Holistic Building Research Articles

Performance of a sequential versus holistic building design approach using multi-objective optimization

Integrated design processes are currently pushed forward in order to achieve net-zero energy building designs at affordable cost. Through a case study of a residential building, this paper compares a sequential versus a holistic design approach based on multi-objective optimization. In the holistic approach, 39 design variables related to the architecture and HVAC systems are simultaneously optimized. In the sequential approach, the architecture variables are first optimized; several optimal solutions are then selected for the second phase optimization of the heating system parameters. Carbon footprint, life cycle cost and thermal comfort are optimized by the algorithm NSGA-II. With only 100 computational hours, the holistic approach found 59% of the optimal solutions, whereas it took 765 h to find 41% of the optimal solutions with the sequential approach. This comparison shows the negative effects of making irreversible variable selections in the early phase of a design process, as it reduces the ability to find optimal solutions in the end.

Get the picture? Lessons learned from a smartphone-based post-occupancy evaluation

In the past several decades, it has been widely recognized that psychological aspects, including perceived control over one’s indoor environment, are important to holistic building occupant comfort and satisfaction evaluations. However, current post-occupancy evaluations tend to focus on collecting quantitative data, despite overwhelming evidence that subtle qualitative factors can profoundly impact the quality of occupants’ adaptive opportunities and comfort. This paper presents the development and demonstration of a novel smartphone-based survey that is used to concurrently collect: 1) office occupants’ subjective evaluation of usability and comfort of spaces, 2) participant-sourced photographs of electrical and mechanical systems for improving occupant comfort, and 3) open-ended questions about the uploaded photos. This paper is primarily focused on methodological aspects of the photograph-based smartphone post-occupancy evaluation, while providing select results of a pilot study involving 41 participants in Canada. The photographs yield significant explanatory power and contextual insights for quantitative results, though with significant post-processing effort and a reduced sample size.

Integrated Design and a Holistic Building Energy Performance Simulation Method for Staged Practices

Building simulation activities in different design stages are reviewed and discussed. This paper categorized the major purposes of building energy simulation with various modeling purposes for informed decisions at different design stages. Limitations and challenges in building performance simulation are analysed. From the practitioner point view for building designers and consultants, this paper proposed a holistic design and simulation strategy aiming for improvement or solutions in building simulation consulting, to better refine the design and consulting within the integrated design practice process for improving building energy performance in design, operation and management as the ultimate goal.

Performance-based engineering and multi-criteria decision analysis for sustainable and resilient building design

In this paper, an integrated approach for a holistic (involving notions of resiliency and sustainability) building design is presented to select the optimal design alternative based on multiple conflicting criteria using the multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT). A probabilistic formulation of MAUT is proposed, where the distributions of the uncertain parameters are determined by a performance-based engineering (PBE) approach. Here PBE is used to evaluate the building energy efficiency and sustainability in addition to structural safety. In the proposed framework, different design alternatives of a building are ranked based on the generalized expected utility, which is able to include the most adopted probabilistic decision models, like the expected utility and the cumulative prospect theory. The distributions of the utilities are obtained from the first-order reliability method to provide (i) good tradeoff between accuracy and efficiency, and (ii) rational decision making by evaluating the most critical realizations of the consequences of each alternative through the design point. The application of the proposed approach to a building shows that design for resilience may imply design for sustainability and that green buildings (alone) may be not resilient in the face of extreme events.

Usability evaluation of a web-based tool for supporting holistic building energy management

This paper presents the evaluation of the level of usability of an intelligent monitoring and control interface for energy efficient management of public buildings, called BuildVis, which forms part of a Building Energy Management System (BEMS.) The BEMS ‘intelligence’ is derived from an intelligent algorithm component which brings together ANN-GA rule generation, a fuzzy rule selection engine, and a semantic knowledge base. The knowledge base makes use of linked data and an integrated ontology to uplift heterogeneous data sources relevant to building energy consumption. The developed ontology is based upon the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), which is a Building Information Modelling (BIM) standard and consists of two different types of rule model to control and manage the buildings adaptively. The populated rules are a mix of an intelligent rule generation approach using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Genetic Algorithms (GA), and also data mining rules using Decision Tree techniques on historical data. The resulting rules are triggered by the intelligent controller, which processes available sensor measurements in the building. This generates ‘suggestions’ which are presented to the Facility Manager (FM) on the BuildVis web-based interface. BuildVis uses HTML5 innovations to visualise a 3D interactive model of the building that is accessible over a wide range of desktop and mobile platforms. The suggestions are presented on a zone by zone basis, alerting them to potential energy saving actions. As the usability of the system is seen as a key determinate to success, the paper evaluates the level of usability for both a set of technical users and also the FMs for five European buildings, providing analysis and lessons learned from the approach taken.

