEING IN MANITOBA SCHOOL BUILDINGS

This exploratory research aims to evaluate indoor environmental quality in the classrooms of three school buildings in Southern Manitoba,Canada,and to evaluate the well-being of these schools’teachers as it pertains to their perception of their classrooms’indoor environment.The schools include a middle-aged,conventional school;a new,non-green school;and a new,green school certified using the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating system.The methodology involved using a mobile instrument cart to conduct snapshot measurements of thermal comfort,indoor air quality,lighting and acoustics in classrooms and an occupant survey to evaluate teachers’long-term satisfaction with their classrooms’indoor environmental quality.The results showed that the new,green and new,non-green schools’classrooms performed better than the conventional,middle-aged school’s classrooms with respect to some aspects of thermal comfort and indoor air quality only.Teachers in the new,green school and in the new,non-green school were more satisfied than teachers in the conventional,middle-aged school with their classrooms’overall indoor environmental quality,lighting quality and indoor air quality.Surprisingly,the new,green and new-non green school classrooms’performance were very comparable with the new,green school’s classrooms performing statistically significantly better with respect to relative humidity.Similarly,none of the differences in teachers’satisfaction ratings between the new,green and new,non-green school were statistically significant.

A Study on the Evaluation of Heating and Cooling Energy Efficiency in Residential Buildings for Climatic Zones of Turkey

In Turkey, most of the common type projects of mass production residential buildings are being developed and constructed by TOK1 （Housing Development Administration of Turkey）. These buildings, in which energy efficient approach has been disregarded for years, cause to gradually increase on heating and cooling energy consumptions. In regards to national economics, it is essential to evaluate energy efficiency and to develop suggestions to decrease energy consumptions in residential buildings. To achieve appropriate solutions, cost evaluation also becomes necessary. Therefore, this paper aims to introduce a study which serves the purpose of producing a choice of energy efficient solutions in order to reduce energy consumptions and energy cost. In this study, different heating and cooling energy efficient scenarios have been developed for a selected residential building, constructed by TOKI, for climatic zones of Turkey. For each scenario, energy simulations have been executed by means of the simulation program--DesignBuilder, the user-friendly visual interface of EnergyPlus, and cost analysis has been carried out by using the net present value and discounted payback period method. As a result, energy and cost effective solutions have been presented and discussed for different climatic zones.

Analysis and Evaluation of Thermal-cooling Loads of Office Buildings Using Carrier Software in Iran

The importance and necessity of energy saving in the world have been dis­cussed for many years,but achieving a logical and transparent solution is still one of the main challenges and problems of the world’s economy.The rapid growth of energy consumption in the last two decades has caused the security of the domestic energy supply of buildings to face serious prob­lems.In this research,first by entering parameters such as the type of mate­rials,doors and windows,and the type of soil on the floor connected to the ground,etc.in the heat and cold load calculation software(HAP Carrier)as the design calculations and then in the second step entering the specifica­tions inferred from the Iran’s national building code as a reference for ener­gy saving calculations,calculations are performed and compared as the first criterion,and finally these two outputs are compared.The actual energy consumption and determination of the building energy consumption index are determined as another criterion,as well as the degree of deviation from the actual consumption.The results showed that the theoretical method and the thermal and refrigeration load calculations of the Zanjan Gas Company building have 6%difference in cooling load but the heating load is about 34%different,which means for cooling loads,the theoretical model can be used with high accuracy but for heating loads,the national building code needs fundamental changes.

