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Resumo Câmara Bioclimática de Baixo Custo (CBBC) é um laboratório de estudos comparativos de conforto ambiental e desempenho de edificações. Neste artigo, apresenta-se um diagnóstico geral das condições de conforto térmico e acústico proporcionadas pela configuração inicial da CBBC, a partir de alguns resultados da avaliação pós-ocupação (APO) - a qual também englobava aspectos de conforto lumínico, ergonômico e funcional. Inicialmente, faz-se uma breve contextualização sobre APO. No delineamento experimental, apresentam-se a estrutura e as funcionalidades da CBBC, detalha-se o monitoramento de variáveis ambientais, o protocolo de operação da CBBC e a metodologia adotada na APO. Na sequência, constam os resultados da APO realizada por 136 voluntários em agosto de 2018, sob condições de ventilação forçada, porém sem interferência de climatização artificial. A maioria dos ocupantes declarou sentir-se confortável com a temperatura do ar interna (84,6%). Em contrapartida, mais de um quinto dos ocupantes declararam estar insatisfeitos (19,1%) ou muito insatisfeitos (2,2%) com o nível de ruído na CBBC. Abstract The Cost-effective Bioclimatic Building Chamber (CBBC) is a laboratory dedicated to comparative studies on environmental comfort and building performance. In this paper, a diagnosis of thermo-acoustic comfort conditions provided by CBBC’s original configuration is presented, based on some results from a Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) - which also included lighting, ergonomic, and functional comfort aspects. Firstly, a brief contextualisation of POE is presented. Regarding research procedures, the paper describes CBBC’s structure and functionalities, environmental parameters monitoring, CBBC’s operation protocol, and POE’s methodology. Subsequently, the results of the first POE application are discussed, accomplished by 136 volunteers in August 2018, under forced ventilated conditions without active air conditioning. Most occupants reported thermal comfort at CBBC (84,6%). On the other hand, more than one fifth of the occupants declared dissatisfaction (19,1%) or high dissatisfaction (2,2%) with the CBBC’s noise level.

Building operations rely heavily on control systems and sensors. This paper provides a sophisticated literature review on sensor systems in building/HVAC systems, particularly in the context of controls, and their impacts on energy efficiency and thermal comfort. This study aims to understand the previous and current research and identify future research opportunities on this subject. The reviewed sensor systems were used for heuristic rule-based controls, local controls, and advanced optimal controls for existing and emerging technologies. Five major aspects of sensors are reviewed here: control loops for sensors, sensor types, sensor locations, sensor data, and a sensor impact evaluation framework. To augment the literature review, comprehensive standardized interviews were also conducted with relevant industry experts and practitioners. These interviews were designed and performed to (1) identify significant factors for selecting sensor sets and current undergoing issues, (2) identify potential improvements in sensor configuration/deployment, and (3) integrate expert (e.g., researcher, building operation practitioner) knowledge and experiences to develop structured use-case scenarios. Researchers collected and analyzed 31 interview responses for this paper.

The building sector continues to register a significant rise in energy demand and environmental impact, notably in developing countries. A considerable proportion of this energy is required during the operational phase of buildings for interior heating and cooling, leading to a necessity of building performance improvement. A holistic approach in building design and construction represents a step to moderate construction costs in conjunction with reduced long-term operating costs and a low impact on the environment. The present paper presents an experimental evaluation of the energy efficiency of a building under real climate conditions, the building, which represents a holistically designed modular laboratory, is located in a moderate continental temperate climate, characteristic of the south-eastern part of the Pannonian Depression, with some sub-Mediterranean influences. Considerations for the holistic design of the building, including multi-object optimization and integrated design with a high regard for technology and operational life are described. The paper provides a genuine overview of the energy efficiency response of the building during six months of operational use through a monitored energy management system. The energetic analysis presented in the paper represents an intermediary stage as not all the energetic users were installed nor all the energetic suppliers. However, the results showed a reliable thermal response in the behaviour of recycled-PET thermal wadding used as insulation material in the building and for the intermediary stage in which the building has only secondary energy users, the energetic balance proves its efficiency, keeping the buffer stock of energy high values over 90%.

Building performance simulation serves the derivation of the relevant building performance indicators (e.g., energy use, indoor-environmental conditions) given the assumptions of certain model input parameters (i.e., description of the building, boundary conditions, occupants' presence and behaviour). Simulation can be employed for multiple purposes, including but not limited to building design support, building systems configuration, and code compliance demonstration. It has been suggested that the level of detail and resolution of simulation models must match their deployment purpose. However, there is arguably a lack of definitive guidelines for the purpose-dependent selection of appropriate simulation models. To address this challenge, the present contribution suggests that the attributes of a simulation model in general, and the type of the adopted occupant model in particular, must correspond to the specifics of the building performance indicator under investigation. To make progress in this area, a typological classification of building performance indicators is proposed along three salient dimensions, namely the indicators' topical domain (e.g., energy use, thermal comfort, noise control), their spatial attributes, and their temporal attributes. Following a detailed analysis, the paper presents a high-level approach to derive the basic requirements concerning occupant models as a~categorical function of the simulation purpose.

The search for finding solutions to urban problems led to the emergence of efforts to apply the concept of sustainability to cities. Many assessment tools have been developed to assess sustainability index from buildings to neighborhoods and urban centers. Neighborhood Sustainability Assessment (NSA) tools are peculiar to regions with the payload to examine the buildings within their environments, evaluate society, tenure, transportation, water, air, energy and biologic diversity economically, environmentally and socially. This paper presents the development of a building performance and design tool that is designed and intended to assist the Nigerian government with its building codes and policies and also building practitioners with the design process. The methodology is based on a review of existing building rating systems and NSAs, from which a system adapted to the requirements of the Nigerian National Building Code for residential buildings is proposed. Methodology is further developed into a design tool whose features include a case study as a reference building validated through Independent Assessors Correlation Module. This paper will assist the Nigerian National Building Code in establishing policies favorable to the Built Environment and aid designers in the creation of sustainable buildings in Nigeria, as well as serving as an exemplar to other developing African countries., {"references":["Building and Construction Authority. (2013). Green Mark for Districts. pp. (Version 2.0), pp. 1–24.","Adekunle A.O., Emmanuel C.O., Stephen B.O., & Olugbenga F. (2015). Analysis of Global Solar Irradiance over Climatic Zones in Nigeria for Solar Energy Applications. Journal of Solar Energy, 1-9.","Arshad Ahmed, & John Sturges. (2014). Materials Science In Construction: An Introduction. New York: Routledge.","BREEAM. (2021, February 16). Building Research Establishment Ltd. Retrieved from BREEAM: https://www.breeam.com/","Clark W.C,, Turner B.L,, Kates R.W,, Richards J.F, Mathews J.T, & Meyer W.B. (1990). The Earth as Transformed by Human Action: Global and regional changes in the biosphere over the past 300 years. London: Cambridge University Press.","Drakasis-Smith, D. (1997). Third world cities: sustainable urban development III, basic needs and human rights. Urban Studies, 796–825.","Jubril A., Tamaraukuro T. A., & George B. (2017). Development of a building performance assessment and design tool for residential buildings in Nigeria. International High- Performance Built Environment Conference- A Sustainable Built Environment Conference 2016 Series (pp. 221 – 230). Cyprus International University: ScienceDirect.","Sharifi, A, & Murayama, A. (2013). A critical review of seven selected neighborhood sustainability assessment tools. Environmental Impact Assessment Review, (pp. pp. 73–87).","Sharifi, A. (2013, January 12). Sustainability at the Neighborhood Level: Assessment Tools and the Pursuit of Sustainability, Graduate School of Environmental Studies Nagoya University. Nagoya: Unpublished PhD thesis."]}

