Building systems and indoor environment : simulation for design decision support

This paper outlines the state-of-the-art in integrated building simulation for design support. The ESP-r system is used as an example where integrated simulation is a core philosophy behind the development. The paper finishes with indicating a number of barriers, which hinder routine application of simulation for building design

Beneficial Impacts on Environment and Society Through Smart Sustainable Maintenance of Public Real Estate

Healthy, sustainable, energy-efficient buildings are more valuable since the green movement. Air quality, lighting, acoustics, and thermal conditions affect IEQ. Indoor air quality affects resident health. Chemicals or organisms contaminate the air. This work contributes to the goal of renovating and decarbonizing existing public administration buildings in the regional territory by integrating technologies and advanced building-plant systems management policies. This work focuses on building-plant energy diagnosis, its principles, regulations, and application procedures, especially IEQ and thermo-hygrometric comfort measurement and evaluation protocols. It follows a discussion of LCA for energy diagnosis and smart indoor air quality management and maintenance, such as quantifying human activity's impact on the indoor environment or adapting a modeling methodology to identify critical parameters to be monitored and controlled by building-plant systems' integrated sensor and actuator architecture. The goal is to find connections between indoor and outdoor air quality, occupant behavior in public buildings (especially schools and universities), and short- and long-term BRI. The study compares smart building diagnostic methods and procedures to European standards. This may improve Public Building Administration Social-LCA standards

Screening of energy efficient technologies for industrial buildings' retrofit

This chapter discusses screening of energy efficient technologies for industrial buildings' retrofit

New Methods of Computer Aided Optimization of Investment and Operating Costs for Buildings During Their Useful Life

Current software solutions for real estate planning, construction and use, do not model the complete life cycle of a building. Well-integrated software tools exist for the planning and construction phases. Data integrity exists throughout the planning and construction phases, but problems occur at the transition to the use-phase. At this interface, the complete data set of planning and execution gets lost. Another software deficiency is that current software solutions don’t handle construction work and maintenance work equally. This is why a new software generation is demanded, which continuously covers the entire workflow process from the planning phase to the demolition of a building. New data concepts have to be developed, which allow bringing work items for construction together with work items for real estate use

Using Life Cycle Assessment Methods to Guide Architectural Decision-Making for Sustainable Prefabricated Modular Buildings

Within this work, life cycle assessment modeling is used to determine top design priorities and quantitatively inform sustainable design decision-making for a prefabricated modular building. A case-study life-cycle assessment was performed for a 5,000 ft2 prefabricated commercial building constructed in San Francisco, California, and scenario analysis was run examining the life cycle environmental impacts of various energy and material design substitutions, and a structural design change. Results show that even for a highly energy-efficient modular building, the top design priority is still minimizing operational energy impacts, since this strongly dominates the building life cycle\u27s environmental impacts. However, as an energy-efficient building approaches net zero energy, manufacturing-phase impacts are dominant, and a new set of design priorities emerges. Transportation and end-of-life disposal impacts were of low to negligible importance in both cases

Environmental benchmarking of building typologies through BIM-based combinatorial case studies

Integrated life-cycle assessment (LCA) tools have emerged as decision-making support for BIM practitioners during the design stage of sustainable projects. However, differences between methodologies applied for determining the environmental impact of buildings produce significant variations in the results obtained, making them difficult to be compared. In this study, a methodology is defined for generating environmental benchmarks for building typologies through a combination of BIM-based LCA tools and machine learning techniques. When applied to an 11-story residential building typology with 92 dwellings by varying the constructive solutions of façades, partitions, roof and thermal insulation materials, results fall within a range from 360 to 430 kgCO2eq/m2. The Random Forest (RF) algorithm is successfully applied for identifying the most decisive variables in the analysis (partitions and façades), and shows signs of being useful for predicting the environmental impact of future constructions and to be applied to the analysis of greater scale urban zones

The design of a solar energy collection system to augment heating and cooling for a commercial office building

Analytical studies supported by experimental testing indicate that solar energy can be utilized to heat and cool commercial buildings. In a 50,000 square foot one-story office building at the Langley Research Center, 15,000 square feet of solar collectors are designed to provide the energy required to supply 79 percent of the building heating needs and 52 percent of its cooling needs. The experience gained from the space program is providing the technology base for this project. Included are some of the analytical studies made to make the building design changes necessary to utilize solar energy, the basic solar collector design, collector efficiencies, and the integrated system design

Design of an energy conservation building

The concepts in designing and predicting energy consumption in a low energy use building are summarized. The building will use less than 30,000 Btu/sq.ft./yr. of boarder energy. The building's primary energy conservation features include heavy concrete walls with external insulation, a highly insulated ceiling, and large amounts of glass for natural lighting. A solar collector air system is integrated into the south wall. Calculations for energy conservation features were performed using NASA's NECAP Energy Program