A decision support system for fostering smart energy efficient districts

The role of ICT is becoming prominent in tackling some of the urban societal challenges such as energy wastage and increasing carbon emissions. In this context, the concept of DAREED aims to deliver an integrated decision support system (DSS) to drive energy efficiency and low carbon activities at both a building and district level. The main aim of this paper is to present the technical concept of the Best Practices recommendation component of the DAREED system. This component seeks to compare and identify existing best practices to recommend practical actions to various stakeholders (e.g. building managers, citizens) in order to improve energy performance considering the global needs of a building. This paper also discusses the context of the three field trial sites (based in UK, Spain and Italy) in which the DAREED platform along with the best practices tool is to be tested and validated.This work evolved in the context of the project DAREED (Decision support Advisor for innovative business models and useR engagement for smart Energy Efficient Districts), www.dareed.eu, a project cofunded by the EC within FP7, Grant agreement no: 609082

Information-Driven Housing

This paper suggests a new information-driven framework is needed to help consumers evaluate the sustainability of their housing options. The paper provides an outline of this new framework and how it would work

Theoretical framework for user-focused evaluation in office design

As was stated in the introduction, a user-focused renovation approach can enhance user satisfaction in offices and the functional quality of the offices while meeting energy performance goals. The first step for this renovation approach is to identify users’ needs and the physical and psychological factors affecting user satisfaction, as input to office renovation projects. The main aim is to identify the factors that are affecting the physical and psychological satisfaction of users, based on what previous research has found in that field. Therefore, this chapter highlights the main parameters currently applied to the evaluation of user satisfaction, including the definitions based on the literature review. The research approach for the literature review is discussed in section 2.2. Searching was limited to the main key terms of office, work environment, and user satisfaction and comfort. Section 2.3 explores the relationship between office renovation and user satisfaction. The terms user satisfaction and the user’s expectations in workplaces are defined in section 2.4. In section 2.5, the important factors were searched through empirical-based international literature mainly. Based hereupon, section 2.6 discusses the challenge of evaluating user satisfaction. In section 2.7, the findings present ten main parameters to increase user satisfaction in office renovation. The parameters were categorised into three levels based on needs theories to organise the hierarchy of priorities

Human experience in the natural and built environment : implications for research policy and practice

22nd IAPS conference. Edited book of abstracts. 427 pp. University of Strathclyde, Sheffield and West of Scotland Publication. ISBN: 978-0-94-764988-3

Local sustainable development and well-being/quality of life. An application of the capability approach at regional level

This paper has a twofold aim: the former is to focus on the concept of well-being/quality of life and its relationships with local sustainable development and the latter is to apply the capability approach at regional level. More specifically, one wants to analyse if sustainable development at a local level serves to better understand both the formation of well-being and/or quality of life. The instrument which will allow us to verify the operational value of the capability approach is the building of a multidimensional synthetic index of sustainability. This index will consists of aggregating a set of variables of different nature from the socio-economic to the environmental ones. It may be considered an alternative to the conventional indices, which are normally founded on GDP, and will be applied to the Italian regions. After having standardised each variable so to make them homogeneous, the methodology proposed, which will allow us to gather and compare the Italian regions according to the higher or lower level of quality of life, is the Wroclaws Economic School taxonomic method. The results obtained may represent an information tool for targeting and zoning sustainable development measures which aim at improving well-being/quality of life at a local level.

Adaptive Building Envelope: An Integral Approach to Indoor Environment Control in Buildings

The problem of energy consumption of buildings is complex and multidimensional, as it is a cross section of building envelope performance, indoor environmental conditions and user demands and preferences. In order to fulfil the EU goal stated in the 2020 climate and energy package and beyond, the implementation of high-performance buildings is crucial. Part of the solution is properly designed, flexible and adequately controlled building envelope that can contribute to reduced energy consumption and to increased occupancy comfort. In the presented chapter first, a structured treatment of the indoor environment formation is proposed that can be used in order to define appropriate fields of interventions when designing building automation systems. Furthermore, interaction between adaptive building envelope elements, indoor and exterior environment is discussed and elaborated. Second, the conventional and artificial intelligence control approaches used in building automation are discussed and commented, whereas advantages and disadvantages of each group are discussed. At the end, an example of building automation system designed on the principles of a holistic treatment of indoor environment in buildings is presented. The discussed system was designed at the Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering using a combination of conventional and artificial intelligence control methods

Combating overheating: mixed-mode conditioning for workplace comfort

© 2016 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Using post-occupancy evaluations of seven mixed-mode buildings–three in Australia and four in India–this paper demonstrates that effective mixed-mode conditioning (instead of year-round air-conditioning) can deliver comfortable workspaces. Occupant feedback reinforces strong associations between overheating, thermal comfort, overall comfort and perceived productivity. However, differing levels of thermal acceptability within and between the Australian and Indian contexts are evident. Occupants in the Indian buildings were found to tolerate a wider range of temperatures when compared with Western contexts where lower temperature limits entrench an energy demand through a greater reliance on air-conditioning. The outcomes from the study suggest that the perception of overheating and consequent risk to building performance can be intensified when occupants perceive limited adaptive opportunity or problems are not rectified quickly, whereas perceived control is less important where building systems are user responsive. Occupants in three of the study buildings also perceived higher-than-anticipated comfort which could be attributable to well-liked attributes, such as break-out spaces, daylight and fresh air included in these buildings. The findings challenge designers and clients to develop user-responsive climate interactive workplaces that capitalize on spatial and mixed-mode environmental control to tackle the question of overheating

Valuing Environmental Factors in Cost-Benefit Analysis Using Data Envelopment Analysis

Environmental cost-benefit analysis (ECBA) refers to social evaluation of investment projects and policies that involve significant environmental impacts. Valuation of the environmental impacts in monetary terms forms one of the critical steps in ECBA. We propose a new approach for environmental valuation within ECBA framework that is based on data envelopment analysis (DEA) and does not demand any price estimation for environmental impacts using traditional revealed or stated preference methods. We show that DEA can be modified to the context of CBA by using absolute shadow prices instead of traditionally used relative prices. We also discuss how the approach can be used for sensitive analysis which is an important part of ECBA. We illustrate the application of the DEA approach to ECBA by means of a hypothetical numerical example where a household considers investment to a new sport utility vehicle.Cost-Benefit Analysis, Data Envelopment Analysis, Eco-Efficiency, Environmental Valuation, Environmental Performance, Performance Measurement

Assessing gaps and needs for integrating building performance optimization tools in net zero energy buildings design

This paper summarizes a study undertaken to reveal potential challenges and opportunities for integrating optimization tools in net zero energy buildings (NZEB) design. The paper reviews current trends in simulation-based building performance optimization (BPO) and outlines major criteria for optimization tools selection and evaluation. This is based on analyzing user's needs for tools capabilities and requirement specifications. The review is carried out by means of a literature review of 165 publications and interviews with 28 optimization experts. The findings are based on an inter-group comparison between experts. The aim is to assess the gaps and needs for integrating BPO tools in NZEB design. The findings indicate a breakthrough in using evolutionary algorithms in solving highly constrained envelope, HVAC and renewable optimization problems. Simple genetic algorithm solved many design and operation problems and allowed measuring the improvement in the optimality of a solution against a base case. Evolutionary algorithms are also easily adapted to enable them to solve a particular optimization problem more effectively. However, existing limitations including model uncertainty, computation time, difficulty of use and steep learning curve. Some future directions anticipated or needed for improvement of current tools are presented.Peer reviewe