•Evaluation of design strategies in refurbishment of the residential prefab-housing.•Implementation of EEI measures results in reduction of buildings energy loads.•Synergy of passive and active ...actions make possible to approach zero energy status.•Economic analysis of the refurbishment EE models shows their feasibility.•Even without introducing subsidies retrofit actions are sustainable on their own.
The main objective of the presented paper was to evaluate the integrated design strategies applied in refurbishment of the prefabricated residential housing, erected in ′70 in the New Belgrade, Serbia, in order to achieve energy savings accompanied with reduction of CO2 emissions and improvement of households’ health and comfort. Conducted study led to the preliminary design of energy refurbishment of the existing building, and its conversion to energy efficient building with minimized loads. Building's dynamic behavior and energy efficiency have been optimized implementing BPS-Building Performance Simulation. Very significant reduction of thermal and cooling loads with the reference to the building's existing status is obtained. Refurbishment encompassed comprehensive optimization of building's envelope structure, natural and mixed ventilation. The implementation of a series of EEI (energy efficiency improvement) measures resulted in significant reduction of buildings energy loads. The investment in energy efficiency retrofitting can improve macroeconomic stability and contribute to the sustainable economic growth. Furthermore, economic analyses were performed for each model, considering present economic situation in Serbia and availability of funds for refurbishment. Presented methodology and results of the performed analyses offer an opportunity to extend their application to other neighborhoods, exploring refurbishment potential results if applied on a greater urban scale.
•A new optimal Model Reference Adaptive Control scheme for buildings is developed.•No a priori knowledge of building dynamics and parameters certainty is required.•Control robustness vs. disturbances ...and nonlinear unmodelled dynamics is proved.•Indoor air temperature/humidity conditions and comfort requirements are fulfilled.•Through DETECt PCM analyses and multi-simulations are performed without retuning.
In this paper a novel optimal Model Reference Adaptive Control approach, developed to tame the thermohygrometric behaviour of buildings as well as to guarantee the indoor comfort, is presented. The main advantages of the proposed method are: (i) no-need of a priori knowledge of the specific building dynamics due to climate, occupants’ behaviour, building use, envelope features and utility rates; (ii) robustness with respect to a large class of perturbations, external disturbances, nonlinear unmodelled dynamics or parameters uncertainty; (iii) ability to impose desired optimal dynamics; (iv) accurate regulation and fast tracking of indoor air temperature and humidity in the case of stringent requirements in special building spaces (e.g. hospitals, museums, laboratories, etc.).
In order to investigate the effectiveness of the proposed method, the developed strategy has been implemented in the new release of a white-modelling building energy performance simulation code, called DETECt 2.3. The tool enables multi-zone building simulation analyses and is capable to dynamically predict: (i) spaces sensible and latent heating and cooling demands and loads; (ii) indoor air temperatures and humidity, as well as building envelope internal and external temperatures; (iii) the performance of phase change materials (PCM) embedded in building enclosures and for any layer configuration; (iv) the thermohygrometric comfort of occupants.
In order to analyse the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed control strategy, several case studies have been carried out. They refer to some reference buildings with different geometry, use and construction materials (also including PCM integrated into the building envelope) simulated in different weather conditions. For each case study, both continuous and intermittent control system regimes have been considered. Results confirm the ability of the developed approach to achieve the selected indoor air temperature and humidity conditions in order to guarantee indoor comfort in uncertain conditions. The numerical analysis is complemented with the rigorous analytical proof of asymptotic stability.
Current approaches to simulate occupants' wayfinding in AEC mostly employ direct routing algorithms that assume global knowledge of the navigation environment to compute a shortest path between two ...locations. This simplification overlooks evidence concerning the role of perception and cognition during wayfinding in complex buildings, leading to potentially erroneous predictions that may hinder architects' ability to design wayfinding by architecture. To bridge this gap, we present a novel simulation paradigm entitled Cognitive Occupancy Modeling in BIM to simulate wayfinding by means of a vision-based cognitive agent and a semantically-enriched navigation space extracted from BIM (Building Information Modeling). To evaluate the predictive power of the proposed paradigm against human behavior, we conducted a wayfinding experiment in Virtual Reality (VR) with 149 participants, followed by a series of simulation experiments with cognitive and direct routing agents. Results highlight a significant correspondence between human participants' and cognitive agents' wayfinding behavior that was not observed with direct routing agents, demonstrating the potential of cognitive modeling to inform building performance simulations in AEC.