Refurbishment in Educational Buildings – Methodological Approach for High Performance Integrated School Refurbishment Actions

Every year governments of the European Member States invest several billion Euros in maintenance and upkeep of their schools. With 17% of non-residential buildings in the European Union being educational buildings, there is a substantial opportunity for setting examples of integrated refurbishment actions, which address functional and energy-related aspects in a joint view.Currently these potentials are not fully exploited. The reasons for the few numbers of truly holistic school refurbishment projects can be found in the limited budgets, the political and institutional framework conditions as well as the lack of innovative and holistic building refurbishment concepts. The assumption for research was that refurbishment in educational buildings focuses mostly on single measures in respect of maintenance and adaptation of the building structure. Energy efficiency measures are only selectively considered and functional changes are rarely implemented in existing buildings.This paper summarizes the results of the research project SchulRen+ [5] that analyzed school buildings in an integrated approach: Considering structural, functional and energy-related aspects in a joint view – the project reveals high performance refurbishment actions that have the potential for the development of ‘Nearly Zero Energy’ or ‘Plus Energy’ buildings.Based on the example of the school building stock of the city of Vienna, a nationally funded project analyzed these constraints with the goal of providing workable solutions for integrated school refurbishments. In an interdisciplinary approach, stakeholders from the city municipality, schools as well as building professionals provided input for the development of a methodology for replicable energy- and functionally optimized school refurbishment concepts. Structural, functional and energy relevant framework conditions were summarized and synergetic potentials of comprehensive school refurbishments were highlighted. Following the requirements of the stakeholders, different scenarios (light, intermediate, advanced) were subsequently tested in terms of functionality, energy efficiency and life cycle costs. For one case study a typical end of 19th century building was selected - similar building types can be found across central Europe. It demonstrated the required changes in prospective school refurbishment projects. The emphasis was on the energetic optimization in synergy with the optimization of the functional room concepts in order to give justice to the changed requirements in new teaching types and methods.The case study resulted in concrete recommendations for decision support and showed how portfolio management and a holistic refurbishment approach could be undertaken for larger educational building stocks.

Evaluation criteria for construction waste management tools: towards a holistic BIM framework

AbstractThis study identifies evaluation criteria with the goal of appraising the performance of existing construction waste management tools and employing the results in the development of a holistic building information modelling (BIM) framework for construction waste management. Based on the literature, this paper identifies 32 construction waste management tools in five categories: (a) waste management plan templates and guides, (b) waste data collection and audit tools (c) waste quantification models, (d) waste prediction tools, and (e) geographic information system (GIS)-enabled waste tools. After reviewing these tools and conducting four focus-group interviews (FGIs), the findings revealed six categories of evaluation criteria (a) waste prediction; (b) waste data; (c) commercial and procurement; (d) BIM; (e) design; and (f) technological. The performance of the tools is assessed using the evaluation criteria and the result reveals that the existing tools are not robust enough to tackle construction...

