Window Thermal Performance Optimization in the Government Built Emirati Family House-Abu Dhabi Emirate.

Presently, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has one of the world’s largest energy consumption per capita, with the building sector accounting for 70% of the consumed energy, primarily used for cooling. In the last three decades, the UAE government launched several housing programs that fit the needs of Emirati beneficiaries while recently targeting also energy efficiency. This study aims at optimizing the window thermal performance in relation to orientation in a typical house within a representative governmental housing program. Often enough, housing orientation is governed by urban planning layout, where windows rarely show any adapted heat control treatment in relation to orientation despite their significant impact on heat gains under the local extreme hot climate. This research started with an overview of the historical development of housing programs in the UAE along with “Estidama”, the local sustainability framework. Second, a detailed review of optimum window design for heat control is presented. Next, a representative house is selected for investigation based on a detailed review of Al Falah governmental housing program, which included master plan layout, housing typology, construction materials and the window’s design specifications. The thermal performance of the case study in relation to orientation was evaluated using Home Energy Efficient Design (HEED) software. The results indicate variable annual electricity consumption per orientation with the western orientation leading with 9.7% more than the east, and 3.0% more than the north and south orientations. Thereafter, the window thermal optimization process investigated the impact of window’s components including glass, frame and external shading devices in relation to each orientation. The best performing component were then combined into two scenarios; the first one included a vinyl frame and double tinted squared Low E glass and the second scenario had Low e glass, vinyl frame and automated slatted blinds. The results indicated a reduction of the total annual energy consumption ranging between around 6% when facing east and 13% when facing west. More importantly, the optimal window components highlighted similar performance independently from orientation, thus enabling flexibility in housing planning projects while promoting thermal efficiency and energy savings

Advanced Simulation Methods for Occupant-Centric Building Design

Performance quantification through simulation has been particularly advantageous to building design, as it can be applied to non-existent buildings in the design process, allows for testing design variants under identical conditions, and demands much less resources as compared to physical measurements. Consequently, use of building simulation in the design process has evolved to – for example – establish and verify design performance, screen and optimize design parameters, and study robustness and adaptability in adverse conditions. In this context, the present chapter investigates how the state-of-the-art simulation-aided design procedures can contribute to realize occupant-centric design objectives. To this end, the chapter, first, discusses the ways in which simulation-aided design methods can represent occupants and capture their interactions with buildings’ environmental control systems. Subsequently, a number of key simulation-aided design methods and objectives are explored with a focus on the role of occupants. Finally, a carefully described prototypical building model serves to demonstrate and test the introduced occupant-centric simulation-aided design procedures

Advanced simulation methods for occupant-centric building design

Performance quantification through simulation has been particularly advantageous to building design, as it can be applied to non-existent buildings in the design process, allows for testing design variants under identical conditions, and demands much less resources as compared to physical measurements. Consequently, use of building simulation in the design process has evolved to – for example – establish and verify design performance, screen and optimize design parameters, and study robustness and adaptability in adverse conditions. In this context, the present chapter investigates how the state-of-the-art simulation-aided design procedures can contribute to realize occupant-centric design objectives. To this end, the chapter, first, discusses the ways in which simulation-aided design methods can represent occupants and capture their interactions with buildings’ environmental control systems. Subsequently, a number of key simulation-aided design methods and objectives are explored with a focus on the role of occupants. Finally, a carefully described prototypical building model serves to demonstrate and test the introduced occupant-centric simulation-aided design procedures

Detailed Case Studies

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) are one of the key technologies that support the development of pervasive health monitoring (remote patient monitoring systems), which has attracted more attention in recent years. These WBAN applications requires stringent security requirements as they are concerned with human lives. In the recent scenario of the corona pandemic, where most of the healthcare providers are giving online services for treatment, DDoS attacks become the major threats over the internet. This chapter particularly focusses on detection of DDoS attack using machine learning algorithms over the healthcare environment. In the process of attack detection, the dataset is preprocessed. After preprocessing the dataset, the cleaned dataset is given to the popular classification algorithms in the area of machine learning namely, AdaBoost, J48, k-NN, JRip, Random Committee and Random Forest classifiers. Those algorithms are evaluated independently and the results are recorded. Results concluded that J48 outperform with accuracy of 99.98% with CICIDS dataset and random forest outperform with accuracy of 99.917, but it takes the longest model building time. Depending on the evaluation performance the appropriate classifier is selected for further DDoS detection at real-time