International audience; Interactive learning plays a key role in extending the occupant behavior implementation toward smart buildings. Efficient feedbacks can be obtained from the end user by involving occupants and increasing their awareness about energy systems.Working in highly energy-efficient buildings can be a great opportunity, but users need to feel empowered. This means making them aware of the building features andallowing them to manage some of the appliances. In this way, disorientation or annoyance is avoided, and people feel more in control. This paper proposes a solution to interact with occupants to estimate the number of occupants. A novel way of supervised learning is analyzed to estimate the occupancy in a room where actual occupancy is interactively requested to occupants when it is the most relevant to limit the number of interactions. Occupancy estimation algorithm relies on machine learning; it uses information gathered from occupants with the measurements collected from common sensors, for instance, motion detection, power consumption, and CO2 concentration. Two different classifiers are investigated for occupancy estimation with interactions: a decision tree C4.5 and a parameterized rule-based classfier. In this paper, the question of when interacting with occupants is investigated. This approach avoids the usage of a camera to determine the actual occupancy. A complete real-time interaction environment has been developed and is used to estimate the occupancy in an office case study. The graphical user interface has been designed to carry out a real-time experiment.

The use of manual labour and physically demanding building techniques is a hallmark of the construction industry. However, recent technological developments have given rise to a rising tendency in the construction industry towards digitalization and data-driven decision-making. The purpose of this study is to investigate how data engineering and computing are used in the construction sector and how they affect building methods. The study depends on a thorough analysis of the literature, which includes 26 pertinent papers from scholarly publications and business reports. The results imply that computing and data engineering can dramatically enhance building procedures and results. Particularly, these technologies make project planning, resource allocation, and risk management more precise and effective. The use of data can also result in more accountability and transparency in building projects, which can save costs and enhance overall project performance. The study also looks at the challenges involved in applying data engineering and computation in the construction sector, including problems with data security, privacy, and quality. The study also emphasises the requirement for more thorough data management plans as well as the creation of industry-wide standards and best practices. The results have important ramifications for experts in the field, academics, and decision-makers, and they can guide future initiatives to incorporate data-driven methods into the construction sector.

Increasing awareness of climate issues in recent decades has led to new policies on buildings’ energy consumption and energy performance. The European Union (EU) directive 2010/31/EC, i.e., the energy performance of buildings directive (EPBD), is one of the measures initiated to achieve climate and energy goals by reducing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in the building sector. The EPBD required all new buildings to be nearly zero-energy buildings (nZEBs) by 2021. Nearly zero-energy buildings (nZEBs) are buildings with a very-high-energy performance and nearly zero or low-energy requirements covered to a very significant extent by energy from renewable sources produced on-site or nearby. The utilisation of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels is a common approach for achieving the nZEB standard. The carbon footprint of PV panels is often not discussed as a parameter. This paper aimed to analyse the environmental performance of an existing nearly zero-energy university building in a Norwegian use case scenario. This analysis is performed by assessing annual electricity and heat consumption from both energetic and environmental perspectives. The energy required for the building during the studied period is then used to analyse the environmental and energy performance of the building. When it comes to the environmental assessment, the commercial software SimaPro was used. The proposed revision EPBD and nZEB definition from 2021 suggests that nZEBs should also consider operational greenhouse gas emissions and life-cycle global warming potential from 2027. The life cycle assessment (LCA) of the building’s energy sources looks at the global warming potential (GWP) and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and how they compare to Norwegian grid electricity. The results of the analysis highlights potential challenges to justifying the use of alternative energy sources to fulfil the criteria of nZEBs. When installing solar PV, it is important to consider the energy mix of the country where the solar PVs are produced. To solely consider the energy performance of the building, the installation of solar PV panels in countries with a high share of renewable energy may result in a reduced impact in terms of emission reduction from a life cycle perspective.

The building sector is responsible for nearly 40% of global energy consumption. Many existing buildings have poor thermal insulation and low energy performance, hindering sustainability goals. Energy-driven building retrofitting could address this issue and implementing Building Information Modelling (BIM) in retrofitting can reduce process time, costs, and waste associated with such undertakings. Yet, there is a lack of research and insufficient guidance for implementing BIM in energy-driven retrofitting. A BIM framework is presented to enhance decision-making processes during retrofitting. The aims of this study were to (1) identify BIM technologies and methodologies that could address existing barriers and improve efficiency in green retrofitting, (2) evaluate two BIM frameworks previously adopted in retrofitting projects, and (3) provide a set of recommendations. A comprehensive literature review was conducted to benchmark current retrofitting strategies and measures and identify the opportunities for implementing BIM. Then, a comparative analysis was conducted using two published case studies, to evaluate the BIM frameworks adopted in the research. The comparison provided an understanding of cases where BIM modelling and analysis tools were adopted, and costs and energy savings subsequently accrued; this facilitated the identification of the market's most cost-effective and energy-efficient retrofitting package at the time of publication.

Sensing occupant presence and their trajectories of movement in buildings enable new types of analysis and building operation strategies. However, obtaining such information in a cost-efficient and non-intrusive manner is a challenge. This paper proposes the Occu-track method for how inexpensive battery-powered sensors can be used at scale to estimate occupant presence and movement trajectories. The technique combines graph analysis and advanced clustering to produce accurate estimates. This paper validates the efficiency of Occu-track in two different settings; a music room and a private office. The experimental results from two room-level deployments demonstrate the benefits of the approach obtaining an average Root Mean Squared Error of 1.19 meters for case 1 and 0.88 meters for case 2 for trajectory estimation. The results can contribute to new dimensions of research associated with the generation of metadata from non-intrusive sensors to make informed decisions about efficient space utilization and floor plans, intelligent building operations, crowd management, comfortable indoor environment, or managing personnel.

In the 21st century, sustainable development is high on the international agenda, with the implementation of green walls contributing significantly to achieving environmental and social benefits, mainly in the frame of sustainable improvement of the building sector. The installation of a greening system can provide engineered solutions for stormwater management and climate change mitigation at both the urban and building level. This facilitates improving indoor comfort conditions and reducing energy needs. In order to improve the features of products and to facilitate the implementation of a proper technical standard, this paper proposes a critical bibliographic analysis of more recent scientific works. Moreover, by means of a numerical model of an existing single-family apartment, placed in the Mediterranean climate zone, a building envelope refurbishment with a living wall is carried out. A parametric analysis provides evidence for the application of different plants&rsquo, types and insulation materials. The results are analyzed considering the energy needs, the thermo-hygrometric comfort, and the outdoor surface temperature variation of the building envelope, emphasizing that a multi-criteria design approach is needed for green vertical systems. The paper provides data and an approach useful for designers and researchers in the evaluation and optimization of the performance of greening systems.