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•The limitations of direct routing agents to capture the effects of architecture on wayfinding are elucidated.•A wayfinding experiment in Virtual Reality with 149 participants confirms these limitations.•A novel paradigm to support Cognitive Occupancy Modeling in BIM is put forth.•The paradigm is employed to simulate wayfinding by architecture using vision-based cognitive agents and a BIM-based navigation space.•Compared to direct routing agents, cognitive agents are significantly more predictiveof human wayfinding.
Reducing the emissions in the building sector requires reasonable renovation and integration of renewable energy sources to find the optimal trade-off between ecological benefit and economic effort. ...However, many buildings, different types of usage, needs of residents, and transient weather conditions contribute to a vast number of use cases, making the search for the optimal trade-off challenging. Therefore, a systematic reduction of use cases is necessary to target emission reductions in the building sector. Furthermore, emissions in the building sector mainly belong to heating and cooling purposes. Thus, many frameworks exist to estimate the heating and cooling demand at building and district scales. In addition, some contributions exist at a national scale, determining spatially resolved demands. However, the optimal integration of fluctuating renewable energy sources requires a detailed resolution in the time domain. Currently, no framework allows the calculation of spatially and temporally resolved demands at the national scale from which a meaningful use case reduction can be obtained.
This work proposes the ACoolHeaD framework for Automated Cooling and Heating Demand calculations for entire urban districts and countries based on spatially and temporally resolved building performance simulations. ACoolHeaD connects predefined formatted input data with the TEASER tool for automated parameterization of building simulation models. After parameterizing the building models, the framework selects representative weather data sets as boundary conditions for the simulation to ensure spatial and temporal resolution during computation. The calculation of the demands is fully automated. Finally, the k-medoids clustering algorithm is applied to systematically reduce the number of use cases, identifying representative demands. As a use case for ACoolHeaD serves Germany since sound data available. Thus, ACoolHeaD estimates the representative heating demand for about 19 million buildings in Germany in this work.
An extended input data preparation reduces the computational effort from about 19 million building simulations to 3,520. The average, maximum, and integral heating demand is determined in each simulation, which are classification indicators for the clustering algorithm. Germany’s integral overall (clustered) heating demand is estimated at 2,796 PJ (2,793 PJ), respectively, which is about 10 % higher than the current values of the Federal Ministry (2,557 PJ). The result shows a good agreement and a successful application of ACoolHeaD considering all necessary assumptions. Based on the maximum and average heating demand, the entire building stock is clustered by k-medoids clustering to five buildings, which can be used for further representative investigations considering Germany. As a next step, we recommend investigating the influence of occupancy, the selected weather data sets, and analyzing cooling for future scenarios to increase the detail level and thus improve the expressiveness of ACoolHeaD results.
Buildings are responsible for almost one third of global energy consumption. The building and construction sector could thus make a significant contribution to the communal effort needed to meet the ...Paris Agreement that would substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate change. Given the importance of decarbonizing buildings and making them energy efficient in order to meet the Paris Agreement, and bearing in mind the promising role of biomimetic solutions in achieving this goal, this book reports on some recent research in the field related to bio-inspired approaches for reducing building energy use. This book includes a review of the use of biomimicry in modern building design; how both the Saharan ant and the zebra have inspired strategies for reducing energy use in Panama City; how the study of biomimetics can contribute to city regeneration; the description of a method to connect the thermal physiology of plants and animals to thermal challenges in buildings; how biomimicry could contribute to creating a circular economy in the construction sector; and how advances in electricity storage could benefit from a biomimetic approach. This book thus covers a combination of research and review articles to offer a glimpse into current biomimetic design strategies together with new directions for future research.
Given the prediction of global warming, there is a growing concern about overheating in the severe cold and cold regions of China. In the past decades, indoor thermal comfort has been neglected in ...building practice, while efficiency-oriented improvements have been developed, such as increased insulation of building envelope. An extensive literature review shows contradictory conclusions about whether increased insulation can alleviate overheating. The aim of this research is to conduct simulations based on measured data to reveal the influence of insulation on overheating in dwellings in these regions of China. An unoccupied residential flat was monitored to determine the extent of overheating while eliminating the effects of other contributors, such as natural ventilation. Validated building performance simulations were carried out with altered insulation layer thickness in Integrated Environmental Solutions-Virtual Environment IESVE software to examine its influence on overheating during summertime in five representative cities. The results showed clear evidence of summer overheating in these regions. In Yichun, Harbin, Shenyang, Dalian and Beijing, walls with increased insulation were found to exacerbate overheating in the bedrooms without natural ventilation by 22.5%, 16.6%, 20.3%, 11.8% and 6.9%, respectively, compared to the uninsulated walls. This study provides useful information for building regulations on energy efficiency and thermal comfort.
