Evaluation of Static Horizontal Louvers on Annual Daylighting Performance in Classrooms

Daylighting has a great impact on students’ health, learning performance, and productivity. The goal of this paper is to enhance daylighting performance by examining year-round daylighting performance of Southern facades in the case of one central window in a classroom located in Cairo, Egypt by using static external horizontal shading devices during the Fall, Spring and Summer semesters The scope of the study is to evaluate and assess the effect of the window-to-wall ratio (WWR) in addition to the louvers’ configurations of depth and count parameters of the classroom on annual daylighting performance metrics for classrooms’ southern facades by using Rhinoceros, Grasshopper interface and Honeybee Plus plugin which uses the Radiance engine for annual daylighting Simulations. Annual Sunlight Exposure, Spatial Daylight Autonomy and upper and lower limits of useful daylight illuminance are incorporated for an efficient annual daylighting performance. Based on geographical location and sun altitude angles that is gathered from ladybug tools, three alternative configurations of fixed horizontal louvers were investigated to evaluate the difference between them. Results show a low difference with the proposed louver configurations cases and a high reduction in annual sunlight exposure by 78% which complies with LEED v4 and IES-LM-83-12 criteria

BIM2BEM integrated approach: Examining status of the adoption of building information modelling and building energy models in Egyptian architectural firms

Egyptian architectural firms are moving from the use of CAD towards the adoption of BIM. Meanwhile, these firms are challenged with the use of BEM in order to cope with the call for energy conservation. To achieve better collaboration, the approach of BIM2BEM has emerged, aiming to integrate between BEM and BIM, which leads to the production of buildings that cope with updates in environmental policies. Nevertheless, these changes facing Egyptian architectural firms haven’t been examined in an integrated manner in published research work. Thus, the main objective of this paper is to examine the status of the application of both BIM and BEM, in Egypt. The research methodology involved using a semi-structured questionnaire and analysing two office buildings as case studies. Results showed that the application of BIM2BEM approach in Egypt is currently spreading and developing. It also showed that there are several barriers to adoption of this approach. Keywords: Building Information Modelling (BIM), Building Energy Models (BEM), Architectural firms, Egyp

Design guidelines for pedestrian circulation requirements of multi-modal hub stations

Many countries are increasing their research interest in multi-modal passenger transportation design, including hub, interchange, and other typologies. Multi-modal transportation is the act of connecting and moving people and goods using at least two different modes of transportation. As a result, expanding the country's transportation system is part of its economic reform strategy. The problem of the paper is the lack of guidelines for pedestrian circulation requirements in public transportation stations in Egypt. This paper analyzed and evaluated the pedestrian circulation requirements in public transport stations in Egypt. With the aim of suggesting the design guidelines for pedestrian circulation requirements in multi-modal hub stations in Egypt. After identification, the findings are formed by the suggested design guidelines for pedestrian circulation requirements of multi-modal hub stations in Egypt. This paper recommends a framework for the design aspects of multi-modal hub stations