Regulations and robust low-carbon buildings

Building regulations and associated calculation methods have been rapidly evolving, driven in Europe by the European Union Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. As an example, the current UK regulations are explored in relation to buildings that are naturally ventilated, mechanically ventilated, or mechanically ventilated and cooled. The UK regulatory energy and carbon calculation methods are investigated using a standard office design with typical, best practice, and advanced building fabric and systems applied. The criteria and calculations for demonstrating avoidance of excessive temperatures in buildings that have no mechanical cooling are also explored. Observations are made on how the regulations may influence future adoption of mechanical cooling. Current regulatory methods can be subjective and limited in scope. For example, they do not include adaptive comfort criteria or uncertainties in parameters such as occupant behaviour, climate, internal gains from equipment, etc. A design methodology is proposed that addresses these issues and provides a capability parameter to quantify robustness. This capability parameter allows comparison of design options and provides an indication to building users of the limitations to a building's use beyond which mitigating action would have to be taken for performance to be maintained

Simulation and BIM in building design, commissioning and operation: a comparison with the microelectronics industry

Analogy between the Microelectronics and Building industries is explored with the focus on design, commissioning and operation processes. Some issues found in the realisation of low energy buildings are highlighted and techniques gleaned from microelectronics proposed as possible solutions. Opportunities identified include: adoption of a more integrated process, use of standard cells, inclusion of controls and operational code in the design, generation of building commissioning tests from simulation, generation of building operational control code (including self-test) from simulation, inclusion of variation and uncertainties in the design process, use of quality processes such as indices to represent design robustness and formal continuous improvement methods. The possible integration of these techniques within a building information model (BIM) flow is discussed and some examples of enabling technologies given

Dietary-based gut flora modulation against Clostridium difficile onset

Clostridium difficile infection is a frequent complication of antibiotic therapy in hospitalised patients, which today is attracting more attention than ever and has led to its classification as a 'superbug'. Disruption of the composition of the intestinal microflora following antibiotic treatment is an important prerequisite for overgrowth of C. difficile and the subsequent development of an infection. Treatment options for antibiotic-associated diarrhoea and C. difficile-induced colitis include administration of specific antibiotics (e.g. vancomycin), which often leads to high relapse rates. More importantly, both the rate and severity of C. difficile-associated diseases are increasing, with new epidemic strains of C. difficile often implicated. For the prevention and treatment of antibiotic-associated diarrhoea and C. difficile infection, several probiotic bacteria such as selected strains of lactobacilli (especially Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG), Bifidobacterium longum, and Enterococcus faecium and the non-pathogenic yeast Saccharomyces boulardii have been used. Controlled trials indicate a benefit of S. boulardii and L. rhamnosus GG as therapeutic agents when used as adjuncts to antibiotics. However, the need for more well designed controlled trials with probiotics is explicit

Embracing variations in patterns of use, pre and post design phase, to improve tenant energy performance

This paper elaborates a new energy performance benchmarking method to support green tenancy agreements and other energy performance contracts. The existing national energy reporting method does not categorise systemic variations in patterns of use. Results of a case study monitoring operational data of a multi-tenanted office building are presented. The data reveals the actual designed spectrum of occupant density accounts for a 44% increase in tenant energy demand per square meter and a 112% increase in tenant energy demand per full time employees [FTE], dramatically affecting the buildings internal gains, heating and cooling requirements. The study highlights how low levels of occupancy and extended operational hours can give a false representation of energy efficiency

Thermal mass, insulation and ventilation in sustainable housing - An investigation across climate and occupancy

Sustainable housing standards are reviewed including the UK 2005 building regulations, the UK Advanced Standard and EU Passive-house Standard. Conflicts between the standards are highlighted. The significance of insulation, orientation, ventilation, thermal mass, occupancy, gains, shading and climate on predicted energy performance is illustrated. An ESP-r model is then used to investigate these factors across a range of climates and occupancy / gains scenarios. The investigation covers both heating and cooling energy requirements. The relative importance of key factors is quantified and a matrix of results presented with conclusions. The role of simulation in informing design decisions is demonstrated as well as the importance of considering climate and occupancy/ gains patterns