The Implementation of Geotechnical Data into the BIM Process

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is a relatively new concept to the UK construction industry. With its inception in recent years, the industry is still coming to grips with its utilisation, with around 54% of projects utilising BIM as of 2014. Due to this, BIM has become an extremely relevant topic within the UK infrastructure and the government has instilled an initiative for all centrally-funded projects to utilise BIM as a design tool. However, an optimal BIM strategy has not yet been developed or utilised for transport infrastructure projects which was the primary rationale for this research project. This paper reviews the current BIM process and the limitations it has and how they can be mitigated and, in turn, the process ameliorated in terms of project cost and time. Geotechnical data integration has the potential to improve the BIM process since most projects do not take below-ground data into account. As a result the primary purpose of this study is specifically concerned with investigating how the integration of geotechnical data into the BIM strategy will be possible and how it can influence the process in a cost- and time-saving manner. A number of methods of integrating geotechnical data into the BIM process were considered and critically reviewed, and the potential application of an optimal method focusing on transportation geotechnics was carried out. The research was carried out using a mixed-method approach utilising both positivist and interpretivist strategies. Specifically, a quantitative analysis of a questionnaire survey on qualified UK engineers with industrial experience was analysed together with an analysis of a geotechnical design and construction case study. The results showed that the geotechnical engineers fully support the integration of geotechnical data into the BIM process, while the majority of them consider that this would provide significant cost and time savings in major infrastructure projects as demonstrated in the case study of design and construction of landslip prevention measures for a failed trunk road embankment in Scotland. Utilisation of current data formats through integration with the above-ground data is recommended for a holistic building information model.

A new systemic approach to improve the sustainability performance of office buildings in the early design stage

Different users and investors’ project preferences, often lead to trade-offs during the early design phase of a project. Currently, decisions of design options and their technical measures are mainly reduced to an instantaneously assessed criterion (i.e. energy efficiency) within the sustainability assessment of buildings. Due to criteria interdependency, the current linear applied approach used in building certification neglects criteria trade-offs and is therefore only partly suitable for holistic building improvement processes. In order to fulfil stakeholder interests on the one hand and a high sustainability performance on the other, it is crucial to identify appropriate design measures. Based on the Austrian building certification system ÖGNI/DGNB, we applied a systemic approach for building sustainability-improvement, using a case study of a public office building in Graz, Austria. The main part of the study describes the important steps required for the systemic optimization of building sustainability. The method applied in this study allows the quantification of the relative influence and the identification of the individual optimization potential of design options on each single assessment criterion. The proposed systemic approach clearly demonstrated the improvement potential of the currently most developed building certification system considering the interdependency between the individual criteria.

Building energy optimization in the early design stages: A simplified method

This paper presents the application of multi-objective genetic algorithms for holistic building design that considers multiple criteria; building energy use, capital cost, daylight distribution and thermal indoor environment. The optimization focus is related to building envelope parameters. To obtain relevant feedback from multi-objective optimizations in early design stages, evaluation speed is a key concern. The paper presents a fast evaluation method fit for the early design stages. It uses a combination of two different quasi-steady-state methods for energy and indoor environment evaluations, a Radiance implementation for daylight simulations and a scripted algorithm for capital cost evaluations. The application of the method is developed around an integrated dynamic model which allows visual design feedback from all evaluations to be an integrated part of the design tool experience. It is concluded, that quasi-steady-state methods implemented as part of integrated dynamic models are fast and flexible enough to support building energy-, indoor environment- and cost-optimization the early design stages.

Thermal Comfort in a Refurbished Low-Energy House: The OEKOHAUS Case Study

This contribution presents the results of a long-term thermal comfort monitoring effort in the so-called OEKOHAUS building in Petronell, Lower Austria. This building mainly acts as an educational facility for the Museum of Natural History of Vienna and includes also office and short-term occupancy spaces. It was established in an existing building, adapted and refurbished in 1996. At the time of refurbishment, it clearly exceeded the applicable standard thermal requirements for building elements. Given the building's unique mixed use, it displays a highly fluctuating occupancy pattern. Subsequent to the recent installment of energy and indoor climate monitoring system, multiple streams of data are being collected. Specifically, indoor environmental variables relevant to thermal comfort in a number of zones in the building have been monitored and evaluated. Collected data include indoor temperature and relative humidity, which were represented and analyzed for different zones of the building in terms of psychrometric charts (for a monitoring period in Winter 2012/13). Moreover, indoor CO2 concentration was monitored to address indoor air quality conditions. The paper presents the monitoring results and their meaning within the larger context of a monitoring-based holistic building performance assessment strategy.

