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Research background: With the rapid development of civil engineering, the traditional low rise building model can no longer meet the needs of urbanization, and high-rise building structure has become the future development direction. In recent years, earthquake disasters occur frequently in China, which has caused huge losses to high-rise buildings. Therefore, we must strengthen the relevant research of high-rise building structures, which can make the high-rise building structural columns meet the requirements of safety performance. Therefore, the health detection and seismic performance evaluation of high-rise buildings will be of great significance. Research method: Through static elastic-plastic evaluation, we can calculate the dissipated strain energy of the structural column, which will further obtain the damage index of the structural column and obtain relevant data. Through this calculation method, we can complete the seismic performance evaluation of high-rise buildings, which is a calculation mode different from the traditional finite element software analysis. Through static elastic-plastic analysis, the seismic performance evaluation of high-rise buildings will have higher accuracy, which will build a damage index. Therefore, this paper uses a variety of research methods, mainly literature survey and empirical analysis. Through literature analysis, this paper can fully and correctly understand the methods of health detection and seismic performance evaluation of high-rise building structures at home and abroad, which will further clarify the current research level at home and abroad. Through empirical research, this paper analyzes specific examples, which can obtain more accurate results. Conclusion: In this paper, the seismic performance of high-rise buildings is comprehensively evaluated according to the damage index value of building structural columns. The simulation results show that more ideal seismic evaluation results can be obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hong Kong buildings account for 90% of total electricity consumption and over 60% of greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore buildings present both a challenge and an opportunity for reduction in energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Net Zero Energy Building (NZEB) and Net Zero Carbon Building (NZCB) are recognised as feasible strategies to reduce energy use and carbon emissions leading to a more sustainable built environment. While there is a growing number of NZEBs and NZCBs in relatively cool or temperate climates, there are relatively few examples in the subtropical climate, and in a densely populated city such as Hong Kong. This paper will examine the current progress towards a low carbon built environment in Hong Kong, zero energy/carbon design strategies and technologies applicable to building in a subtropical climate, and examines a case study of Hong Kong's first zero carbon building ZCB. ZCB's energy and carbon performance, experiences and lessons learned, and future directions are discussed. The paper will conclude with the challenges and opportunities for wider adoption of NZEBs and NZCBs in the Hong Kong construction industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The significant variation in building׳s energy intensity is partly due to the large number of distributed energy users characterized by heterogeneous lifestyles and nonuniform consumption behaviours. Understanding the degree of variation and its cause is critical to designing appropriate policies for energy efficiency improvement. This paper aims to provide a data-based benchmark of buildings energy performance in China and investigates the facts and causes of large variations in energy consumption across buildings based on updated and harmonised dataset. Specifically, the paper is the first in literature to decompose aggregate heating consumption in northern urban China and reallocate the disaggregate data to relevant residential and commercial building energy use, which makes it consistent to conduct international comparison of building performance in terms of primary energy intensity. It is found that buildings energy performance exhibits a sizeable heterogeneity varying with building typology and climate zones in China. Heating and cooling energy consumption for residential buildings located in HSCW climate zone may differ by a factor of 4–10 depending on the technology and energy supply mode, whereby nontechnical interventions may have significant impacts on total energy demand in the built environment. In particular, our analysis results point to the importance of making greater efforts in the commercial sector. Commercial buildings are found significantly more energy intensive than their residential counterpart, mainly due to the fact that BEE policy has been poorly implemented and architectural design has not been optimised in commercial sector. An estimate suggests that improving energy efficiency in the commercial sector may contribute to one-fifth of total energy savings potentials by 2020 in line with the IEA׳s 450 ppm scenario. It is necessary for Chinese building authorities to incorporate the heterogeneity characteristics across different climate zones and building typologies into BEE policy portfolio to effectively curb energy consumption related carbon emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The