Building energy simulation programs are used for optimal sizing of building systems to reduce excessive energy wastage. Such programs employ thermo-dynamic algorithms to estimate every aspect of the target building with a certain level of accuracy. Currently, almost all building simulation tools capture static features of a building including the envelope, geometry, and Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems, etc. However, building performance also relies on dynamic features such as occupants&rsquo, interactions with the building. Such interactions have not been fully implemented in building energy simulation tools, which potentially influences the comprehensiveness and accuracy of estimations. This paper discusses an information exchange mechanism via coupling of EnergyPlus&trade, a building energy simulation engine and PMFServ, an occupant behavior modeling tool, to alleviate this issue. The simulation process is conducted in Building Controls Virtual Testbed (BCVTB), a virtual simulation coupling tool that connects the two separate simulation engines on a time-step basis. This approach adds a critical dimension to the traditional building energy simulation programs to seamlessly integrate occupants&rsquo, interactions with building components to improve the modeling capability, thereby improving building performance evaluation. The results analysis of this paper reveals a need to consider metrics that measure different types of comfort for building occupants.

The green wall is an engineered technology for stormwater management and climate change mitigation at the urban level. At the building scale, these energy efficiency measures are suitable for improving indoor comfort conditions and for reducing energy needs. Several guidelines are available about vertical greening systems, but these propose design parameters and performance evaluation criteria, often incomparable. In order to facilitate the implementation of proper technical standards, this paper proposes a critical review of more recent scientific investigations. All parameters for the design optimization are discussed as well as the achievable social and private benefits by taking into consideration the type of study (numerical or experimental), the climate conditions, the analysis period, all technical requirements of the green layer as well as of the back wall. The review underlines that a multi-criteria design approach is needed for green vertical systems. Thus, the paper is concluded with a SWOT analysis, evidencing “strengths”, “weaknesses”, “opportunities” and “threats”. The analysis shows that the highlighted benefits will acquire greater relevance considering the increase in global temperatures and the growing need to redevelop densely built urban centers, while some negative aspects may be filled in the future with a deeper preparation of designers and careful choice of materials. The review paper shows, therefore, drivers and barriers occurring designing and implementing green walls.

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is increasingly used as an early-stage design-decision tool to support choices of structural system. However LCA modellers must first make numerous methodological decisions, and the resultant wide variations in approach are often inadequately described by the modellers.\ud \ud This paper identifies, and quantifies, the three major areas of methodological variation. These are: temporal differences in the stages considered; spatial differences in the material boundaries; and physical disparities in the data coefficients. The effects are then demonstrated through a case study of a student residential building in Cambridge. The cross-laminated timber (CLT) structure is compared with concrete frame, steel frame and load-bearing masonry, considering the influence that varying the temporal boundaries, the data coefficients, and the spatial boundaries has on the choice.\ud \ud While for this building CLT is confirmed as the lowest impact material, the paper demonstrates that varying the methodological choices can change the results by an alarming factor of 10 or even more. The findings confirm the need for the utmost clarity and transparency with all LCA calculations. Making wider industry or policy decisions based on LCA results should be undertaken with extreme caution.

Purpose Environmental rating systems typically focus on building characteristics at a specific point in time; but from investment and valuation perspectives, actual performance over time should be the most important thing. Newly constructed commercial buildings today usually come with a high degree of technically advanced installations and a wide range of monitoring possibilities. This provides us with the possibility of monitoring a building’s in-use performance. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how frontrunners in the Swedish green building market actually monitor their new buildings, and look for similarities in that area. Design/methodology/approach By investigating a selected case study, conducting a survey and follow-up interviews among Swedish real estate companies and finally studying the available industry information, this paper considers what key performance indicators real estate developers choose to monitor as well as how they go about collecting and using the data. By doing this, we can get an idea of what is already monitored and to what extent. The case study also provides an insight into what is technologically possible. Findings A comparison of the gathered data from this study is then made with information that investors and property valuers would be expected to be interested in. The results show that these data are, to a large extent, information that the frontrunners already gather, but it is not made publicly available. One area where important information is lacking, however, is data about indoor climate. Research limitations/implications The study is solely focussed on commercial buildings in Sweden and also on real estate owners with a high sustainability profile. Originality/value This paper presents a starting point in introducing the research area of the continued sustainability performance of our built environment. In order to understand and improve the environmental performance over time of our buildings and the connection to potential value, it is important to know what we can and should monitor.

Improving building performance is of great significance to protecting the ecology, saving energy and enhancing the living environment. This paper developed a comprehensive method for optimizing the design of a regular architectural space to improve building performance. The research aims to provide architects with robust and accurate design references when conducting design tasks. The entire optimization process is divided into three steps. The first step is to build a database by generating the research objects randomly and performing building simulations on them. The second step is to train artificial neural network (ANN) models as a substitute of the time-consuming building simulation in the multi-objective optimization to predict the building performance quickly. The last step is to perform multi-objective optimization based on the actual design constraints. To demonstrate the optimization process, a common type of classroom space defined by 30 design parameters was selected as a case study. The optimization objectives were set as energy demand, thermal environment and daylight environment. The accuracy of different ANN models was assessed. To imitate realistic design tasks, three design scenarios with constraints are used in the optimization. All the three optimizations finished in 350 s. Compared to the traditional optimization method based on simulation, the optimization calculation is accelerated by approximately 2,570 times. To ensure the reliability of the optimization results, several nondominated solutions of each case were validated by simulation, and there were good agreements between the simulation results and the optimization results. An integrated solution and a reference solution was defined for each case. Compared to the reference solution, the objectives of the integrated solution of the three cases have been improved by 24.6%, 18.7% and 14.2% on average, respectively, indicating that this method is feasible and effective to improve building design in actual tasks.

Buildings consume a large proportion of global primary energy and building performance management requires massive data inputs. Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a tool used for comparing different buildings while avoiding problems caused by heterogeneous data sources. However, silos of building and energy consumption data are separate, and the linkages between a KPI formula and different data sets are often non-existent. This paper develops an ontology-based approach for automatically calculating the KPI to support building energy evaluation. The proposed approach integrates building information from BIM and energy and environmental information collected by sensor networks. A KPI ontology is developed to establish a KPI formula, thereby linking static and dynamic data generated in the building operation phase. Each KPI can be defined by inputs, a formula and outputs, and the formula consists of parameters and operators. The parameters can be linked to building data or transformed into a SPARQL query. A case study is investigated based on the proposed approach, and the KPIs for energy and environment are calculated for a real building project. The result shows that this approach relates the KPI formula to the data generated in the building operation phase and can automatically give the result after defining the space and time of interest, thus supporting building performance benchmarking with massive data sets at different levels of details. This research proposes a novel approach to integrating the KPI formula and linked building data from a semantic perspective, and other researchers can use this approach as a foundation for linking data from different sources and computational methods such as formula created for building performance evaluation.

