Retail Buildings Research Articles

Poorer Regions Consume More Undeveloped but Less High-Quality Land Than Wealthier Regions—A Case Study

Despite the efforts of developed countries to protect undeveloped land, development continues to expand beyond urban boundaries. High-quality land needed for food production is often consumed. This study aims to verify possible causes of undeveloped land and high-quality land consumption within regions (NUTS3) using a new approach to building growth monitoring. It investigates residential (RBs) and commercial buildings (retail and industrial buildings, RIBs). The development between 2006 and 2016 in the Czech Republic, a country in Central Europe, is used as a case study. Population growth and gross domestic product per capita (GDP) within regions are considered two potential causes of land consumption; this hypothesis is verified using a linear regression model. Only GDP showed statistically significant results. It correlated negatively with RBs and RBs + RIBs built on undeveloped land and positively with RBs + RIBs and either RBs or RIBs built on high-quality land. Based on the results, we recommend that land protection policies be differentiated according to regional specifics to be more effective. Regions with lower GDPs should obtain more support in protecting undeveloped land against residential development. The protection of high-quality land should be emphasized by supporting residential and commercial development on brownfield sites in regions with higher GDPs.

Planning Strategy for Urban Building Energy Conservation Supported by Agent-Based Modeling

As a systematic, preventive, and structural adjustment method of improving building energy conservation and carbon emission reduction, urban planning has received extensive attention. However, due to the insufficient interface between energy-saving technology and urban planning systems, urban planning has not properly played a role in building energy conservation. Scientific and innovative technical methods are urgently needed to explore the role of coordinating multiple effective planning elements in overall building energy conservation through urban planning means. Due to climate conditions, there is high demand for conserving building energy in severe cold regions, but research into this has not been thoroughly carried out. Harbin, located in the northeast of China, belongs to the Dwa zone of the Köppen–Geiger Climate Classification, and is also a typical city of severe cold regions where the daily average temperature is lower than 5 °C for more than 145 days in a year. This study takes Harbin as an example and uses agent-based modeling to establish an urban-scale building energy consumption simulation model. The model contains four types of agents (a global agent, building agent, residential agent, and household equipment agent) and two types of influence factor modules (an urban form module and a climate module). Three simulation scenarios were designed, including a baseline scenario, an urban form scenario, and a climate scenario. The baseline scenario provided an overview of the urban-scale building energy consumption distribution characteristics of Harbin and served as a reference group for the simulation results of other scenarios. The urban form scenario results show that when the elements with a highly significant impact change by 1 unit, the retail building block has the most obvious change in energy consumption, up to 44.7 × 106 kWh/105 m2/year, while the office building block has the lowest change, with 34.5 × 103 kWh/105 m2/year. The fluctuation of electricity is the most obvious, but the total change is lower than the heating energy consumption. The climate scenario shows that the energy consumption of residential land in urban centers will consistently rise in the next 50 years, up to 5.3 × 105 kWh/105 m2/year. Based on these results, this study puts forward future building energy conservation planning strategies for Harbin, focusing on three aspects: the planning and control of urban form, the optimization and adjustment of the climate, and the building energy conservation planning system. These research results are expected to provide scientific support for transforming Harbin into a low-carbon city.

Defining and applying an electricity demand flexibility benchmarking metrics framework for grid-interactive efficient commercial buildings