effects of green roofs and practical green façades within courtyard area on public buildings investigated for "Hot Summer, cold Winter" region of China. • Internal surface temperatures for areas with and without external greening monitored and compared. • Heating and cooling energy consumption before and after greening compared from computer simulation as well as from smart meter readings. • Actual heating and cooling energy consumption before and after greening compared using statistical analyses. T -statistics and p -values show significant reductions were achieved. The "Hot Summer Cold Winter" climate region of China is one of the most challenging regions for providing occupant comfort in buildings, with high demands for heating as well as cooling, together with high humidity levels. Although the performance of buildings has improved with the implementation of the new Chinese National Building Standards for the Zhejiang Province, it is believed that adding passive strategies could help to alleviate the problem even further. This paper aims to investigate the effects of adding horizontal greening (green roof) and vertical greening in the courtyard area to existing public buildings in the "Hot Summer Cold Winter" climate region of China. Using computer simulation and measurements from a monitored case in the city of Ningbo, the effects of green retrofitting on human comfort and energy consumption are analysed. Simulation results suggest that with partial horizontal and vertical greening, the cooling load could be reduced by 8.8% and heating load by 1.85%. Comparisons between actual energy use before and after greening on the case building showed significant reductions in both winter and summer, confirming the positive effects of vertical and horizontal greening of public buildings in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• BIM-DB can effectively simulate building performance parameters. • The PSO-RF-NSGA-III hybrid method can be used to predict and optimize building performance. • NSGA can simultaneously optimize energy consumption, carbon emissions and thermal comfort. • The optimal building parameters are different in different regions. Near-zero-energy-consumption buildings (NZEBs) are of great significance for sustainable development, and their design and research have attracted increasing academic attention. To drive and realize the energy saving design and achieve carbon emission and thermal comfort optimization of NZEBs, in this paper, an intelligent optimization method integrating the BIM-DB and PSO-RF-NSGA-III method is established. Multiobjective optimization problems involving NZEBs in four typical climate regions in China are explored. With a typical office building as an example, first, simulation calculations regarding the energy consumption, carbon emissions and indoor thermal comfort in the four climatic regions are performed based on orthogonal tests and BIM-DB. Second, the nonlinear mapping relationships between building design parameters and prediction targets are constructed with the PSO-RF model, which is trained with sample data. The obtained nonlinear mapping relations are used to establish the objective function of NSGA-III, and the multiobjective Pareto-optimal solution set is obtained with the developed PSO-RF-NSGA-III algorithm. Finally, the only optimal solution is determined by using the ideal point method, and reference near-zero-energy-consumption office building parameters are calculated for different climate regions. The conclusions are as follows. (1) The PSO-RF algorithm can efficiently predict building energy consumption, carbon emissions and thermal comfort. In the four regions, the goodness of fit of the three targets is greater than 0.94. (2) Multiobjective optimization can be performed with the proposed RF-NSGA-III intelligent optimization method. After optimizing multiple groups of optimization schemes and adopting energy saving measures, the energy consumption levels in the four climate regions are reduced by 39.72 %, 32.22 %, 26.94 % and 35.37 %, and the other goals are optimized. (3) Index calculations indicate that the optimized building design parameters meet the specified standards for NZEBs, and the main influencing factors and corresponding measures vary from region to region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early architectural design and energy saving reconstruction of building, it is essential need the typical meteorological year（TMY）for building performance analysis. The accuracy of the typical meteorological year data is directly impact the energy simulation results. In order to obtain accurate TMY data for construction engineering applications, the paper does the following work: (1) Reviewed the progress of the typical meteorological year; (2) Several TMY generation methods were compared using the same raw weather data, discusses the applicability of these methods for the cities of typical climate zones in China. Based on the most recent and comprehensive first-hand ground observation data, this paper adopts three methods to generate TMY for the typical city covering the climate zoning of China. Result shows different TMY generation method has applicability in different region, and through the simulation of building energy consumption, the comprehensive method has obvious advantages. It shows that in a region with diverse regional climate characteristics such