Accelerated growth of urbanizaton and the consequent rise in the number of buildings results on an increase in rapid constructons without minimum criteria that enable the safe building performance and how it behaves during episodes of fre. In this scenario, this paper aims to analyze research trends and the status quo of building fire performance in the last five years, evaluating perspectives for research, and proposals for future directons through a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) approach associated with bibliometric analysis. The analysis was carried out based on the Web of Science database under parameters such as authors, countries and regions, journals, research areas, and keywords. For each rule, among all the results retrieved, those that stood out the most in the stipulated period were evaluated. It was found that research on fire performance in projects is increasing, with a total of 402 published works. In the analysis by Systematic Literature Review, there was a trend of research concerning materials and structural systems, evaluating the performance, behavior, resistance, and safety of buildings under fire conditons. Ultimately, the results pointed out a possible evoluton of the trend in research on methodologies and intelligent control systems applied to the management of fire emergencies. Resumo: Com o acelerado crescimento da urbanização e consequente aumento do número de edificações, houve acréscimo de projetos e construções céleres, sem critérios mínimos que possibilitem o bom desempenho do edifício e como se comporta durante episódios de incêndios. Nesse cenário, este trabalho tem como objetivo analisar tendências em pesquisa e o status quo de desempenho do fogo de edificações nos últimos cinco anos, avaliando perspectivas para pesquisa na área e propostas de direcionamento futuro, por meio de uma abordagem de Revisão Sistemática da Literatura (RSL) associada a uma análise bibliométrica. A análise foi realizada com base no banco de dados Web of Science, sob parâmetros como: autores, países e regiões, periódicos, áreas de pesquisa e palavras-chave. Para cada critério, dentre todos os resultados recuperados, avaliaram-se aqueles que mais se destacaram no período estipulado. Verificou-se que pesquisas voltadas ao desempenho no fogo em projetos são crescentes, apresentando um total de 402 trabalhos publicados. Na análise por Revisão Sistemática da Literatura, verificou-se uma tendência de pesquisa em relação aos materiais e sistemas estruturais, avaliando desempenho, comportamento, resistência e segurança das edificações em condição de incêndio. Além disso, os resultados apontaram uma possibilidade de evolução da tendência em pesquisa de metodologias e sistemas inteligentes de controle aplicados ao gerenciamento de emergências de incêndio. Resumen: Con el acelerado crecimiento de la urbanización y el consecuente incremento en el número de edificaciones, hubo un incremento de proyectos y construcciones rápidas, sin criterios mínimos que permitan el buen desempeño del edifício y cómo se comporta durante los episodios de incendio. En este escenario, este trabajo tene como objetivo analizar las tendencias en la investigación y el status quo del comportamiento frente al fuego en los edificios en los últimos cinco años, evaluando perspectivas de investigación en el área y propuestas para el rumbo futuro, a través de un enfoque de Revisión Sistemática de la Literatura (RSL) asociado con un análisis bibliométrico. El análisis se realizó utilizando la base de datos Web of Science bajo parámetros como: autores, países y regiones, revistas, áreas de investigación y palabras clave. Para cada criterio, entre todos los resultados recuperados, se evaluaron los que más destacaron en el período estipulado. Se constató que la investigación sobre el comportamiento frente al fuego en proyectos está creciendo, con un total de 402 trabajos publicados. En el análisis de Revisión Sistemática de la Literatura, hubo una tendencia de investigación en relación a los materiales y sistemas estructurales, evaluando el desempeño, comportamiento, resistencia y seguridad de los edificios en condiciones de incendio. Además, los resultados apuntan a una posibilidad de evolución de la tendencia en la investigación sobre metodologías y sistemas de control inteligente aplicados a la gestón de emergencias contra incendios.

Global warming and other environmental problems are increasing the demand for green and low-carbon buildings. The development of high-performance computers and building information models has a significant impact on low-carbon buildings. Low-carbon building design needs to comprehensively consider geography, climate, material, cost and other factors, a highly complex multidisciplinary research problem. Therefore, it is urgent to use advanced modeling and simulation technology, involving BIM, parametric design, cloud platform and evolutionary algorithm. This paper proposes a BIM based low-carbon building design optimization framework, which realizes the comprehensive trade-off function of building low-carbon energy saving and daylighting performance through an improved genetic algorithm. The framework drives BIM through parameterization and integrates building environment information, geometric information and operation information, including six parts: BIM model establishment, parameter-driven development, building performance simulation, multi-objective optimization design, Pareto frontier analysis, and energy-saving decision-making and evaluation. The case study shows that the simulation results obtained through the framework can effectively achieve building energy conservation while maximizing the lighting performance of the building, providing a scientific basis and reference for construction professionals to design low-carbon buildings. Finally, the application advantages and limitations of the framework in low-carbon building design and its application prospects in low-carbon energy-saving building design are discussed. This research has made contributions to the multi-disciplinary low-carbon energy conservation research field, realized the multi-objective optimization strategy of building performance based on BIM, genetic algorithm and simulation, and is an important supplement to existing building energy conservation and emission reduction optimization design.

Occupancy behavior in buildings is challenging to define and quantify because of their stochastic, diverse and complex nature. Indoor environment and energy usage in buildings are significantly influenced by the actions and behavior of occupants. Accurate estimation and prediction of occupancy behaviours such as occupancy trajectories with datasets from deployed sensors can reduce energy consumption and facilitate intelligent building operations. However, identifying affordable sensors for estimating occupancy in buildings is still a challenge. To detect occupancy state in real-time, we propose a smart fusion of not necessarily optimal expensive sensors but accurate enough sensors. Sensor fusion is opted to boost the performance of the framework. In this paper, we propose HeteroSense an occupancy sensing framework that uses a label-based approach for activity recognition using machine learning classification algorithms. Based on the sensor data collected from heterogeneous sensing modalities, an algorithm is designed for trajectory detection. This paper also discusses the challenges faced during the design phase for the deployment and it summarizes the potential improvements in the field of occupancy sensing for energy efficient buildings.

The quality of buildings can be assessed in terms of the indoor air quality, thermal comfort, lighting quality, acoustic comfort afforded the occupants, collectively referred to as Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ). A major barrier to a more thoroughly representative audit of actual IEQ performance are the expense and complexity of the measurement instrumentation required. Rapid developments in sensor technology in recent years present the opportunity for continuous and pervasive IEQ monitoring to deliver truly representative characterisations of building performance at a modest cost. The last remaining obstacle to realising these developments seems to be a concern about instrument accuracy. In this paper we test the performance of a low-cost IEQ monitoring system (SAMBA) introduced in an earlier paper. Calibration data from 100 devices was analysed to calculate the standard error of the estimate as a measure of equipment accuracy. Those performance specifications were used in a Monte Carlo simulation based on measurements of thermal comfort parameters from 24 office buildings. Performance measures suggests the low-cost system, whilst not as accurate as laboratory equipment, is more than sufficient for building IEQ diagnostics and compliance assessments. Furthermore, the results of the Monte Carlo simulation show that continuous monitoring systems are better at characterising long-term performance than ad hoc measurement strategies using precision equipment. Low-cost pervasive monitoring technologies therefore offer a unique opportunity to improve our quantitative understanding of, and response to, indoor environmental quality issues.

This paper presents a summary of recent CIBSE guidance on health and wellbeing in buildings, including how to define indoor environmental criteria. In a rapidly-evolving field, it also summarises key areas of current research and development, how to evaluate such studies, and what to look out for when reviewing emerging products. The paper focuses on indoor air quality, thermal comfort and humidity, but many of its principles are valid for other aspects of indoor environments. Overall, CIBSE guidance advocates for source control, the precautionary principle, and monitoring of building performance in order to avoid unintended consequences. Key themes of active research, with potential for significant improvements to health and comfort, include: • improving our understanding of conditions best suited to a range of populations (e.g. the elderly, children); • assessing the impact of, and designing for, exposure to a range of environmental stressors. This would be an evolution from current guidelines which tend to respond to one factor alone (e.g. responding to combined excessive heat and noise, rather than to one or the other); • building our knowledge of impacts and solutions in the housing retrofit sector, considering jointly the effects on energy consumption, comfort, indoor air quality and humidity.

