Buildings In Urban Context Research Articles

Experts versus the Public: Perceptions of Siting Wind Turbines and Performance Concerns

Experiences of wind turbines (WT) shape public perception and acceptance of the technology, influencing government policy, deployment, and land-use policies of wind turbines. This paper attempts to find changes in public perceptions over the last three decades and differences between experts and the public over different land-use options. A semi-structured questionnaire that integrates a visual survey of 10 images of WT technology in different urban, landscape and seascape settings was presented to both groups. The perceptions of siting, proximity, landscape type, and maturity of urban wind turbines’ technology in renewable energy generation were contrasted. The results revealed that both the public and experts alike significantly preferred images of WT inclusion in seascape and landscape settings and responded negatively to images of WT as an addition to buildings in urban contexts. Images of wind turbines around transport settings were ranked in the second set of acceptances, after landscape settings, indicating that closer proximity to WT is acceptable, but for a short duration. The analysis also highlighted a preference by the public for aesthetically engaging WT, even if they resulted in lower energy yields, but were less accepted by the experts who based their judgment on technical performance.

Impact of urban heat island on energy demand in buildings: Local climate zones in Nanjing

This study aims to assess the impact of neighborhood-scale urban heat island (UHI) on the energy performance of buildings. Hourly air temperature and relative humidity were continuously measured for three years in 10 neighborhoods of Nanjing, China, which were selected based on the Local Climate Zone (LCZ) scheme. Data collected from the LCZ sites and suburban meteorological stations were analyzed and used as inputs for building energy simulations. Two types of building use (residential and office) were investigated. For the 10 LCZ sites, the annual mean UHI intensity ranged from 0.4 °C to 2.2 °C in the nighttime (19:00–06:00), and from 0.3 °C to 0.9 °C in the daytime (07:00–18:00). The heat islands presented in the LCZ sites could increase the cooling demand of residential (office) buildings by 12−24% (9−14%) and reduce heating demand by 3−20% (5−20%), leading to an increase of 2−5% (2−6%) in annual total demand. Compared with residential buildings, office buildings were less sensitive to UHI with respect to cooling and heating demand. Analysis of the hottest and coldest days shows that the average daily peak cooling load of residential (office) buildings was increased by 6−14% (5−9%), and the average daily peak heating load was decreased by 4−15% (3−14%). The study indicates that the spatiotemporal variability of UHI at the local scale can exert different effects on the energy performance of buildings. In addition, this study emphasizes the importance of developing site-specific climatic data to reliably assess the energy performance of buildings in urban contexts.

TEASER: an open tool for urban energy modelling of building stocks

The energy supply of buildings in urban contexts is undergoing significant changes. The increase of renewable sources for electrical and thermal energy generation will require flexible and secure supply systems. To reflect and consider these changes in energy systems and buildings, dynamic simulation is one key element. Sparse and limited access to detailed building information as well as computing time are challenges for building simulation on urban-scale. In addition, data acquisition and modelling for building performance simulation (BPS) are time-consuming and error-prone. To enable the use of BPS on urban-scale, this paper presents TEASER, an open framework for urban energy modelling of building stocks (open-source at https://github.com/RWTH-EBC/TEASER). TEASER provides an interface for multiple data sources, data enrichment and export of ready-to-run Modelica simulation models. The paper presents TEASER's methodology and package structure. Three use cases show TEASER's capabilities on the building, neighbourhood and urban scales.

Parametric energy simulation in early design: High-rise residential buildings in urban contexts

This paper presents a framework for the development of early-design guidance to inform architects and policy-makers using parametric whole-building energy simulation. It includes a case study of a prototype multifamily residential building, using an exhaustive search method and a total of 90,000+ simulations. The authors performed a simple sensitivity analysis to identify the most influential of the tested design parameters on energy use intensity, which included WWR, Glass Type, Building Rotation, Building Shape, and Wall Insulation, in that order. They identified synergies and trade-offs when designing for different energy objectives, including (a) decreasing Energy Use Intensity, (b) reducing peak-loads, and (c) increasing passive survivability – i.e., maintaining the safest interior temperatures in an extended power outage.This paper also investigated the effect of urban context as a source of sun shading and found it to have a substantial impact on the design optimization. Ignoring urban context in energy simulation, a common practice, would mislead designers in some cases and result in sub-optimal design decisions. Since in generalized guidelines the future building site is unknown, the authors tested a method for generating urban contexts based on the floor area ratio and maximum building heights of an urban district.

Expanding Inter-Building Effect modeling to examine primary energy for lighting

Abstract Building modeling and energy performance assessment models have become fundamental tools for both designers and researchers. Spanning the boundary of single building analysis, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how buildings energy performance is influenced by Inter-Building Effects (IBE). Previous research has examined IBE impact on cooling and heating energy performance predictions across buildings, however, the impact of IBE on lighting, which may be substantial, has not been examined. We investigated this impact through coupled numerical and experimental analysis. We built upon and further validated the Inter-Building Effect approach through modeling the contribution of lighting energy use on IBE and through the use of empirical data for model calibration. We demonstrated that the energy use performance prediction deviations resulting from lighting IBE are greater than those from heating or cooling in a case study building and we described this expanded IBE calculation and assessment as IBE II . To further confirm the reliability of the findings, we replicated the analysis for four different building orientations and observed non-negligible primary energy requirement modeling errors irrespective of orientation. This demonstrates the critical need to include lighting in IBE calculations to more accurately model primary energy requirement for buildings in urban contexts.

Cultural Heritage in Times of Crisis:

Cultural Heritage in Times of Crisis:

Impact of Urban Spaces and Building Height on Airflow Distribution: Wind Tunnel Testing of an Urban Setting Prototype in Abu-Dhabi City

This paper investigates the effect of changing design parameters such as building height, urban space width, and building cluster arrangement on airflow in typical urban settings in Abu-Dhabi. It focuses on the impact of these parameters on airflow pathlines and velocity and analyzes the results with regard to thermal comfort in outdoor urban spaces. The study concludes with some design guideline and recommendations such as the following: low-rise buildings in the urban context should face the windward direction to reduce wind shadow effect; staggered arrangements of buildings in urban context provide more effective passive cooling design than parallel arrangement because of its potential to cool building structures at night by natural convection and to reduce high levels of humidity.