• Introduces a novel demand flexibility (DF) benchmarking metrics framework • Allows benchmarking across geographic areas with different climates and grid needs • Enables empirical approaches to achieve understanding of key influential factors of DF • Framework tested with two benchmarking case studies of 132 office and retail buildings • Identified load shed intensity range and variability; influence of event duration and timing Building demand flexibility (DF) research has recently gained attention. To unlock building DF as a predictable grid resource, we must establish a quantitative understanding of the resource size, performance variability, and predictability based on large empirical datasets. Researchers have proposed various sets of theoretical metrics to measure this performance. Some metrics have been applied to simulation results, but most fall short of exploring the complexities in real building applications. There are practical metrics used in individual demand response field studies but they alone cannot fulfill the job of DF benchmarking across a diverse group of buildings. The electrical grid's geographically diverse and changing nature presents challenges to comparing building DF performance measured under different conditions (i.e., benchmarking DF ). To address this challenge, a novel DF benchmarking framework focused on load shedding and shifting is presented; the foundation is a set of simple, proven single-event metrics with attributes describing event conditions. These enable benchmarking and visualization in different dimensions for identifying trends that represent how these attributes influence DF. To test its feasibility and scalability, the DF framework was applied to two case studies of 11 office buildings and 121 big-box retail buildings with demand response participation data. These examples provided a pathway for using both building level benchmarking and aggregation to extract insights into building DF about magnitude, consistency, and influential factors. Potential applications of the framework and real-world values have been identified for grid and building stakeholders.

The resiliency of photovoltaic applied fuelling station in Malaysia: A dynamic urban emission displacement assessment

The number of fuelling stations continue to increase with the growing population and demand. Low carbon building for the cities and communities concept has led to a reassessment of service provision and fuel station urbanisation using a safe and matured renewable system; solar photovoltaics. This study uses a dynamic urban emission displacement assessment considering spatial and temporal variables of a fuel retail building in Malaysia. The result shows that the carbon emission potency is not concentrated within the fuelling area; instead, it's redirected through vehicle emission, operation and maintenance. The annual emission displaced by the installed solar photovoltaic system is about 18,022 metric tonnes of CO 2 /year. The solar-integrated building has its monthly electricity cost reduced by 20% with only 70% of its roof space usage. The life cycle cost of a 50kW photovoltaic system refurbishment translates to around RM22,000 of savings per year. However, the return on investment may take about eight years. In reality, fossil fuel divestment is impossible due to its reliability, but renewable technology can improve the built environment and air quality management in the city. • Annual vehicle fuel emission is about 18 x 10 6 metric tonnes of CO 2 per station. • Vehicle displaced urban spatial-independent dynamic CO 2 emission potency. • The integrated solar photovoltaic system improves the fuelling station BEI by 90%. • A 20% reduction of commitment cost with only 70% available space occupation. • A 50kW system installation is equal to RM22,750 of savings per year.

Wall and roof solutions for a retail building considering cost investment and life cycle approach: A case study in Portugal

This study explored which envelope solutions in retail buildings led to cost-optimal levels considering the Energy Performance of Building Directive and Portuguese regulation. For such, energy simulations were run in BIM software based on the analysis of a case study in Portugal. Typical alternative solutions were tested against the original case study, and solutions with considerably lower U-value considering the code for commercial buildings (0,7 W/m2°K for walls and 0,5 W/m2.°K for roofs). To assess the cost-effectiveness of alternative envelope solutions, the Payback Period, the Net Present Value and the Internal Rate of Return at 15 years and 50 years were assessed. Results indicate that solutions with lower U-values are related to 2–5% savings in energy consumption and can be cost-effective at 15 and 50 years, namely vacuum insulation panels of 2.5 cm and sandwich panels of 8–12 cm. This leads to the conclusion that lowering present code U-values can be cost-effective, but it will result in additional initial costs.