On 7th May 1611, the construction of Esfahan Shah mosque started to be a part of the re-modeling of Safavid capital, a building that adopts a glazed bulbous double dome as a hybrid structure of brick and wooden elements. This paper aims to present building techniques, construction process and conservation works of this complex dome through historical evidence and onsite surveying. For these purposes, following a brief history of the building, the paper explores the geometry, morphology and construction sequences. It subsequently addresses the conservation during the last century from Salnameh (1934–36) up to current intervention and their consequences. The paper necessarily illustrates cracks pattern, not only to recognize its causes via their type and geometry but also to address historical performance and structural capacity. According to the objectives, the study of the Shah dome plays an important role to better understand other similar cases. This paper concludes that structural analysis and future conservation could benefit from the achievements derived from historical research, which also allow further understanding of construction techniques., (undefined)

Higher building performance saves operational costs, helps sustainability goals, and increases the comfort, satisfaction, productivity, and health of occupants. However, models simulating the occupants' perceived performance of indoor environments require highly heterogeneous input data. This paper aims to show how semantic web technologies can help to overcome problems deriving from this heterogeneity issue. Literature is studied to categorize the necessary input information for modeling occupants' perceived building performance. Two perspectives were consulted, namely the Indoor Environmental Quality approach and the Healing Environments approach. Based on the results, a core IEQ data model, integrating building topology, static properties, and dynamic properties, is proposed. We introduced a method to integrate this information by using the Building Performance Ontology (BOP). This method was tested by manually transforming the Open Smart Home (OSH) data to BOP vocabulary. Time-series data from various sensors were stored in InfluxDB and connected to the linked building data. A custom-built python tool was created to compute the thermal comfort of the OSH using the PMV/PPD method. The results indicate that a common data structure for static and dynamic properties helps to integrate the heterogeneity input data. Furthermore, we showed that adding occupants' data or system information could improve thermal comfort through multiple reactive approaches.

The Australian 2019/20 summer witnessed an extraordinary bushfire season characterised by unprecedented duration, geographical reach and impact. The aftermath of the bushfires includes increased health-related implications on people due to short and long exposure to poor air quality. The current advice from the Australian authorities in such events is to remain indoors, as it was assumed indoor air quality (IAQ) is healthy. This paper examined that assumption and presents the case study of an office building in Canberra subjected to the 2019/20 bushfires, responding to the need of understanding the ability of air-conditioning buildings to cope with such unprecedented and extreme weather events. Measured data for indoor concentration of CO2, PM10 and PM2.5 recorded a prolonged period of concerning levels, as well as extreme concentration peaks. This poses a significant risk to the occupants’ health. The values showed peaks up to 12 times higher for PM10 and 24 times higher for PM2.5 than the recommended critical thresholds. The infiltration factor and protection performance analysis suggest that old filtering systems and low airtightness levels are not optimal in protecting the indoor environment from outdoor air pollutants. Practice relevance Results show that the concentration of the outdoor pollutant significantly exceeded thresholds for a prolonged time, posing a health risk to the population. The case study presented has been partially able to protect its occupants thanks to the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) response, but this brings up the concern about all those spaces where mechanical ventilation may not be installed or have the same filtering system. Evidence provided here calls for an urgent update of the protection agenda to account for extreme weather events with regard to the diverse indoor built environments, because relying on the mechanical ventilation system is no more sufficient to provide healthy and safe environments.

Fueled by big data, powerful and affordable computing resources, and advanced algorithms, machine learning has been explored and applied to buildings research for the past decades and has demonstrated its potential to enhance building performance. This study systematically surveyed how machine learning has been applied at different stages of building life cycle. By conducting a literature search on the Web of Knowledge platform, we found 9579 papers in this field and selected 153 papers for an in-depth review. The number of published papers is increasing year by year, with a focus on building design, operation, and control. However, no study was found using machine learning in building commissioning. There are successful pilot studies on fault detection and diagnosis of HVAC equipment and systems, load prediction, energy baseline estimate, load shape clustering, occupancy prediction, and learning occupant behaviors and energy use patterns. None of the existing studies were adopted broadly by the building industry, due to common challenges including (1) lack of large scale labeled data to train and validate the model, (2) lack of model transferability, which limits a model trained with one data-rich building to be used in another building with limited data, (3) lack of strong justification of costs and benefits of deploying machine learning, and (4) the performance might not be reliable and robust for the stated goals, as the method might work for some buildings but could not be generalized to others. Findings from the study can inform future machine learning research to improve occupant comfort, energy efficiency, demand flexibility, and resilience of buildings, as well as to inspire young researchers in the field to explore multidisciplinary approaches that integrate building science, computing science, data science, and social science.

Commercial buildings during operation are dynamic environments where changes to control strategies and space usage regularly occur. As a result of these and other issues, a performance gap between design intent and actual building performance emerges. This paper seeks to address the operational performance gap and enhance operational building performance through statistically-based fault detection. Additionally, this paper seeks to remedy the knowledge gap building managers face in the identification of key building faults based on minimal quantities and streams of time-series building data. A new methodology is presented that incorporates simulation and breakout detection to address these issues. Residual based exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) charts and Shewhart charts are compared against a breakout detection algorithm to identify shifts or faults in building performance data. Artificial faults are introduced into the measured time-series data to test the validity of the chosen statistical techniques. Statistical metric sensitivity and precision are calculated to quantify the performance of the new methodology. A summary of results demonstrate that the breakout detection algorithm was the most effective method in detecting meaningful faults in building performance data, followed by residual based EWMA and Shewhart models. European Commission - Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) Science Foundation Ireland UCD Energy 21 program 24 month embargo - AC Update issue date during checkdate report - AC

Seismic protection devices such as energy dissipators have been used in structures for many years. However, it has not been until the last years that computers allowed assessing the full advantages of these devices in large structures by means of nonlinear dynamic analysis. Previous analysis/design techniques for these devices were based on simplified linear approaches such as considering an equivalent increment to the global damping. In this paper we evaluate the performance of the Shear Link Bozzo (SLB) seismic dissipators of two real high-rise buildings, located in a seismic prone area. In the first case study we compare the performance of the bare structure to a similar protection but using Buckle Restrained Braces and the bare structure. In the second case study, we show that a potential rebar optimization can be achieved using SLB devices without compromising the structural performance and satisfying the code requirements in high-rise buildings. The use of SLB devices showed not only economic advantages but also achieve a better performance compared to the bare structure and the equipped with BRBs.

Higher education building (HEB) is believed to be key functional. It spawns not only environment, but also human and economic resources. Initially, growing students’ population with various learning activities has constituted risk emergence, inefficient of energy use and climate discomfort. Thus, it decreases the yearly total performance of the building. To sustain the building efficiency, Building Performance Evaluation (BPE) plays a vital role to improve performance issues in HEB. Hence, this paper explores the significance of users’ feedback as the concept of building performance. This paper also describes literatures on the HEB's background including risk factors and performance issues.

