Delivering building simulation information via new communication media

Often, the goal of understanding how the building works and the impact of design decisions is hampered by limitations in the presentation of performance data. Contemporary results display is often constrained to what was considered good practice some decades ago rather than in ways that preserve the richness of the underlying data. This paper reviews a framework for building simulation support that addresses these presentation limitations as well as making a start on issues related to distributed team working. The framework uses tools and communication protocols that enable concurrent information sharing and provide a richer set of options for understanding complex performance relationships

Communicating building simulation outputs to users

Copious amounts of data are generated by contemporary building simulation (BS) programs and the translation of these data to information that may be acted upon is problematic. Although graphs are an effective way of displaying quantitative information, they are unable to support experiential appraisals whereby building performance can be fully comprehended. To achieve this requires the use of multimedia techniques, includeing colour, sound and animation. This paper reports the interim results from a PhD project that is developing a web-enabled program to assist in the interpretation of the performance trends inherent in large data sets as produced by BS programs. The aim is to identify and link key performance concepts and support an inter-comparison of alternative design hypotheses

Delivering building simulation information via new communication media

Often, the goal of understanding how the building works and the impact of design decisions is hampered by limitations in the presentation of performance data. Contemporary results display is often constrained to what was considered good practice some decades ago rather than in ways that preserve the richness of the underlying data. This paper reviews a framework for building simulation support that addresses these presentation limitations as well as making a start on issues related to distributed team working. The framework uses tools and communication protocols that enable concurrent information sharing and provide a richer set of options for understanding complex performance relationships

Simulation support for the formulation of domestic sector upgrading strategies

This paper describes the application of a building simulation program to construct a decision-support tool for use by policy makers addressing the needs of the Scottish domestic housing sector. The process of tool formulation is described and an example given of its use to identify best-value retrofit options while taking factors such as future climate change and improved standard of living into consideration. It is argued that the process of tool formation renders it applicable to the cumulative roll-out of upgrade measures in the long term, both within and outwith the UK