bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Optimizing occupant-centric building controls given stochastic occupant behaviour
Authors: zadeh Zeinab Khorasani , Ouf Mohamed M. 
Published: December 2021

Abstract
Occupant-centric control (OCC) strategies represent a novel approach for indoor climate control in which occupancy patterns and occupant preferences are embedded within control sequences. They aim to improve both occupant comfort and energy efficiency by learning and predicting occupant behaviour, then optimizing building operations accordingly. Previous studies estimate that OCC can increase energy savings by up to 60% while improving occupant comfort. However, their performance is subjected to several factors, including uncertainty due to occupant behaviour, OCC configurational settings, as well as building design parameters. To this end, testing OCCs and adjusting their configurational settings are critical to ensure optimal performance. Furthermore, identifying building design alternatives that can optimize such performance given different occupant preferences is an important step that cannot be investigated during field implementations of OCC due to logistical constraints. This paper presents a framework to optimize OCC performance in a simulation environment, which entails coupling synthetic occupant behaviour models with OCCs that learn their preferences. The genetic algorithm for optimization is then used to identify the configurational settings and design parameters that minimize energy consumption under three different occupant scenarios. To demonstrate the proposed framework, three OCCs were implemented in the building simulation program, EnergyPlus, and executed through a Python package, EPPY to optimize OCC configurational settings and design parameters. Results revealed significant improvement of OCC performance under the identified optimal configurational settings and design parameters for each of the investigated occupant scenarios. This approach would improve OCC performance in actual buildings and avoid discomfort issues that arise during the initial implementation phases.
Designing a 24-hour perturbation method for the estimation of a building heat transfer coefficient
Authors: Juricic S , Rouchier S , Goffart J 
Published: December 2021

Abstract
Verification of the actual thermal performance of a building envelope after renovation is likely to become a useful key for performance contracting in the frame of heavy retrofit operations in buildings. Some existing methods such as the co-heating method, use on-site measurements to estimate the Heat Transfer Coefficient, or its inverse the overall thermal resistance. Although reliable and accurate, they need several days to several weeks of undisturbed measurements which can be rather inconvenient for building occupants and quite expensive in terms of operational costs. This paper investigates perturbation methods to design a 24-h heat input signal that would ensure an accuracy similar to or better than other perturbation methods to estimate an overall thermal resistance of the building envelope. The paper first studies 256 different squared heating signals in a numerical methodology to determine common characteristics of high-scoring 24-h signals. An experimental campaign in a wooden-framed house tested one of the high-scoring signals. The experimental results showed estimation errors higher than expected but consistent with the literature.
Energy performance assessment of passive buildings in future climatic scenarios: the case of study of the childcare centre in Putignano (Bari, Italy)
Authors: Campagna L M , Carlucci F , Russo P , Fiorito F 
Published: December 2021

Abstract
The building sector is a primary target for GreenHouse Gas emissions mitigation efforts, as it accounts for 36% of final energy use. The most effective mitigation strategies include the energy retrofit of the existing building stock. Among existing buildings, particular attention should be paid to school buildings, which are among the most diffuse public buildings in Europe, most of them built decades ago, with a resulting high potential in terms of refurbishment effectiveness. Moreover, schools cover a social function and require high levels of indoor environmental quality. In this field, the research activity is intense, but retrofit strategies are still conceived considering historical weather data, which could not represent correctly present and future climate patterns, reducing the retrofit effectiveness. In this work, an energy retrofit to “Passivhaus standard” of a childcare centre located in the Mediterranean area is analysed through dynamic simulations. A post-retrofit building model is simulated using Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) and compared with the ones simulated in future weather scenarios, created using the morphing method. The analyses aim to assess if the technical solutions currently adopted on the basis of the TMY will lead to acceptable energy performance in future decades. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis of different design solutions is performed, aiming to assess their effectiveness in future weather conditions.
Towards net-zero carbon performance: using demand side management and a low carbon grid to reduce operational carbon emissions in a UK public office
Authors: Burman E , Jain N , de-Borja-Torrejón M 
Published: December 2021

Abstract
This paper investigates the performance of an office building that has achieved a low carbon performance in practice thanks to a performance contract and Soft Landings approach. The findings show the potential of this building for further de-carbonisation as a result of electrification of heating and load shifting to take advantage of a low carbon electricity grid. Whilst retrospective modelling based on the past carbon intensity data shows the effectiveness of demand-side management, assessment of the existing smart readiness of the building revealed that the building services and control strategy are not fully equipped with the data analytics and carbon or price signal responsiveness required to facilitate grid integration. The environmental strategy and procurement method used for this building combined with an effective grid integration strategy can serve as a prototype for low carbon design to achieve the ever stringent carbon emissions objectives set out for the non-domestic buildings.
Demand Side Flexibility Potential and Comfort Performance of Non-Residential Buildings
Authors: Chantzis Georgios , Antoniadou Panagiota , Symeonidou Maria , Giama Effrosyni , Oxizidis Simeon , Kolokotsa Dionysia , Papadopoulos Agis M. 
Published: December 2021