Project management under uncertainty

Morris' (1986) analysis of the factors affecting project success and failure is considered in relation to the psychology of judgement under uncertainty. A model is proposed whereby project managers may identify the specific circumstances in which human decision-making is prone to systematic error, and hence may apply a number of de-biasing techniques

Topic Maps and TEI - Using Topic Maps as a Tool for Presenting TEI Documents

This paper describes a method used by the website of the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre (NZETC), in which Topic Maps are used as a tool for presenting TEI-encoded texts in HTML form. Many electronic text archives transform their TEI texts into HTML for publishing their texts on the World Wide Web. Typically each chapter or page is transformed from TEI into a separate web page. Such a method produces websites that have the same structure as a physical book. However, TEI is more expressive than HTML and can encode many other features of interest than just chapters, pages, and paragraphs. For example, TEI is also used to encode information about people and places and events, as well as literary criticism, and linguistic analysis. Indeed, TEI is designed to be extended to suit all kinds of scholarly needs. These more complex aspects of text encoding are more difficult to transform into HTML. Because TEI is designed to be convenient for scholars to encode complex information, rather than for readers to understand it, it is necessary to transform the TEI into another form suitable for display. For instance, where a TEI corpus includes references to people, these references might be collated together to produce an index. For practical purposes, it is often necessary to extract information from TEI into a database, so that it can be queried conveniently and transformed into a web site. The new "Topic Map" standard of the International Standards Organisation is identified as a suitable technology for solving this problem. A topic map is a kind of Web database with an extremely flexible structure. This paper describes a framework for using TEI in conjunction with Topic Maps to produce a large website which can be navigated easily in many directions

Generating the Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand website, using XSLT running on a Condor grid

This is a report on an experimental NZETC project to speed up the automated regeneration of a large website by using VUW's Condor computing grid. The aim of the project was to investigate the feasibility of using the grid as a platform for website generation. The project did not extend to generating the entire website, though it did produce the bulk of it, and did successfully demonstrate the feasibility of using the grid for similar work in future. The grid-based application has shown the grid to be a good platform for generating large websites from XML source materials. The application was able to generate around 80 thousand web pages in about 4 hours, making it many times quicker than a system based on a single computer. The project also highlighted a few technical issues with the Condor grid, relating to the use of file folders in grid jobs; prioritisation of grid nodes based on the opening hours of the computer labs; and the special configuration of computers running Microsoft Windows

Occupant behaviour in naturally ventilated and hybrid buildings

Adaptive thermal comfort criteria for building occupants are now becoming established. In this paper we illustrate their use in the prediction of occupant behaviour and make a comparison with a non-adaptive temperature threshold approach. A thermal comfort driven adaptive behavioural model for window opening is described and its use within dynamic simulation illustrated for a number of building types. Further development of the adaptive behavioural model is suggested including use of windows, doors, ceiling fans, night cooling, air conditioning and heating, also the setting of opportunities and constraints appropriate to a particular situation. The integration in dynamic simulation of the thermal adaptive behaviours together with non-thermally driven behaviours such as occupancy, lights and blind use is proposed in order to create a more complete model of occupant behaviour. It is further proposed that this behavioural model is implemented in a methodology that includes other uncertainties (e.g. in internal gains) so that a realistic range of occupant behaviours is represented at the design stage to assist in the design of robust, comfortable and low energy buildings

Facing the growing problem of the electric power consumption in Egyptian residential building using building performance simulation program

Egypt has been experiencing recurrent power cuts especially at the summer, with the problem being made worse by the extra demands placed on the electrical grid by the advent of the holy month of Ramadan. Electricity shortages are now a problem in Cairo, Alexandria, Sohag, Qena, Luxor, Aswan, and Nubia, as well as in the Nile Delta governorates of Beheira and Qalioubiya. The aim of this study is to develop a model for the Egyptian residential building using Building Performance Simulation Program and make sensitivity analysis on some variables effecting the electric power consumption in order to help faceting the growing problem in Egypt. The model was created using the IES-VE 2012 (Integrated Environmental Solution ). The simulation model was verified against the survey data for the Egyptian apartment and same model simulated using energy Plus simulation tool. The results of the program describing different situations for energy using profile for the air conditions, lighting and equipments in respect to building layout and construction climate and pattern of use. This model can be used in the future to help in reducing the electric power consumption in the residential building