as China, one certain method for selecting TMY is not enough, and comprehensive methods should be proposed to meet the needs of different building types and energy consumption simulation. • The development of typical meteorological year is reviewed. • Meteorological data covering China's climate zones are analyzed. • Several methods for generating typical meteorological year are compared. • Applicability of TMY method under different climate characteristics is obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• SL, DL and DRL models were constructed for multi performance prediction of gymnasiums under different weather conditions. • Accuracy, time, interpretability, ease-of-use, hyperparameters, and robustness of the metamodels have been investigated. • Energy consumption, temperature and CO 2 time series vectors prediction were modeling with nine training sets. • Methodology for hyperparameters comparison using exhaustive grid search and sensitivity analysis. • RDPG is most accurate but time-consuming. LSTM is more efficient and also has relatively excellent accuracy. Building performance simulation (BPS) is essential for testing energy demand and indoor environment quality of different building designs. However, software for BPS is computationally intensive and impractical to run thousands even millions of simulations for performance analysis and optimization. Especially for the large space buildings, which usually have complex forms and high energy consumption. The computational problem could be overcome by the adoption of metamodels. Most correlational research focuses on single performance prediction of a particular building, which makes the model less robust when applied to multi vectors prediction for different buildings under multiple weather conditions. This paper leveraged six metamodels, which include recurrent deterministic policy gradient (RDPG), asynchronous advantage actor-critic (A3C), long short-term memory (LSTM), convolution neural network (CNN), artificial neural network (ANN) and support vector regression (SVR), to predict hourly-based multi performance vectors of gymnasiums under various design parameters and multiple weather conditions. Six metamodels are trained and tested on a large scale of datasets simulated by EnergyPlus over four gymnasium cases in different cities of China. The accuracy, efficiency, ease-of-use, robustness and interpretability of the models are investigated. To conduct a fair and detailed comparison, a methodological approach using grid searches for model settings selection assisted by sensitivity analysis is pursued. Principal component analysis (PCA) is also adopted to interpret the work process of the metamodels. The comparison showed that the RDPG model provides the most accurate prediction results with R2 converges at 0.993, 0.982 and 0.941 for energy, temperature and CO 2 , respectively. LSTM model is more efficient than RDPG, and suitable for users who need emphasis on both time and accuracy. ANN is suitable for users with limited time and require models of ease-of-use and robustness. SVR and ANN could be used for the automatically co-simulation with BPS software. In future research, the influence of occupant behavior also should be investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• POE was carried out to compare the design target and operational effect after use. • A Large Irregular Green Commercial Building was chosen for in-depth analysis. • We recommend the building energy saving and carbon emission reduction strategy. Commercial buildings, especially large irregular commercial buildings with complex space and dense occupation, have high energy consumption and carbon emissions. Moreover, the actual operating performance differs significantly from its design, in terms of energy conservation and carbon emissions. This study selected an irregular large-scale green commercial building in Dalian, a coastal city in the cold zone of China. The running energy consumption and indoor physical environment were investigated and analyzed, and a satisfaction survey was conducted using the Post-occupancy evaluation (POE) methods. The promotion strategies of holistic design were proposed by comparing the operational building performance with the design target. The research shows that the energy consumption of the building was 68.02 kWh/m2, which failed to meet the standard requirements. The carbon emission was 74.76 kgCO 2 /m2. Less than 10 % of humidity in summer fell in the expected range, and the lowest value of PM 2.5 concentration in winter was 28.3 %. The score of indoor environmental quality and service satisfaction was low. This paper identifies the problems and analyzes the differences between the operation stage and design phase. It provides recommendations and guidelines for optimizing the carbon emission and indoor environment based on the performance improvement of building operational conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This method integrates uncertainty analysis and cluster analysis methods. • Proposed novel zoning indicators are statistically significant. • Moves from traditional weather-based approaches to a performance-based approach. • Robust tool to tackle complex relation between climate and building energy efficiency. • Provide evidence for the rationality of decision making in energy policy. Climatic zoning is an important tool in building energy policy and regulations, smaller and more homogeneous climate zones could help enhance the rationality of energy policymaking. In most countries, climate zoning is based on simplified climate models, and it is difficult to accurately represent the energy demand characteristics of buildings. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel climate subdivision method that tackles the complex relations between climate and building energy-efficient, which move from traditional weather-based approaches to a performance-based approach. Integrate the uncertainty analysis method and the building dynamic performance simulation to extract a novel statistically significant index as the basis for classification. The K -means clustering method and discriminant analysis method are used to obtain and verify the clustering results, respectively. Furthermore, the comparison with clustering results based on degree days confirms the superiority of the new method proposed in this paper in identifying building energy demand. The method is applied to the cold climate zone of China as a showcase. The results show significant differences in building energy demand and the order of key features affecting building performance between each region in the climatic zones. The zone can be further sub-divided into four groups considering the climate factor and building feature uncertainty, and clustering results have been verified by several evaluation indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid development of green buildings world widely has not delivered the anticipated energy related benefits because the real performance of green buildings is not as good as expected. This paper presents a building case study in China by applying a holistic approach which integrates system dynamics and energy performance simulation to evaluate the building performance gap and provide management strategies to minimize the performance gap. The case study in this paper is an office building located in Shanghai, which was awarded "Three Star" in Evaluation Standard for Green Buildings in China (GB/T 50378–2006). Several scenarios including six single management strategy scenarios and four multiple management strategy scenarios are carried out and in each scenario, building performance is analyzed qualitatively in terms of project quality (ranging from 0 to 1), and quantitatively in terms of energy use intensity (kWh/m2). The results of this case study are compared to another green office building located in the UK. The cross case mismatch between qualitative and quantitative results is due to four factors that performed better in reality that they were designed. It is demonstrated that multiple factors could help to increase building performance more than single factor especially when management cost was considered. The comparison of the two cases in China and the UK, shows that design factors should be treated in a more stringent way instead of referring values from local standard authorities only which could induce overdesign of the buildings. • This article integrates system dynamics with energy performance simulation. • This article tempts to quantify the effect of social factors on building performance gap. • This article documents well the developed framework and detailed application process to a case study in China. • This article provides a possible solution to help developers to improve actual building performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monitoring buildings' heat loss and quickly discovering high energy-consuming buildings in a certain area is of great significance for urban management departments to propose urban governance and management measures from the perspective of global optimization. Developing a 3D-infrared (3D-IR) model of a building or a complex created with infrared thermograph (IRT) obtained by unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technologies would greatly contribute to a comprehensive observation on the thermal performance of a study objective. In this paper, a procedure for high energy-consuming building screen based on the 3D infrared (IR) models of multiple buildings is proposed and demonstrated as an effective approach for regional evaluation comparing with measured heating energy data provided by the local municipal department. Firstly, the 3D-IR model of multiple buildings is established, where the single building models are built based on UAV-IRT technology respectively, and the modelling condition as well as the temperature-color mapping relationship of each building is unified. Secondly, the measuring schemes and the evaluation method of the building thermal performance based on the 3D-IR model is proposed. Thirdly, the energy-consuming performance of five buildings in Jining, a city in northern China, is measured and analyzed by using the above-mentioned methods. Finally, the proposed evaluation method of the building performance is applied to evaluate the tested buildings. By referencing to measured heat energy data, the proposed method can be taken as an efficient and reasonably accurate screen method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Accurate sensors are the prerequisite for any building control and management operation to succeed. However, due to the lack of awareness of the importance, sensors are often out of calibration. This paper proposes a preventive approach to determine sensor maintenance requirements, which aims to explicitly quantify the importance of sensors and determine a proper calibration frequency for sensors with high importance. The approach takes account of the sensor bias growth mechanism and relates the sensor importance to a user-defined building performance index. The sensor importance is evaluated under a stochastic framework, which essentially is the way in which sensor bias grows. The calibration frequency is identified using a polynomial function which describes the degradation rate of the building performance index. The proposed approach is applied to a building located in Hong Kong. Results show that the proposed approach can effectively identify important sensors and their calibration frequency. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The performance of building cooling heating and power (BCHP) system is obviously dependent upon the seasonal atmospheric conditions and the building types. This paper presents the energy flow analysis and the evaluation criteria of the redundant BCHP system and describes the optimal design method. The BCHP systems for four building categories (Hotel, Office, Hospital and School) in five climate zones (Severe Cold Zone, Cold Zone, Hot Summer and Cold Winter Zone, Mild Zone and Hot Summer and Warm Winter Zone) in China are compared and evaluated from energetic, economic and environmental aspects. The comparison results show that the BCHP system is generally suitable for the building, which operates for long time over the entire year, in the climate zone where buildings require more heat for space heating. Moreover, the influence analysis on BCHP capacity and operation strategy indicates that the capacity of power generation unit (PGU) is the most sensitive design parameter to influence the integrated performance of the BCHP system. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Numerous studies about the ground source heat pump building heating and cooling systems have been constructed in office building, hotel, residential building and school et al. However, few researches about the constant temperature and humidity air-conditioning system driven by ground-coupled heat pumps were carried out. In this paper, a constant temperature and humidity air-conditioning system driven by ground source heat pump was designed and constructed in an archives building in Shanghai, China. During the operation in the cooling mode, the heat extraction from the condenser of the heat pump was divided: part was rejected to the soil while another was used to reheat the air in AHUs. According to the experimental results, the indoor temperature and relative humidity fulfilled the “Archives Design Code”. In summer, the heat rejected to the soil was reduced by 32%, which was helpful for the earth energy conservation. The soil temperature increased only 0.5 °C after the GSHP system operating for a year. The energy cost of the air-conditioning system was 56.1 kWh/m2. Compared with air source heat pump system and water cooled unit with boiler system, the operating cost of ground source heat pump was reduced by 55.8% and 48.4%, respectively. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A liquid desiccant based independent humidity control (IHC) air-conditioning system driven by heat pumps is presented in this paper. The system consists of a liquid desiccant fresh air processor and a high-temperature chilled water system. The operating principles of the fresh air processor and the whole system are presented in detail. Based on the in situ system installed in an ecological building of Shanghai Research Institute of Building Sciences (SRIBS), a performance investigation was performed in summer, 2007. The measurement results show that (1) the indoor temperature and humidity both are in the specified range; (2) the supply water temperature of the high-temperature refrigerator is higher than the corresponding indoor air dew point temperature, so no condensed water would be formed on the fan-coil unit (FCU) surface; and (3) the average coefficients of performances (COPs) of the fresh air processor and the high-temperature refrigerator are 6.24 and 4.38, respectively, and the average COP of the whole IHC system is 5.28. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The shading-type building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) claddings can act as power generators as well as external shading devices of a building, which reduce the energy consumption of the building. However, there is little information about energy impacts of different tilt angles of the shading-type BIPV claddings. By considering the typical meteorological conditions of Hong Kong, the energy performance of the shading-type BIPV claddings, in terms of the electricity generation and the cooling load reduction, is analyzed in this paper. The optimum tilt angle of PV modules for maximum electricity generation is found to be 20° instead of local latitude. Combining electricity generation and cooling load reduction, it can be concluded that the optimum tilt angles for the first type of the shading-type BIPV claddings vary from 30° to 50°, while the optimum tilt angle for the second type is 0°. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The concept of net zero energy building (NZEB) has attracted worldwide attention and has the potential to achieve significant energy and emissions reductions. Various technical strategies have been demonstrated to be able to achieve the net-zero-energy target. However, this issue becomes more complex when the economic performances of these strategies are considered. Although studies on the economic performance of NZEBs can be found in the literature, gaps in the research still exist. This paper presents a systematic methodology that combines life cycle cost analysis, benefit-cost analysis, and dynamic building performance simulation to effectively evaluate the economic performance of individual NZEB technologies and holistic technical strategies and determine the most economically competitive options. To demonstrate the application and validity of the methodology, a case study of office buildings in the Yangtze River Delta region of China is presented. Although this case study is ad hoc, the proposed methodology is applicable to buildings of other types and in other regions as long as the climatic and economic conditions are known. • A methodology for developing economically efficient NZEB strategies is proposed. • The methodology combines building energy simulation, LCC and benefit-cost analysis. • A prototype of office buildings in the Yangtze River Delta region is established. • Economically competitive NZEB strategies for the prototype building are developed. • Without extra rooftop PV, designing the prototype as NZEB is economically inviable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper used a simulation-based method to predict the life cycle energy performance of residential buildings in different climate zones of China. After comparison, GISS-E2-R was selected as the general climate model (GCM) for generating future weather data, and 15 locations in different climate zones of China were involved. To predict the life cycle building performance, we created a Python procedure to generate future weather data files for every year from 2020 to 2099 for each location and performed simulations on a parametric simulation tool. According to the simulation results, heating energy is expected to decrease, and cooling energy is expected to increase in the future under the influence of climate change. The more climate change there is, the greater the heating energy and cooling energy of the building change. There are three trends in residential building energy demand. For the locations where heating energy dominates, there will be a significant decrease in total energy demand. For the locations in central China, the increase in cooling energy will offset part of the decrease in heating energy; therefore, there will be a relatively small drop in the total energy demand. For the locations where cooling energy dominates, the total energy demand is expected to rise. Finally, a simple sensitivity analysis was conducted to explore the impact of the passive design of the window-to-wall ratio (WWR), solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC), wall construction and roof construction on the life cycle energy demand under representative concentration pathway (RCP) 8.5 and 4.5. • The applicability of multiple general climate models in China was evaluated. • Weather files from 2020 to 2099 were generated in batch for building simulation. • There are three trends in energy demand of residential building in China. • The life cycle energy demand in varying climate and locations was obtained. • The impact of passive design on life cycle energy demand was studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Traditional Chinese kang systems are reviewed and compared. • Improved kang systems are summarized and compared. • Possible directions for further study of Chinese kang are suggested. Chinese kang, which serves as the main space heating equipment in rural residences of cold regions of China, has received increasing attention due to people's increasing requirements of thermal comfort and concerns about indoor air environment in recent years. Most of the existing studies focused on one specific type of Chinese kang by using experimental or numerical methods to investigate the system's energy performance and its effect on the indoor environment. Therefore, there is a lack of comprehensive review of all the existing types of Chinese kangs. This paper firstly classifies the traditional Chinese kangs into three categories according to their culture and ethnic background. Secondly, the detailed construction, flue modality and thermal performance of the three kang systems are reviewed and compared. Thirdly, some recently proposed improved kang systems are introduced and analyzed. Finally, based on the review results, several possible research opportunities are suggested to guide future research on Chinese kangs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Thermochromic coatings with five different colors were prepared. • Spectral reflectivity and color-changing properties of the samples were measured. • A three-step control method is used to simulate energy performance for an office building model. • Thermochromic coatings are most favorable in areas with uniformly distributed cooling and heating demands. Thermochromic coatings are promising in lowering air conditioning energy consumption of buildings. In this paper, thermochromic coatings with five different colors are prepared and their optical properties are measured. A two-story office building model is established and simulation is conducted to evaluate the energy performance of thermochromic coatings by using a three-step control