Improved Fast Calculating Climate Surface Calculation Method Combined with Multi-parameter Building Optimization for Early Design Stages

This study presents a fast-calculating building optimization method for the early design stages in building renovation. It is used in combination of Climate Surface calculation method for predicting heating and cooling energy demand. The advantage of the presented calculation method is its short calculation time. The use of the Climate Surface method enables the application of holistic building optimization methods in the early design stages, where optimization methods based on dynamic simulation tools are too time consuming. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the advantages of the Climate Surface method in applications where many building predictions are needed as in holistic optimizations and in statistical evaluations like Monte Carlo simulations. In this study, an improvement of the Climate Surface is demonstrated and the accuracy and calculation time of the Climate Surface method is compared to the dynamic simulation software EnergyPlus. Statistical error indicator methods are used to verify the accuracy of the Climate Surface Method. The Equi-Marginal building optimization method is applied in combination with the Climate Surface to illustrate its reliable and fast calculation results. Evaluation criterion for the optimization process is the Life Cycle Cost. The results show that the presented optimization achieves reliable calculation results in a reasonable time period for early design stages.

Deterioration Identification of Structural Concrete Ground on Residual Bearing Capacities

Found on data of accelerated life test, the relationship between outward disease of structural concrete and holistic deterioration of building was analysed. The results indicated that: outward diseases of structural concrete, such as abrasion, scour erosion, and peeling, carbonization etc, are not hypostatic breakage for holistic building, so could not be regarded as the key points of deterioration identification at building. Deterioration appraisement should be focused on detections of engineering indices relating to structural inbeing quality and analyses of multifarious remainder relating to bearing capacity. Only in this way, deterioration degree of structural concrete and efficacious repair indices could be factually incarnated. Ground on testing multifarious bearing capacities, deterioration identification of concrete buildings was founded, and remedy principles corresponding to inbeing deterioration indices were put forward.

A Framework for Risk-Informed Performance-Based Fire Protection Design for the Built Environment

Performance-based fire protection design (PBFPD) approaches have now been in use for more than 20 years. One might be tempted to conclude that the current 'state of the art' is working well. However, application of PBFPD remains limited, several shortcomings exist, and an increasing number of countries are moving toward 'prescribed performance' to address the gaps. There are many factors contributing to these problems with PBFPD. Research has been carried out in two principal problem areas: the relationship between occupants and fire safety measures in the context of holistic building performance expectations during everyday use of the building, and also the lack of specifics within current PBFPD approaches. To address these concerns, a new framework for risk-informed PBFPD has been developed, centered on the study of systems formed by specific building types and their associated occupants. This framework replaces generic guidance with a more in-depth and targeted "building-occupant" system approach. This article focuses on how a successful implementation of the new risk-informed PBFPD approach will require acceptance of the need for a paradigm shift from one in which fire is the center of the problem to one in which building performance metrics are evaluated in case of fire events. This article also details the different steps of the new PBFPD process and how this process differs from the current ones, notably in separating technical steps from political steps related to decision making and policy. Finally, this article presents how the new approach is practically applied to a project, focusing on a proof of concept of the new PBFPD process. Language: en

Conceptual Model Development for Holistic Building Fire Safety Performance Analysis

The evaluation of building performance during fires is a critical step in designing appropriate strategies. Inappropriate or incomplete performance evaluations can mislead fire safety design solutions, which may in turn result in unacceptable loss of life or building damage from fire. While various building fire safety performance evaluation models have been developed, they focus primarily on ‘hard’ characteristics, such as building construction type and fire protection measures. However, ‘soft’ characteristics, such as building design (architectural) features and occupant characteristics, which also significantly influence building fire safety performance, have not been comprehensively taken into account. In the current study, two conceptual performance models: a generic fire response model and an integrated characteristic interaction model, have been developed to represent the holistic building fire safety performance considering the effects of both hard and soft characteristics. In these models, various cause-effect relationships among building, people, and fire characteristics are identified at the different levels of detail. Based on the conceptual models, a quantitative model utilizing the parameter ranking method and weighted sum method, which are commonly used in analytical hierarchy process, is proposed as a tool to help evaluate building fire safety performance and to assist decision making process of developing fire safety design solutions.