This paper explores feasibility of achieving net-zero energy goals in retrofitting commercial buildings. An existing commercial building in Holyoke, Massachusetts was chosen as the research target to ...study how to integrate passive design strategies and energy-efficient building systems to improve the building performance and reduce energy consumption. Also, the objective was to investigate how to maximize energy savings and reach net zero energy goals by utilizing renewable energy sources for building's energy needs. Based on extensive energy modeling and simulations, multiple design considerations were investigated, such as material selection, improvements to building envelope, retrofitting of HVAC and lighting systems, occupancy loads, as well as application of renewable energy sources. The comparative analysis of simulation results was used to determine how specific techniques lead to energy saving and cost reductions. The research results show that this commercial building is able to meet net-zero energy use after appropriate design manipulations and use of renewable energy sources. The strategies and methodologies can be applied to other adaptive reuse and retrofit projects, and improve energy performance of existing buildings.
Resource scarcity and anthropogenic climate change require the reduction of performance gaps in existing buildings. In addition to unexpected user behavior, performance gaps are primarily caused by ...the technical gap due to operational errors in building technology. The main objective of this paper is to quantify model input uncertainty incorporating uncertain boundary conditions in terms of operational errors using thermo-dynamic building performance simulations and to identify the most relevant input parameters for the performance gaps in air conditioning systems by means of sensitivity analyses. Model input uncertainty is stochastically determined using Monte-Carlo Simulations to calculate the target values “primary energy demand” as well as “over- and under-temperature degree hours” for an office building. Selected parameters are simulated in a specific uncertainty and sensitivity analyses using the Sobol’ and Jansen estimators, which distinguish between a direct influence on the target variables and interactions between the parameters. The methodology requires a selection process, which is carried out as part of relative uncertainty and relative sensitivity analyses. Furthermore, the operational errors are compared with construction factors as well as building physics inputs and design parameters for building technology systems to show their reciprocal effects as part of a comprehensive investigation. The main findings of this paper are that operational errors in air conditioning systems play an essential role in decreasing energy efficiency and thermal comfort, but do not warrant the significance of certain construction factors as well as setpoints in building technology. Moreover, the impact of operational errors on thermal overheating of the building investigated is minor compared to other targets that cause greater model input uncertainty.
Urban growth has increased the risk of over-heating both in the microclimate and inside buildings, affecting thermal comfort and energy efficiency. That is why this research aims to evaluate the ...energy performance of buildings in terms of thermal comfort (operative temperature (OP) levels, satisfied hours of natural ventilation SHNV, thermal lag), and energy efficiency (roof heat gains and surface temperatures) in an urban area in Panama City, using superficial-heat-dissipation biomimetic strategies. Two case studies, a base case and a proposed case, were evaluated using the Designbuilder software through dynamic simulation. The proposed case is based on a combined biomimetic strategy; the reflective characteristics of the Saharan ant applied as a coating on the roofs through a segmented pattern such as the Zebra's stripes (one section with coating, and another without). Results showed that the OP decreased from 8 to 10 °C for the entire urban zone throughout the year. A reduction of 3.13% corresponding to 8790 kWh per year was achieved for cooling energy consumption. A difference of 5 °C in external surface temperature was obtained, having a lower temperature in which the biomimetic strategy was applied. Besides, it was evidenced that a contrasted-reflectivity-stripes pitched roof performed better than a fully reflective roof. Thus, the functionality of Zebra stripes, together with the reflective characteristics of the Saharan ant, provide better performance for buildings' thermal regulation and energy needs for cooling.
The refurbishment of the existing housing stock has a twofold aim: to decrease consumption of fossil fuels and to reduce the CO2 emissions. The main focus of the presented paper is the evaluation of ...the integrated design approach applied in scenarios for refurbishment of the prefabricated residential multi-apartment building. The criteria used in searching for the best approach to the renewable energy sources-integrated refurbishment were minimized energy loads, minimized CO2 emissions and improved indoor environment quality, health and comfort. After in-depth environmental analysis, a series of energy efficiency improvement measures were implemented, as a comprehensive optimization of the building’s envelope structure, natural and mixed ventilation and source energy delivery. The building’s dynamic behaviour and energy efficiency have been analysed and optimized by the building performance simulation and PV panels’ integration for the typical meteorological year of Belgrade, Serbia. Energy refurbishment should be approached in an organized, pragmatic and interdisciplinary way. Hence, the focus should be not only on the latest leading-edge technology, but on the synergy of different practices and principles in order to ensure the path to sustainable development and achieving desired objectives.
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