method based on their dynamic color-changing properties. A comparative analysis is carried out for thermochromic coatings, cool coating and common coating. It is observed that when the building is located in Shanghai, average daily surface temperature of thermochromic coatings is lower than the common coating during cooling period and higher than the cool coating during heating period. Annual energy consumption results indicate that thermochromic coatings can avoid the penalty of increasing heating load for cool coatings. In particular, the annual energy consumption of the office building using thermochromic coatings can be reduced by 4.28–5.02 kWh/m2 compared to the common coating, and 0.73–1.47 kWh/ m2 compared to the cool coating. Simulation of other cities in different climate zones in China reveals that thermochromic coatings have better energy saving effects especially for the areas with hot summers and cold winters, and relatively uniform distribution of cooling and heating demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of residential energy consumption, the top-down approach and bottom-up approach have been developed to model and predict residential energy demand, and the bottom-up engineering model is a promising choice and an effective tool for urban planners and policymakers. However, unlike the existing building stock databases in some developed countries or regions, China's Pearl River Delta (PRD) region lacks such building databases. Thus, the study established a database of 120 residential districts in the PRD region, and developed typical models through the data of the collection, quantification and classification. In this paper, three typical residential district models have been defined, which was a supplement to previously develop seven typical residential building models. Moreover, four common family patterns in the PRD region were determined by literature research, the corresponding schedules and basic settings were developed subsequently for them. Finally, the simulations of the energy consumption of the three residential districts were conducted, whose energy consumption intensities were 28.43 kWh/m2a, 28.41 kWh/m2a and 28.24 kWh/m2a, respectively. The results of the simulation are similar to the results of the actual energy audit, which is considered that the typical residential buildings are representative yet simple-to-use energy model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The operating performance may deteriorate from the optimal condition in industrial hydrocracking process due to changes in product requirements, equipment performance degradation, environmental noises, and random disturbances, etc. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out effective online operating performance assessment for it. In this paper, a two-layer fuzzy synthetic strategy is proposed for operating performance assessment of the hydrocracking process. First, an operating performance assessment index is constructed based on the concept of positive deviation of the quality variables. As there are many products in the process, an assessment system is further built based on the performance index. To calculate the indicators in the assessment index system in real-time, partial least squares is used for prediction. To solve the problem of limited labeled samples in the prediction, the process variables are classified into several subspace blocks according to their correlations with different key indicators. Then, a two-layer fuzzy synthetic evaluation strategy is designed to evaluate the actual operating performance of the hydrocracking process. The proposed strategy is finally illustrated with a series of cases on an industrial hydrocracking process in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• PMV overestimated the thermal sensation of students. • Students preferred cooler thermal environment. • A higher percentage of students felt local thermal discomfort. • The lower limit for 80% acceptability determined by TAV could be 19 ℃. • If indoor design temperature is 19 ℃, 3.46% of annual heating load can be saved. A classroom thermal environment directly not only influences students' thermal comfort but also energy-saving. Numerous studies indicate that students' actual thermal comfort is different from the PMV and adaptive model predictions, and the current thermal comfort standards could not be applicable for the classroom thermal environment design and evaluation. This paper aims to study the university students' general and local thermal comfort by a field survey conducted in a classroom during the heating season in Taiyuan, China. The results indicated that PMV overestimated the thermal sensation of students. Thermal acceptance vote (TAV) defined the widest acceptable temperature range, and the lower limit for 80% acceptability could be 19 ℃ in Taiyuan. Students preferred a cooler than a neutral environment. The indoor design temperature determined by the heating load duration curve (LDC) was about 21.85 ℃. If the indoor design temperature could decrease from 21.85 ℃ to 19 ℃, 3.46% of the annual heating load could be saved. Moreover, although a majority of students found the environment general thermal acceptable, a higher percentage of students felt local thermal discomfort. Local thermal comfort should be a critical issue for the classrooms' thermal environment improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]