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Necessary conditions for the accountable inclusion of dynamic representations of inhabitants in building information models
Published in Symeon E. Christodoulou, Raimar Scherer, eWork and eBusiness in Architecture, Engineering and Construction, 2017
Building Information Models (BIM) have the potential to support building performance assessment applications via efficient and structured provision of required input information. Specifically, building performance simulation tools require information on context (climate), building geometry, construction, and internal processes. Whereas inclusion of information on physical building components and properties (pertaining, for example, to buildings’ fabric and construction) in BIM is fairly well advanced, representations of inhabitants (presence, movement, behaviour, perception, and evaluation) are frequently rudimentary. In fact, assumptions regarding user presence and behaviour in building are not explicitly specified in BIM, but rather injected quasi downstream, i.e. in the course of simulation model generation. To accommodate a number of salient applications—particularly in building performance simulation and building systems control domains—building information models need to include representations of inhabitants. Moreover, such representations should ideally reflect the nature of building occupancy processes: Specifically, the representation of people as passive, static, and exchangeable entities would not cater for reliable building performance assessment and building operation planning. Rather, adequate representations of building inhabitants should address not only passive presence, but the multiplicity of active user-initiated actions (e.g., interactions with buildings indoor environmental control devices and systems). Moreover, such representations should reflect the dynamic nature of such actions.
BIM and BPS
Published in Jan L.M. Hensen, Roberto Lamberts, Building Performance Simulation for Design and Operation, 2019
Timothy Hemsath, Matthew Goldsberry, Joel Yow
Building performance simulation is the computational modelling of a building system simulated to provide approximations of the modelled system’s behavior. The results help us understand more about what is simulated, such as “heat and mass transfer in the building fabric, airflow in and through the building, daylighting, and a vast array of system types and components” (Hensen and Lamberts 2011). Hensen and Lamberts (2011) posits the benefits of BPS in practice, recognizing that predicting and analyzing building behavior is more efficient and economical than resolving these issues once the building is built.
A building performance indicator ontology
Published in Jan Karlshøj, Raimar Scherer, eWork and eBusiness in Architecture, Engineering and Construction, 2018
Computational building performance assessment can be described as a process by which physical and operational data concerning buildings (i.e., building information models) are mapped onto building performance simulation results. Such results are expressed, not exclusively, but quite commonly in terms of numeric values of building performance indicators. Professionals engaged in building performance assessment operate with a large number of building performance indicators, involving multiple domains, different aspects, and varying degrees of resolution.
Investigation of occupant-related energy aspects of the National Building Code of Canada: Energy use impact and potential least-cost code-compliant upgrades
Published in Science and Technology for the Built Environment, 2021
Ahmed Abdeen, William O’Brien, Burak Gunay, Guy Newsham, Heather Knudsen
Code compliance can be achieved by modeling energy performance as per construction specifications using building performance simulation (BPS) tools, thus creating a proposed model, then comparing it to a reference model. In NBC, the proposed model must perform better than the reference model to be in compliance with the code. Using inaccurate/unrealistic occupant-related assumptions in BPS tools has been widely acknowledged as a significant factor leading to the performance gap/differences between predicted and actual energy consumption in buildings (Eguaras-Martínez, Vidaurre-Arbizu, and Martín-Gómez 2014; Hong et al. 2017; Yan et al. 2015). Moreover, more crucially, such differences could lead to sub-optimal requirements and design decisions when providing input to building code development to meet its quantified ambitions.
Passive house vs. passive design: sociotechnical issues in a practice-based design research project for a low-energy house
Published in Architectural Science Review, 2020
David Kroll, Sarah Breen Lovett, Carlos Jimenez-Bescos, Peter Chisnall, Mathew Aitchison
Building performance simulation tools can be invaluable during the design process to improve the energy-efficiency of proposed buildings. The available body of literature on energy performance of buildings is extensive, exploring both technical aspects such as the efficiency of building envelopes (De Boeck et al. 2015), as well as social aspects such as user evaluations and preferences (Hauge, Thomsen, and Berker 2011). How sociotechnical factors play a role in the design process itself, however, seems less well studied and understood. In order to effectively integrate performance assessment tools into architectural practice, it would be important to examine how these factors interact during the design process, beyond a focus on energy-efficiency alone, which has been criticized for example by Shove (2017).
Building performance modeling and simulation
Published in Science and Technology for the Built Environment, 2020
Today’s buildings account for up to 40% of total energy consumption and 36% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. As an effective means to improve building energy efficiency, computer-aided building performance simulation has been applied over the building life cycle, including design, construction, operation and maintenance. At the 4th Asia Conference of the International Building Performance Simulation Association (ASIM2018), which was held at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, on 3–5 December 2018, recent ideas, knowledge and methods about building performance simulation were exchanged through dedicated keynote speeches, workshops and parallel sessions. A small number of excellent articles were recommended by session chairs and the scientific committee for publication in this special issue of Science and Technology for the Built Environment (STBE). All recommended articles were significantly expanded and fully-peer-reviewed, resulting in the nine articles in this special issue of the STBE. These articles cover a wide range of topics that feature recent advances in building thermal and energy performance simulation for diverse purposes. They can be grouped into three main topical categories as summarized below, including simulation for performance evaluation, simulation for control and operations, and machine learning and data-driven modeling.