In designing seismic-resistant buildings, it is commonly used Forced-Based Design method. The concept of the Force-Based Design (FBD) method is based on an elastic analysis of the structure and indirectly shows the performance level of the structure towards the effects of the seismic forces. Therefore, it is required an approach that capable of analyzing and evaluating the performance of the inelastic structural response; it is called Performance-Based Design method. This paper uses two methods of Performance-Based Design, there are Direct Displacement-Based Design and Capacity Spectrum Method, by using pushover analysis. The objectives of the research are to analyze and compare the performance level of the building in inelastic condition by using these two methods. The structural model reinforced concrete special moment frames. Seismic design code that used in this study is SNI 1726:2012. The reviewed parameter values are displacement and story drift values, estimated plastic hinge response, and performance level of the building from two methods. As the results, all the parameter values of DDBD analysis are more significant than CSM. DDBD produces the drift and displacement values of 0.668 m with the rebar ratio is more significant than 1.00. While, the CSM produces the drift and displacement values of 0.501 m with the rebar ratio of 1.00. The failure mechanism of both methods indicates the strong column weak beam where the beams should fail before the columns. The structure performance level which refers to ATC-40 indicate that both DDBD method and CSM method are in Damage Control level despite displacement target of the two methods are different which is DDBD produces displacement target of 0.376 m while CSM produces the value of 0.345 m.

Energy consumption and thermal comfort in residential buildings are highly influenced by occupant behavior, which exhibits a high level of day-to-day and dwelling-to-dwelling variance. Although occupant behavior stochastic models have been developed in the past, the analysis or selection of a building design parameter is typically based on simulations that use a single “average” occupant behavior schedule which does not account for all possible profiles. The objective of this study is to enhance the understanding of how window-to-wall ratio (WWR) of a residential unit affects heating demand and thermal comfort when considering occupant behavior diversity through a parametric analysis. To do so, a stochastic occupant behavior model generates a high number of possible profiles, which are then used as input in an energy simulation of the dwelling. As a result, one obtains probability distributions of energy consumption and comfort for different WWR values. The paper shows that the shape of the probability distributions is affected by WWR and dwelling orientation, and that the influence of different occupant behavior aspects on performance also varies with WWR. This work could help designers to better assess the impact of WWR for a large spectrum of possible occupant behavior profiles.

This paper emphasizes the experimental and numerical study of new cob mixes used for insulation and load bearing wall elements. The experimental study provides complete datasets of thermal properties of the new walling materials, using cob with density ranging from 1107 kg/m3 to 1583 kg/m3 for structural walls and less than 700 kg m−3 for insulation walls. Various mixes of French soils and fibres (reed, wheat straw, hemp shiv, hemp straw, and flax straw) with different water contents are studied. The lowest average thermal conductivity is obtained for the structural cob mix prepared of 5% wheat straw and 31% of water content. The insulation mix, prepared with 25% reed and 31% water content, has the lowest thermal conductivity. Investigation of diffusivity, density, and heat capacity shows that, when thermal conductivity is lower than 0.4 W m−1 K−1, the decrease in cob density leads to better insulation values and higher heat capacity. Little variation is noticed regarding the density and heat capacity for cob mixes with thermal conductivity higher than 0.4 W m−1 K−1. Furthermore, the non-uniformity of local thermal conductivity and heat losses through the samples is due mainly to the non-uniform distribution of fibres inside the mixes inducing an increase in heat loss up to 50% for structural walls and 25% for insulation walls. Cob thermal properties are used in a comparative simulation case study of a typical house under French and UK climatic conditions. The energy performance of the conventional building is compared to a dual walled cob building, showing remarkable reduction in energy consumption as the cob walls, whilst maintaining comfortable indoor conditions without additional heating.

This paper emphasizes the experimental and numerical study of new cob mixes used for insulation and load bearing wall elements. The experimental study provides complete datasets of thermal properties of the new walling materials, using cob with density ranging from 1107 kg/m3 to 1583 kg/m3 for structural walls and less than 700 kg m−3 for insulation walls. Various mixes of French soils and fibres (reed, wheat straw, hemp shiv, hemp straw, and flax straw) with different water contents are studied. The lowest average thermal conductivity is obtained for the structural cob mix prepared of 5% wheat straw and 31% of water content. The insulation mix, prepared with 25% reed and 31% water content, has the lowest thermal conductivity. Investigation of diffusivity, density, and heat capacity shows that, when thermal conductivity is lower than 0.4 W m−1 K−1, the decrease in cob density leads to better insulation values and higher heat capacity. Little variation is noticed regarding the density and heat capacity for cob mixes with thermal conductivity higher than 0.4 W m−1 K−1. Furthermore, the non-uniformity of local thermal conductivity and heat losses through the samples is due mainly to the non-uniform distribution of fibres inside the mixes inducing an increase in heat loss up to 50% for structural walls and 25% for insulation walls. Cob thermal properties are used in a comparative simulation case study of a typical house under French and UK climatic conditions. The energy performance of the conventional building is compared to a dual walled cob building, showing remarkable reduction in energy consumption as the cob walls, whilst maintaining comfortable indoor conditions without additional heating.

Existing building performance metrics cover a wide variety of domains including energy performance, equipment performance, electric lighting, indoor environmental quality, capital and operating costs, and environmental impact. They facilitate building benchmarking and yield actionable insights at all phases of the building life-cycle. Yet, the occupant domain – one of the most significant with respect to building performance – is relatively immature with regards to performance metrics. This paper provides guidance, examples, and critical discussion for developing and applying occupant-centric building performance metrics. First, an approach is proposed for developing and evaluating the suitability of such metrics. Then, using samples of data from real and simulated buildings, this paper proposes metrics that are appropriate for quantifying occupants' impact on buildings. These metrics provide an indication of building performance from an occupant-building interaction perspective, serving a purpose much like traditional building performance metrics. They also force professionals to consider occupants through a new lens because people are the real recipient of the measures and services provided by buildings.

Immersive virtual reality represents one of the most promising technologic aids in the development of a functional lighting design, especially when considering different points of view as users’ satisfaction. This paper presents a new methodology to use Unreal Engine 4.22 as a tool for lighting applications, allowing correct reproduction of artificial light distribution in the game engine by identifying and properly setting a restricted set of parameters. A real office was carefully reproduced, in both the Unreal Engine and DIALux evo software, as comparative case study. Then, the luminance distribution is calculated with both programs on the same surfaces in the virtual environment and compared with the real one. The results suggest a good reliability of the Unreal Engine in reproducing the light distribution, underlining slight differences under certain conditions. In light of these findings, the proposed method seems to validate the use of Unreal Engine as a light design tool.