A STRATEGY FOR ENERGY PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS AT THE EARLY DESIGN STAGE:PREDICTED VS.ACTUAL BUILDING ENERGY PERFORMANCE

Developments in information technology are providing methods to improve current design practices,where uncertainties about various design elements can be simulated and studied from the design inception.Energy and thermal simulations,improved design representations and enhanced collaboration using digital media are increasingly being used.With the expanding interest in energy-efficient build-ing design,whole building energy simulation programs are increasingly employed in the design process to help architects and engineers determine which design strat-egies save energy and improve building performance.The purpose of this research was to investigate the potential of these programs to perform whole building energy analysis during the early stages of architectural design,and compare the results with the actual building energy performance.The research was conducted by simulating energy usage of a fully functional research laboratory building using two different simulation tools that are aimed for early schematic design.The results were compared with utility data of the building to identify the degree of close-ness with which simulation results match the actual energy usage of the build-ing.Results indicate that modeled energy data from one of the software programs was significantly higher than the measured,actual energy usage data,while the results from the second application were comparable,but did not correctly predict monthly energy loads for the building.This suggests that significant deviations may exist between modeled and actual energy consumption for buildings,and more importantly between different simulation software programs.Understanding the limitations and suitability of specific simulation programs is crucial for successful integration of performance simulations with the design process.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY:DESIGN STRATEGIES FOR ENERGY-EFFICIENCY OF HIGH-RISE OFFICE BUILDINGS

Tall buildings are being designed and built across a wide range of cities.A poorly designed tall building can tremendously increase the building’s appetite for energy.Therefore,this paper aims to determine the design strategies that help a high-rise office building to be more energy efficient.For this purpose,a comparative study on twelve case buildings in three climate groups(temperate,sub-tropical&tropical)was performed.The exterior envelope,building form and orientation,service core placement,plan layout,and special design elements like atria and sky gardens were the subject of investigation.effectiveness of different design strategies for reducing the cooling,heating,ventilation and electric lighting energy usage.Finally,lessons from these buildings’were defined for the three climates.Furthermore,a compari-son of building energy performance data with international benchmarks confirmed that in temperate and sub-tropical climates sustainable design strategies for high-rise buildings were performing well,as a result leading to lower energy consump-tion.However,for the tropics the design of high-rise buildings needs additional consideration.

New Zealand Advances in Performance-Based Seismic Design

This paper provides a summary of the objectives and principles which underpin the 2004 edition of the New Zealand earthquake design standard, AS/NZS 1170 Part 5. As with many modern earthquake design standards, the New Zealand earthquake design standard recognizes that earthquake resistant design that only addresses life safety goals without addressing both operational continuity of essential facilities and damage control, falls short of public expectations. Such standards not longer meet societal expectations. The paper outlines how these issues have been addressed within New Zealand, and some of the issues addressed when preparing appendices to the standard to provide guidance for materials standard writers to ensure consistency with the proposed approach. Recognizing the significance of non-structural components and parts of buildings in both damage control and operational continuity has been an important step forward in attaining the performance levels required.

Exergy Analysis of Single and Multi-Step Thermal Processes

The present paper introduces the concepts of exergy and treats it applications to analysis of the gain in exergy efficiency between one-step and multi-step thermal processes. The analysis, which is carried out with the Excel-based SEPE program, is exemplified with the comparison between single-step and two-steps heat pump setup for providing heat to a floor heating system and for domestic hot water. The paper discusses the use of the concept of exergy efficiency as a measure of success for design of a heat pump application and how the use of information on exergy destruction and temperature levels in different parts of the system add a new perspective to the analysis and the evaluation of the system performance. The paper shows how this information can be used to improve the system configuration and also the operation of the system for given boundary conditions. This is especially useful when the energy from the low temperature sources can be utilized at different temperature or quality levels such as for space heating and domestic hot water.

A ROADMAP FOR CLIMATE ACTION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY:HIGHER EDUCATION CAMPUSES AS CLIMATE LEADERS

INTRODUCTION As federal and provincial governments debate the viability of absolute emission reduction targets,universities and college across North America are steadfast on a voluntary movement to slash greenhouse gas emissions and model the way forward on climate action.These institutions are taking advantage of campus contexts that offer decentralized energy supply opportunities,district energy systems,large building portfolios,and research partnerships to leverage change.Higher education campuses are emerging as innovation hubs for the deployment of new technologies,policy development,best practices in portfolio scale building operating models,public-private partnership models and more.