Intelligent Services for Building Information Modeling - Assessing Variable Input Weather Data for Building Simulations

Building Information Modeling (BIM) for optimizing the total lifecycle cost of buildings is a challenge even today. Inadequate software interoperability, high costs as a result of the fragmented nature of the building industry, lack of standardization, inconsistent technology adoption among stakeholders are just some of the obstacles that architects and engineers face. However, optimization requires a structured procedure that enables continuous changes in design variables and assessment on energy consumption. A holistic building design and construction are already introduced in Europe through the energy performance of buildings directive (EPBD). The requirements have been strengthened by the EPBD recast for achieving cost optimal building designs for the life cycle of the building, moving towards nearly zero energy buildings by the end of the decade. BIM and intelligent services could play a crucial role in these efforts with improved visualization and productivity due to easy retrieval of information, increased coordination of data and exchange of information, all leading to a reduced cost for the design of energy efficient buildings. An ongoing European research project aims to contribute to these needs by developing a Virtual Energy Laboratory that will support building energy performance simulations taking into account the stochastic nature of input parameters and processes. This will be supported by information communication technology features utilizing the necessary computational power through cloud computing. This paper presents an overview of the ongoing efforts and focuses on results for assessing the impact of different input weather and climate data that are pertinent in building load and energy performance calculations.

Optimizing Design Study on the K Value of Holistic Teaching Building Group in University

The K value is an important economic and technical indicator of architecture design. For the K value of the holistic teaching building group is too low, so it is needed to be optimized. By analyzing the factors which influences the K value, the paper sets up theory models, and study the K value under different corridor size of the four unit modes, then puts up with optimizing design strategy and the proper range of K value of different mode of holistic teaching building group.

Aiding State Building and Sacrificing Peace Building? The Rwanda–UK relationship 1994–2011

This article explores the relationship between the UK and Rwanda, using the lens of the UK Department for International Development's integrated approach to state building and peace building in fragile and conflict-affected states. It identifies a number of priorities for UK aid under such a framework, but shows that in the case of Rwanda these have not been foregrounded in the bilateral aid relationship. The article suggests a number of reasons for this, arguing that, by refusing to acknowledge or address Rwanda's deviations from what was considered a positive development trajectory, the UK is becoming internationally isolated in its support for the rpf regime. It concludes that, while this bilateral relationship may support achievement of stability and relative security in Rwanda, promoting such a narrow form of state building is detrimental to more holistic peace building, both nationally and regionally.

Tall building design and sustainable urbanism: London as a crucible

Tall buildings offer important scope for sustainable urbanization through their architectural and urban design potential, but they are also resource intensive and inclined to negative impacts. Recognizing these helps to inform and promote sustainable urban development. The prospect is promising. Significant advances in energy-saving and modelling technologies can shift tall buildings towards more sustainable design, operation and social impact. The scope is signified by new designs for London, where the combination of heritage controls, sustainability focus, high land values and appetite to build tall has created a de facto ‘design laboratory’. London's conditions have galvanized design strategies that target a wide range of sustainability credentials, encompassing: energy consumption, use of renewables and embodied energy; occupier benefits – including environmental comfort, spatial quality and flexible internal planning; and positive urban conditions in terms of accessibility, microclimate, visual permeability and public realm. In combination, these establish a wider range of success factors than energy efficiency alone, supplementing the widespread global foci on height metrics and commercial viability with a more holistic tall building design agenda. Despite relatively modest heights in international terms, London's new exemplars offer strategies to inform more sustainable design, wherever tall buildings are developed.

Designing energy efficient commercial buildings—A systems framework

This paper provides a means for improving the effectiveness of energy related decision-making during the design phase of a building. A review of the literature and discussions with experts revealed that several approaches for an Integrated Design Process for energy efficient buildings exist. However, most of these approaches are relatively abstract and philosophical in nature, and do not prescribe procedures that enable energy efficient design. This paper attempts to address this gap by proposing a comprehensive design process titled the ‘Integrated Energy-Efficient Building Design Process’ (IEBDP). This process provides a framework based on systems theory that facilitates the integration of various facets of the energy-efficient alternatives selection process. In addition, the proposed framework seeks to integrate state-of-the-art analysis tools and methods, to aid designers in performing holistic building design. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), a multi-attribute decision-making technique is used to resolve conflicts amongst diverging design goals. The proposed IEBDP framework was then used to design an office building, taken as a case study, in the composite climate of New Delhi, India. It was found that considerable energy savings could be achieved by following the IEBDP process. The benefits of this framework vis-a-vis traditional energy efficient design approaches were evaluated by comparing the design done through the IEBDP process with designs submitted by a group of practicing architects. The various designs were evaluated in terms of strategies adopted, the level of exploration as well as design integration, in order to validate the applicability and use of the IEBDP framework.