Building energy performance in existing stocks via facilities management interventions for low carbon building has become expedient and relevant in global climate change discourse. It has raised the consciousness for the need for a unified decision-support model for Facilities Managers and Owners, which could be used for office buildings across countries in achieving cleaner building energy production and use. This paper aimed at examining the factors that affect office Building Energy Performance; their interdependencies; and identify the critical path for interventions. It filled this gap by presenting a combination of interrelated processes (operations, tactics, and strategies) needed to improve building energy performance, reduce costs and greenhouse gas emissions in buildings for organizations. An online questionnaire survey was used in gathering data on current study model variables from participants of case study office buildings in Nigeria and the UK. Structural Equation Modelling technique was used to examine the factors that contribute to improving the energy performance of heterogeneous office buildings in both countries. The result established a strong correlation among observed variables and constructs and high covariance between constructs. This indicates that dependency and interdependence relationships exist amongst constructs, and in between construct and indicators. The finding reveals that an organization needs Sustainability Policy, Facilities Management and Energy Management as a sub-set of Strategic policy incorporated into its core management policy and operations energy management to achieve low carbon building. It also reveals the most critical pathway in the overall model with Strategic Facilities Management discovered to underpin the optimal performance for office buildings. Crown Copyright (C) 2018 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Climate change is a constant natural phenomenon. However, human activities over the last century have caused drastic changes well beyond its natural trajectory. Due to the unprecedented changes to the environment, rapid solutions to combat the consequences of climate change need to be implemented. Whatever strategy is adopted, education is key in order to achieve goals. Education interventions can be used to facilitate knowledge acquisition, skill development and build attitudes. Art-based education has become increasingly popular among educators, specifically in explaining scientific principles within a visualised environment using the latest technologies. Interior Design is a discipline that relies on visual thinking but lacks empirical work on using these developing technologies to capture student attention and transfer knowledge. This paper presents a study that explores digital art created to communicate the principle of using indoor plants as a means to purify air. The research is designed as a four-step action research project in which one cycle is completed. The results revealed that students were interested in the artwork, regardless of their level of prior knowledge of the subject.

A holistic understanding of the correlations between supply and demand in buildings forms the basis for their performance assessment. This paper aims to reinterpret a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that influence users’ satisfaction from different perspectives. Fieldwork was carried out in an office building following a detailed review on KPIs by conducting user surveys. This study highlights the need to organize specific indicators to focus on the usability of workplaces and, where and when required, through an iterative process, understand the user perception of performance indicators in usage conditions. This methodology is applicable for organizations to understand the main existing in-service problems, and could improve the building’s performance over time. Survey results showed that hygiene was the most recognizable influence on users’ satisfaction and indoor air quality was the less well-known in the assessment results. User perception results can be compared to other office buildings results to benchmark good practices and should also be investigated for the post-COVID-19 period.

Buildings of heritage significance due to their historical, architectural, or cultural value, here called historic buildings, constitute a large proportion of the building stock in many countries around the world. Improving the performance of such buildings is necessary to lower the carbon emissions of the stock, which generates around 40% of the overall emissions worldwide. In historic buildings, it is estimated that heat loss through external walls contributes significantly to the overall energy consumption, and is associated with poor thermal comfort and indoor air quality. Measures to improve the performance of walls of historic buildings require a balance between energy performance, indoor environmental quality, heritage significance, and technical compatibility. Appropriate wall measures are available, but the correct selection and implementation require an integrated process throughout assessment (planning), design, construction, and use. Despite the available knowledge, decision-makers often have limited access to robust information on tested retrofit measures, hindering the implementation of deep renovation. This paper provides an evidence-based approach on the steps required during assessment, design, and construction, and after retrofitting through a literature review. Moreover, it provides a review of possible measures for wall retrofit within the deep renovation of historic buildings, including their advantages and disadvantages and the required considerations based on context.

Higher building performance saves operational costs, helps sustainability goals, and increases the comfort, satisfaction, productivity, and health of occupants. However, models simulating the occupants' perceived performance of indoor environments require highly heterogeneous input data. This paper aims to show how semantic web technologies can help to overcome problems deriving from this heterogeneity issue. Literature is studied to categorize the necessary input information for modeling occupants' perceived building performance. Two perspectives were consulted, namely the Indoor Environmental Quality approach and the Healing Environments approach. Based on the results, a core IEQ data model, integrating building topology, static properties, and dynamic properties, is proposed. We introduced a method to integrate this information by using the Building Performance Ontology (BOP). This method was tested by manually transforming the Open Smart Home (OSH) data to BOP vocabulary. Time-series data from various sensors were stored in InfluxDB and connected to the linked building data. A custom-built python tool was created to compute the thermal comfort of the OSH using the PMV/PPD method. The results indicate that a common data structure for static and dynamic properties helps to integrate the heterogeneity input data. Furthermore, we showed that adding occupants' data or system information could improve thermal comfort through multiple reactive approaches.

The importance of acquiring information from users to support the phases of the building process (design, construction, management and dismantling) is widely recognized by the scientific and technical community. In addition, in the era of the “Digital Transition” in building construction, participatory-sensing systems leveraging smart devices offer unprecedented observational capacity at the scale of the individual. On the other hand, data acquired by the users are typically characterized by multiple actors, many and often conflicting values and views, a wealth of possible outcomes and high uncertainty. Despite the widespread use of “user data acquisition” techniques, there are no procedures and guidelines to create effective user reported-based data acquisition in the building construction sector. This paper proposes eight steps to set an effective User Reporting and overcome the classical drawbacks of data acquired by users for the inspection of technical and factual features. In particular, steps 1-2 a priori identify clusters of stakeholders and users to improve data homogeneity; steps 3-4 select technological tools, questionnaires and guidelines to independently acquire data from different clusters of users; steps 5-8 define the information flow, the validation approach and diagnostics. In order to show the potentiality of the proposed approach, the User Re-porting is applied to the building diagnostics of 131 RC buildings located in the Valencian coast (Spain).

Higher building performance saves operational costs, helps sustainability goals, and increases the comfort, satisfaction, productivity, and health of occupants. However, models simulating the occupants' perceived performance of indoor environments require highly heterogeneous input data. This paper aims to show how semantic web technologies can help to overcome problems deriving from this heterogeneity issue. Literature is studied to categorize the necessary input information for modeling occupants' perceived building performance. Two perspectives were consulted, namely the Indoor Environmental Quality approach and the Healing Environments approach. Based on the results, a core IEQ data model, integrating building topology, static properties, and dynamic properties, is proposed. We introduced a method to integrate this information by using the Building Performance Ontology (BOP). This method was tested by manually transforming the Open Smart Home (OSH) data to BOP vocabulary. Time-series data from various sensors were stored in InfluxDB and connected to the linked building data. A custom-built python tool was created to compute the thermal comfort of the OSH using the PMV/PPD method. The results indicate that a common data structure for static and dynamic properties helps to integrate the heterogeneity input data. Furthermore, we showed that adding occupants' data or system information could improve thermal comfort through multiple reactive approaches.

Buildings are one of the largest contributors to energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in the world. There is an increased interest in building performance evaluation as an essential practice to design a sustainable building. Building performance is influenced by various terms, for example, designs, construction-related factors such as building envelope and airtightness, and energy technologies with or without micro-generations. How well a building performs thermally is key to determining the level of energy demand and GHG emissions. Building standards and regulations, in combination with assessments (e.g., energy modeling tools) and certifications, provide sets of supports, guidelines and instructions for designers and building engineers to ensure users’ health and well-being, consistency in construction practices and environmental protection. This paper reviews, evaluates and suggests a sequence of building performance methods from the UK perspective. It shows the relationships between such methods, their evolutions and related tools, and further highlights the importance of post-occupancy analysis and how crucial such assessments could be for efficient buildings.