Assessing the Sustainability of Retail Buildings: The Portuguese Method LiderA

Retail stores are among the building typologies with the highest consumption of natural resources. However, studies regarding the development of Building Sustainability Assessment methods for retail buildings are missing, despite their environmental, economic, and social importance. This study intends to address this gap in knowledge by (i) developing the Portuguese method LiderA for retail buildings, (ii) comparing LiderA to other BSA methods, and (iii) assessing results in two case studies. The development of LiderA for retail buildings took under consideration the indicators, weights, and specific guidelines of different BSA methods for retail buildings (namely LEED, BREEAM, and DGNB) and trends in the retail sector expressed in retailers’ sustainability reports and retailers’ associations. The most innovative aspects of the development of LiderA for retail buildings include the definition of benchmarks to assess sustainability performance in terms of Energy Intensity (EI), Carbon Intensity (CI), and Water Intensity (WI). Additionally, sustainable business operation practices were introduced in selected indicators as an alternative way to foster the roots of sustainability further down into the value chain, namely regarding ethical and sustainable product purchases, the protection of human rights, a code of conduct for suppliers, fair trade, product traceability, healthy food, sustainable agriculture, and local and organic products. The LiderA method, developed for retail buildings, can support designers, managers, and users in designing and managing more sustainable stores by providing benchmarks and best-practice thresholds for EI, CI, and WI. Given that global retailers operate hundreds of stores, the results show a key potential to increase the environmental performance of retail stores, supporting decision-making towards maximum energy efficiency and carbon neutrality.

Integration Factors of Design Participants in Performance-Based Building Design of Commercial Property

Design practice has shifted towards a performance approach that is based on an awareness of sustainability goals. Achieving this goal requires the integration of all participants through communication, collaboration, and knowledge-sharing (CCKs), specifically at the design stage. The participants are from different stages of the project which are design management (DM), project management (PM), and facility/property management (FM). The current research has not been able to clearly describe the practice in achieving design performance, especially involving the main three stakeholders (DM, PM, and FM). Thus, this study aims to fill the research gap by focusing on the influence of factors CCKs on the design performance of the commercial property, especially retail property. This will form a design, construction, and operational integration model to achieve the performance of retail properties in forming an optimal space. This study uses a method of quantitative study using a questionnaire survey. It was collected from 111 practitioners of the project participants (DM, PM, FM) in retail property development in Indonesia. There are different results in the correlation that the higher the factor value, the lower the space value performance. This correlation occurs in collaboration for PM, communication for DM, and knowledge-sharing for FM. This interesting finding can be explained empirically according to the preferences of each participant. This study contributes to knowledge about the influence of CCKs, which focus on the design of performance-based retail buildings to get the highest space value.

Improved calibration of building models using approximate Bayesian calibration and neural networks

Deep energy retrofits of buildings are crucial to meeting climate targets and depend on calibrated energy models for investor confidence. Bayesian inference can improve the rigour in standard practice and improve confidence in calibrated energy models. Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) methods using neural networks present an opportunity to calibrate energy models while inherently accounting for parameter uncertainty, and face less computational burden than the current standard process for Bayesian calibration. A case study for a large, complex building is presented to demonstrate the applicability of ABC and parameter sensitivity screening is found to result in over-confidence in the resulting inference by between 14% and 85%. Finally, the presentation of posterior distributions as independent distributions may be misleading, which can misattribute the true likelihood of parameters. Highlights Implementation of an Approximate Bayesian Computation method incorporating the Sequential Monte Carlo algorithm with a neural network surrogate model. A comparison of Bayesian inference with standard practice. An investigation of sensitivity screening for parameter selection on the inference results. Application to a complex multi-zone dynamic energy model of a large retail building.

Demolish or reuse? – The balance between operational and embodied emissions in the retrofit of commercial buildings

There are two clear options for reducing the emissions of poorly-performing buildings: refurbishment of the space to a higher standard or demolition and replacement with a better performing building. Non-residential buildings are subject to the latter of these options more than dwellings due to higher rates of ownership changes. This study assesses the carbon emissions of each of the above options for a poorly-performing retail building in Sheffield, UK. The embodied carbon and operational performance of each scenario are calculated to identify the most sustainable option over a 50 year lifespan. The scenario with the lowest emissions is found to be a retrofit case study relying upon electricity as its sole fuel source. The new build scenarios emitted significantly more carbon over the building’s lifespan despite performing better operationally than the refurbishment scenario. It was also found that, due to the decarbonisation of the national grid, relying on gas boilers instead of electric fuel sources would make carbon emissions approximately 2.5x bigger in the refurbishment model, despite being legal under UK building regulations.