Understanding the Needs and Challenges of Occupant-centric Building Design among Stakeholders: A Review

Designing high-performance buildings is a complex process that involves several stakeholders at different stages of design development. Design stakeholders need to work together to achieve design objectives and overcome the challenge that arises from inefficient collaboration and coordination. Among these challenges are occupant-related assumptions which are made throughout the design process, including schematic design, energy modelling, construction, and even operation. Accuracy of these assumptions is highly dependent on the design stakeholders\u27 objectives and the time that they are engaged in the design process. Differences in occupant-related assumptions can lead to a considerable level of uncertainty, which probably leads to suboptimal design decisions. To this end, the current practice, including the challenges and the barriers, needs to be documented and understood in order to develop an improved occupant modelling approach during building design. Therefore, this paper highlights the current practices of communicating occupant-related assumptions in the building design process. In this paper, we also argue the need for in-depth consideration of communication among design stakeholders

How assumptions about occupants can misinform building design

This article demonstrates how different assumptions about occupants during building performance simulation (BPS)-aided design can lead to different design decisions. This is accomplished by evaluating the sensitivity of several building design parameters against the occupant-related assumptions made by the energy modeler, architect, and mechanical engineer. The model described in this article is that of a real office building in Toronto, Canada. By altering occupant-related assumptions (such as the number of people in the building, the plug-in equipment power density [EPD], and the lighting power density [LPD]), this study shows the sensitivity of the ranking of design alternatives as well as energy-savings potential fluctuations when different assumptions are applied

Advanced Simulation Methods for Occupant-Centric Building Design

Performance quantification through simulation has been particularly advantageous to building design, as it can be applied to non-existent buildings in the design process, allows for testing design variants under identical conditions, and demands much less resources as compared to physical measurements. Consequently, use of building simulation in the design process has evolved to – for example – establish and verify design performance, screen and optimize design parameters, and study robustness and adaptability in adverse conditions. In this context, the present chapter investigates how the state-of-the-art simulation-aided design procedures can contribute to realize occupant-centric design objectives. To this end, the chapter, first, discusses the ways in which simulation-aided design methods can represent occupants and capture their interactions with buildings' environmental control systems. Subsequently, a number of key simulation-aided design methods and objectives are explored with a focus on the role of occupants. Finally, a carefully described prototypical building model serves to demonstrate and test the introduced occupant-centric simulation-aided design procedures

Simulation-aided occupant-centric building design: A critical review of tools, methods, and applications

Occupants are active participants in their built environment, affecting its performance while simultaneously being affected by its design and indoor environmental conditions. With recent advances in computer modeling, simulation tools, and analysis techniques, topics such as human-building interactions and occupant behavior have gained significant interest in the literature given their premise of improving building design processes and operating strategies. In practice, the focus of occupant-centric literature has been mostly geared towards the latter (i.e., operation), leaving the implications on building design practices underexplored. This paper fills the gap by providing a critical review of existing studies applying computer-based modeling and simulation to guide occupant-centric building design. The reviewed papers are organized along four main themes, namely occupant-centric: (i) metrics of building performance, (ii) modeling and simulation approaches, (iii) design methods and applications, and (iv) supporting practices and mechanisms. Important barriers are identified for a more effective application of occupant-centric building design practices, including the limited consideration of metrics beyond energy efficiency (e.g., occupant well-being and space planning), the limited implementation and validation of the proposed methods, and the lack of integration of occupant behavior modeling in existing building performance simulation tools. Future research directions are discussed, covering large-scale international data collection efforts to move from generic assumptions about occupant behavior to specific/localized knowledge, improved metrics of measuring building performance, and improved industry practices, such as building codes, to promote an occupant-in-the-loop approach to the building design process