Currently, there is no manual blind control guideline used consistently throughout the energy modeling community. This paper identifies and compares five manual blind control algorithms with unique control patterns and reports blind occlusion, rate of change data, and annual building energy consumption. The blind control schemes detailed here represent five reasonable candidates for use in lighting and energy simulation based on difference driving factors. This study was performed on a medium-sized office building using EnergyPlus with the internal daylight harvesting engine. Results show that applying manual blind control algorithms affects the total annual consumption of the building by as much as 12.5% and 11.5% for interior and exterior blinds respectively, compared to the Always Retracted blinds algorithm. Peak demand was also compared showing blind algorithms affected zone load sizing by as much as 9.8%. The alternate algorithms were tested for their impact on American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Guideline 14 calibration metrics and all models were found to differ from the original calibrated baseline by more than the recommended ±15% for coefficient of variance of the mean square error (CVRMSE) and ±5% for normalized mean bias error (NMBE). The paper recommends that energy modelers use one or more manual blind control algorithms during design stages when making decisions about energy efficiency and other design alternatives.

This paper has a primary focus on the economics of energy efficient housing and mandatory disclosure schemes. From this basis, this paper investigates the role and effect of regulations for the disclosure of the building performance of residential dwellings during the sale process in making energy efficiency visible to the market. The paper examined both international and Australian hedonic pricing analyses that unanimously find positive relationships between energy efficiency and sale price when building performance is disclosed to the market. The paper has also investigated international and Australian qualitative studies that investigate consumer attitudes to energy efficiency when building performance is disclosed during the sale process,many of which found that energy efficiency was not a primary concern compared to more traditional metrics such as location, price and size. The paper has found that a far greater body of research into the impacts of mandatory disclosure regulations has been conducted internationally, especially throughout Europe where the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (2002/91/EC) has established a common framework for Member States, allowing for comparative studies to be undertaken. On the other hand, limited implementation of disclosure regulations in select Australian States and Territories has limited the amount and breadth of research Understanding market reactions, in particular the value of environmental features and how the benefits of energy efficient housing are conveyed to the public will play a vital role in encouraging the private sector to pursue energy efficient measures going forward, contributing to the overall environmental sustainability of the residential sector Refereed/Peer-reviewed

© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. In a changing outdoor climate, new buildings as well as the existing building stock need to adapt in order to keep providing their inhabitants and users a comfortable and healthy indoor environment, with a minimum or - preferably - no increase in energy consumption. In this paper, the effectiveness of six passive climate change adaptation measures applied at the level of building components is assessed using building energy simulations for three generic residential buildings as commonly built in - among others - the Netherlands: (1) detached house; (2) terraced house; (3) apartment. The study involves both residential buildings that are built according to the regulations and common practice in 2012, and residential buildings that were constructed in the 1970s, with a lower thermal resistance of the opaque and transparent parts of the building envelope. The climate change adaptation measures investigated are: (i) increased thermal resistance; (ii) changed thermal capacity; (iii) increased short-wave reflectivity (albedo); (iv) vegetation roofs; (v) solar shading; and (vi) additional natural ventilation.This paper quantifies the effectiveness of these climate change adaptation measures for new residential buildings as well as for renovation of the current building stock. The performance indicator is the number of overheating hours during a year. It is shown that exterior solar shading and additional natural ventilation are most effective for this performance indicator. Furthermore, increasing thermal insulation to reduce energy use for heating demands additional measures to prevent overheating. ispartof: Building and Environment vol:83 pages:142-158 status: published

A two-year post-occupancy performance evaluation has been undertaken of the apartments within Galliard Homes’ Seager Distillery redevelopment site in London. The Seager Distillery site is typical of the many new high-density developments in London, reflecting the tightening standards on energy use and pressure on land use. This paper presents the energy and environmental performance of three apartments studied in detail, including the assessment of the performance of the building fabric, MVHR units and the communal heating system. The paper compares the actual performance against the design intent of the apartments and summarises the performance of the communal heating system in use. It then highlights the reasons for any performance gaps identified, which provide useful learning to both Galliard Homes and the wider building industry. The study has demonstrated that measurements of the actual performance of the building fabric align with design expectations; however, issues were found in the performance of the MVHR systems in the apartments affecting thermal comfort and energy use. This was further exacerbated by the underperforming communal heating system, where various shortcomings have affected its design, installation and operation. The study highlighted areas for improvement in the building and its services in terms of design, installation, commissioning and post-occupancy maintenance. Better building handover and occupant access to relevant information were identified to promote building usability and further contribute to closing the performance gaps.

Since the 1980s, smart buildings have aroused the interest of researchers. However, there is still no consensus on what the intelligence of a building is, and what enhances that intelligence. The purpose of this paper is to identify and correlate the main drivers and systems of smart buildings, by associating them with the main beneficiaries: users, owners, and the environment. To identify the main drivers and systems of these buildings, we carried out a comprehensive, detailed, and interpretative literature search. From the selected articles, we sorted the information, extracted the main concepts and knowledge, and, finally, identified the set of potential drivers and systems. Results showed eleven drivers and eight systems, and these can be enhanced by more than one driver. By analyzing the main beneficiaries, we grouped the drivers into three categories: users, owners, and the environment. Given the lack of consensus on the key drivers that make buildings smarter, this article contributes to filling this gap by identifying them, together with the key systems. It is also relevant for detecting the relationships between drivers and systems, and pointing out which drivers have the greatest potential to affect a particular system, keeping in mind the main beneficiary.

Transparent elements of building enclosure components play a critical role in buildings' performance and integrity. Numeric simulation provides a tool to model and predict the thermal behavior of window constructions. This paper presents a two-dimensional numerical analysis of the thermal behavior of a casement window before and after implementing a vacuum glazing in the external pane. Two modelling approaches were considered, a conventional one (focusing predominantly on conductive heat transfer) and a more detailed one (involving coupled conduction and convection). The results of the study demonstrate the benefits of the aforementioned retrofit option in terms of reduced heat transfer, increase of surface temperature within the cavity during the cold season, and the reduction of surface condensation risk.

During the operation and maintenance of a physical asset its performance may decrease. While an array of tools and methods have been developed to facilitate building performance assessment processes, their complexity and the lack of causality analysis make them impractical. The research presented in this paper aims to understand the most relevant performance areas for non-residential buildings in general, and determine key performance indicators (KPIs) and their relationship to assess the performance of non-residential buildings. The research approach comprised a literature review, a focus group, and a questionnaire survey. The findings revealed that the core indicators used to evaluate building performance are related to safety and assets working properly, health and comfort, space functionality and energy efficiency. External factors were also found to condition the building performance. Results also identified the relationships between the performance indicators and factors with the aim to develop a causal model to accurately evaluate building performance. Durante la operación y el mantenimiento de los activos su performance puede disminuir. Si bien se han desarrollado una serie de herramientas y métodos para facilitar el proceso de evaluación del performance de los edificios, su complejidad y la falta de análisis de causalidad los hacen imprácticos. Este artículo pretende comprender las áreas de performance más relevantes para edificios no residenciales en general, y determinar los Key Performance Indicators (KPI) y su relación. Este estudio se basa en una revisión de la literatura, un focus group y una encuesta. Los resultados revelaron que los indicadores básicos utilizados para evaluar el performance de los edificios están relacionados con la seguridad y el correcto funcionamiento de los activos, la salud y confort, la funcionalidad de los espacios y la eficiencia energética. Los resultados también identificaron las relaciones entre los KPI y los factores externos para desarrollar un modelo causal para evaluar el performance de los edificios.