Assessment of Environmental Loads in the Life Cycle of a Retail and Service Building

In order to achieve the European Union’s climate and energy goals, investments are required, mainly in the areas of energy efficiency, renewable energy sources and infrastructure. Buildings are responsible for almost half of total energy consumption, and nearly 80% of them are energy and ecologically inefficient. The policy of European countries is increasingly more focused on facilities with the highest potential in the areas of energy and matter saving and the possibly circular economy. The aim of the work was to assess the environmental loads occurring in the life cycle of an existing retail and service building. The analysis was performed using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method. By using the IMPACT 2002+ model, it has become possible to assess the impact of the life cycle of the studied facility on human health, environmental quality, climate change and raw material resources. The highest level of negative consequences in the above-mentioned areas was recorded for the life cycle with the disposal in the form of landfill storage. The operational stage was the stage in the life cycle that caused the most harmful impacts on the environment. Therefore, it is necessary to optimize the ecological and energy consumption of resources, for example, by selecting the size and cubature of the facility for its function, maintaining good technical condition, introducing improvements in the usage processes or implementing solutions aimed at reducing media consumption. As a result of the conducted analyses, it can be noticed that in the future, the reduction in energy consumption in the operation of buildings will be of fundamental importance.

Exterior façade design and its impact on boosting business and attracting customers in retail sectors

In recent years, exterior façades have become one of the common architectural features in most of the retail business premises. The external façades, in this case, are considered as aesthetic instruments that add more value to the businesses through continued customer attraction. The exterior façade design should incorporate the architectural elements that are attractive for the customers to develop the willingness to get into the business premises. In the retail business buildings, there is a crucial need to have uniquely designed exterior façades that will enhance the aesthetic qualities. This research was conducted to state the façade design effect towards customer preferences in high-end retailer stores. The case study selected was the façade of Louis Vuitton store in Tokyo’s Ginza shopping district, comparing between its original and current façade designs. This research used an experimental approach by altering research variables. The altered variables were the façade design elements, whereas the influenced variables were customers’ preferences. The decidedness of sample used purposeful sampling method with a technical survey via a questionnaire. The determination of the customers’ level of attraction towards the exterior façade design of the retail building had been done after calculating and breaking down the façade elements and features. Moreover, the author offers two façade designs of the same building: the original façade design (Façade A) and the current façade design (Façade B) to get a description of customers’ preferences. By comparing both façades’ elements, the result showed that the exterior façade design had a significant effect on customer attraction and aids in enhancing the business value for retail businesses. The building that houses the Louis Vuitton store without a very distinctive external façade was upgraded and the outcomes for this study were assessed. Very limited research has been done about building façades in general. This study about façade design in particular and its influence on customer attraction, resulting in boosting a business, is unique and original in its nature.

Cooling potential of greenery systems for a stand-alone retail building under semiarid and humid subtropical climates

Recently, living walls and vegetative roofs have emerged as envelope technologies that can save energy owing to the cooling effects of the building envelope. However, simulation models are required as part of the design support tools available for sizing greenery systems according to architectural constraints and climate. In this study, a green roof heat and mass transfer (GRHMT) model was adapted to develop a novel pot-based living walls heat and mass transfer (LWHMT) model to assess the cooling potential of living walls. The LWHMT model is validated using climate data for Santiago (Chile), which demonstrated a close agreement between the experimental data and the simulated foliage and substrate temperatures and substrate volumetric water content. Along with a previously established GRHMT model, the proposed LWHMT model was coupled to EnergyPlus® through the MLE+® toolbox to simulate the heat transfer between a building and several vegetative surfaces simultaneously. Finally, a prototype retail building was simulated, using climatic conditions for Santiago, to evaluate the impact of wall and roof insulation on the performance of the greenery system, with additional simulations performed for three cities in the USA (Atlanta, GA; Tucson, AZ; Tampa, FL) using different greenery system configurations. The living walls show cooling load reductions of 19.7–24.9%, while the green roofs show much lower reductions of 9.6–15.1%. Moreover, the highest cooling load reductions were obtained by combining green roofs and living walls, achieving a maximum reduction of 36.8% compared with the base case building. In the future, the LWHMT model should be extended to continuous growing media such as pocket felts. In addition, GRHMT and LWHMT models should be integrated into building energy modelling software to develop the full potential of a parametric tool for greenery systems performance simulation.

Quantifying the effect of multiple load flexibility strategies on commercial building electricity demand and services via surrogate modeling

The expansion of commercial building demand response as a demand-side management resource for the electric grid necessitates new decision support resources for customers seeking to assess the benefit–risk tradeoffs of possible strategies for energy flexible building operations. To address this need, we develop surrogate models that predict the impacts of several load flexibility strategies on commercial building electricity demand and indoor temperature, focusing on offices and retail buildings at multiple scales. The surrogate models are fit to a synthetic database generated via whole building simulations, which establish the relationships between the key operational features of a given strategy and potential changes in building demand and temperature across a variety of contexts. The surrogate models are translated to a Bayesian framework to allow straightforward communication of uncertainty and parameter updating given new evidence. We find strong predictive performance across the suite of models, underscoring the usefulness of the approach in guiding decisions about implementing load flexibility strategies under a particular set of operational and environmental conditions.

Retail Buildings' Sustainability Assessment Tools: A Critical Analysis of Leed, Breeam and Dgnb

Retail Buildings' Sustainability Assessment Tools: A Critical Analysis of Leed, Breeam and Dgnb

Cool Roofs in the US: The Impact of Roof Reflectivity, Insulation and Attachment Method on Annual Energy Cost

While it is well-known that cool roofs can efficiently reduce cooling demand in buildings, their overall energy performance in mixed and cold climates has been a topic of debate. This paper presents a comprehensive simulation study to evaluate the combined impact of roof reflectivity, insulation level, and construction type (adhered vs attached) on annual energy demand and energy costs in the United States, for different buildings and climate zones. EnergyPlus was used to model three building types (retail, office, and school buildings) for the 16 most climate-representative locations in the US using typical reflectivity and insulation values. The results show that (i) roof reflectivity is equally important to roof insulation in warm climates; (ii) for low-rise offices and schools, the benefits of reflective roofs vs dark-colored roofs are clear for all US climatic zones, with higher savings in warm climates; (iii) for big-box-retail buildings, reflective roofs perform better except for cold climate zones 7–8; (iv) dark-colored, mechanically attached roofs achieve slightly better performance than reflective roofs in mixed and cold climates. Decision makers should consider building type, climatic conditions, roof insulation levels, and durability performance, along with roof reflectivity, when assessing the overall potential benefits of cool roofs.

Impact of electric vehicle charging on the power demand of retail buildings

• Fast charging for electric vehicles will be more common at retail sites in the future. • Electric vehicle stations with high power levels can dwarf a building's power demand. • Electric vehicles may arrive at sites to charge when building AC loads are high. • Electricity bills increase most for cold climates and in high-demand-charge scenarios. As electric vehicle penetration increases, charging is expected to have a significant impact on the grid. Electric vehicle charging stations will greatly affect a building site's power demand, especially with the onset of fast charging with power levels as high as 350 kW per charger. Here, we assess how electric vehicle charging stations would impact a retail big box grocery store, exploring numerous station sizes, charging power levels, and utilization factors in various climate zones and seasons. We measure the effect of charging by assessing changes in monthly peak power demand, electricity usage, and annual electricity bill, computed using three distinct rate structures. We find that an electric vehicle station has the potential to dwarf a big box building's power demand if behind the same meter, increasing monthly peak power demand at the site by over 250%. Cold-climate areas paired with rate structures incorporating high demand charges are most susceptible for significant changes to the annual electricity bill, with increases as high as 88%.

An Overview of High-Rise Buildings in Jakarta since 1967 to 2020

High-rise buildings in big cities are crucial for business, economic, educational, residential, and entertainment activities in recent times. The technology discoveries in various fields that support high-rise building construction such as structure, mechanical, electrical, and materials have opened up opportunities for comfortable and environmentally safe architectural work. The first milestone of high-rise building construction knowledge in Indonesia was the completion of the thirteen-floors Sarinah retail building in 1967. Indonesia, especially in Jakarta, then experienced rapid growth of high-rise buildings construction. However, there is limited research on the development of high-rise building designs in Indonesia, especially from an architectural design perspective. It leads to the lack of literature on high-rise building design in Indonesia. By utilizing a publicly accessible database from the Council of Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat and recent literature called Designing Tall Building by Mark Sarkisian, this paper explores the design development of high-rise buildings in Jakarta from time to time in the aspects of architecture, structure and sustainability.

Comparison of COVID-19 infection risks through aerosol transmission in supermarkets and small shops.

Aerosol transmission is academically recognized as possible transmission route of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We established an approach to assess the airborne-disease infection risks through aerosol transmission based on the dose-response model and aerosol transport model. The accuracy of evaluation was guaranteed with on-site surveyed ventilation rate and occupant behavior. With the proposed approach, COVID-19 infection risks in 5 typical supermarkets and 21 small shops were evaluated. With one original infected early-shift staff, the average aerosols concentrations at steady-state are 1.06 × 10−3 RNA copies/m3 in the supermarkets and 4.73 × 10−2 RNA copies/m3 in the small shops. With the assumption of 5% original infected staff in the retail buildings, the infection probability of one customer is 1.40 × 10−6 for visiting one small shop and 6.22 × 10−6 for visiting one supermarket. The averaged infection risk in the supermarkets is higher than the small shops (p-value<0.001). On the other hand, the infection risks are higher for the staff working with the infected staff compared with the customers. The proposed approach can be applied to other occupied buildings and assist the pandemic control policy making for sustainable cities and society.

Techno-economic evaluation of integrated energy systems for heat recovery applications in food retail buildings

Eliminating the use of natural gas for non-domestic heat supply is an imperative component of net-zero targets. Techno-economic analyses of competing options for low-carbon heat supply are essential for decision makers developing decarbonisation strategies. This paper investigates the impact various heat supply configurations can have in UK supermarkets by using heat recovery principles from refrigeration systems under different climatic conditions. The methodology builds upon a steady-state model that has been validated in previous studies. All refrigeration integrated heating and cooling (RIHC) systems employ CO2 booster refrigeration to recover heat and provide space heating alongside various technologies such as thermal storage, air-source heat pumps (ASHPs) and direct electric heaters. Seven cases evaluating various technology combinations are analysed and compared against a conventional scenario in which the building is heated with a natural gas boiler. The specific combinations of technologies analysed here contrasts trade-offs and is a first in the literature. The capital costs of these projects are considered, giving insights into their business case. Results indicate that electric heaters are not cost-competitive in supermarkets. Meanwhile, RIHC and ASHP configurations are the most attractive option, and if a thermal storage tank system with advanced controls is included, the benefits increase even further. Best solutions have a 6.3% ROI, a payback time of 16 years while reducing energy demand by 62% and CO2 emissions by 54%. Such investments will be difficult to justify unless policy steers decision makers through incentives or the business case changes by implementing internal carbon pricing.

Review: Elizabeth Scheu Close: A Life in Modern Architecture, Powerhouse: The Life and Work of Judith Chafee

Review: <i>Elizabeth Scheu Close: A Life in Modern Architecture</i>, <i>Powerhouse: The Life and Work of Judith Chafee</i>