Abstract
The need to create and maintain a sustainable indoor environment is now more than ever compelling. Both the legislation framework concerning the energy performance of buildings, as determined in its evolution through the EU Directives 2010/31/EU, 2012/27/EU and 2018/844/EU, and the European strategic plans towards green buildings, denote the need of sustainability and comfort of indoor environment for the occupant. Moreover, the EU Directive 2018/2001 sets the renewable energy target of at least 32% for 2030, denoting that the high renewable energy sources penetration level leads to challenges in the design and control of power generation, transmission and distribution. Demand side management may be able to provide buildings with the energy flexibility needed, in order to utilize the intermittent production of Renewable Energy Sources in a much more efficient and cost-effective way. The flexibility potential of installed building systems is investigated, while considering the effects on the indoor environment conditions and the perceived comfort. The implemented Demand Response (DR) control strategy shifts loads by changing heating system set point temperatures, based on market clearing prices of the day ahead market. The results indicated a reduction in energy consumption and energy costs, while maintaining indoor environment quality at satisfactory levels.
Thermal transmittance prediction based on the application of artificial neural networks on heat flux method results
Authors: Gumbarević S. , Milovanović B. , Gaai M. , Bagarić M. 
Published: December 2021

Abstract
Deep energy renovation of building stock came more into focus in the European Union due to energy efficiency related directives. Many buildings that must undergo deep energy renovation are old and may lack design/renovation documentation, or possible degradation of materials might have occurred in building elements over time. Thermal transmittance (i.e. U-value) is one of the most important parameters for determining the transmission heat losses through building envelope elements. It depends on the thickness and thermal properties of all the materials that form a building element. In-situ U-value can be determined by ISO 9869-1 standard (Heat Flux Method - HFM). Still, measurement duration is one of the reasons why HFM is not widely used in field testing before the renovation design process commences. This paper analyzes the possibility of reducing the measurement time by conducting parallel measurements with one heat-flux sensor. This parallelization could be achieved by applying a specific class of the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) on HFM results to predict unknown heat flux based on collected interior and exterior air temperatures. After the satisfying prediction is achieved, HFM sensor can be relocated to another measuring location. Paper shows a comparison of four ANN cases applied to HFM results for a measurement held on one multi-layer wall – multilayer perceptron with three neurons in one hidden layer, long short-term memory with 100 units, gated recurrent unit with 100 units and combination of 50 long short-term memory units and 50 gated recurrent units. The analysis gave promising results in term of predicting the heat flux rate based on the two input temperatures. Additional analysis on another wall showed possible limitations of the method that serves as a direction for further research on this topic.
Utilizing High Performance Computing to Improve the Application of Machine Learning for Time-Efficient Prediction of Buildings’ Daylighting Performance
Authors: Labib Rania 
Published: December 2021

Abstract
Architects often investigate the daylighting performance of hundreds of design solutions and configurations to ensure an energy-efficient solution for their designs. To shorten the time required for daylighting simulations, architects usually reduce the number of variables or parameters of the building and facade design. This practice usually results in the elimination of design variables that could contribute to an energy-optimized design configuration. Therefore, recent research has focused on incorporating machine learning algorithms that require the execution of only a relatively small subset of the simulations to predict the daylighting and energy performance of buildings. Although machine learning has been shown to be accurate, it still becomes a time-consuming process due to the time required to execute a set of simulations to be used as training and validation data. Furthermore, to save time, designers often decide to use a small simulation subset, which leads to a poorly designed machine learning algorithm that produces inaccurate results. Therefore, this study aims to introduce an automated framework that utilizes high performance computing (HPC) to execute the simulations necessary for the machine learning algorithm while saving time and effort. High performance computing facilitates the execution of thousands of tasks simultaneously for a time-efficient simulation process, therefore allowing designers to increase the size of the simulation’s subset. Pairing high performance computing with machine learning allows for accurate and nearly instantaneous building performance predictions.
Simplified Model for Analyzing Shortwave Solar Effects on Indoor Thermal Comfort
Authors: Wang Nan , Wang Julian 
Published: December 2021

Abstract
Shortwave solar irradiance through building windows may have significant impacts on indoor thermal comfort, especially in near-window zones. Such effects change with intensity and spectral variations of the solar irradiance incident on building windows, which is related to the day of the year, time of day, orientation and dimension of the window, and atmospheric conditions. To assess the effects on thermal comfort, we derived a variable - mean radiant temperature delta based on a proposed spectrally-resolved method to represent the quantity of shortwave solar irradiance incident on occupants and be incorporated into PMV (predicted mean votes)-based thermal comfort models. By characterizing the variations of the calculated PMV values under different solar conditions, the influencing factors to indoor thermal comfort by shortwave solar irradiance were obtained and analyzed. Last, upon a series of parametric settings and numerical analysis, simplified statistical regression models were also established to directly predict spectrally-resolved mean radiant temperature delta and PMV values. This could be convenient and extensively to estimate the solar effects on indoor thermal comfort within the near-window zones.
On the Low Frequency Impact Noise Measurement in Residential Buildings
Authors: Urbán D , Zat’ko P 
Published: December 2021

Abstract
We commonly encounter cases that, despite the fact that buildings meet normative requirements, people are disturbed by unwanted noise generated by walking and other sources of impact noise. It is not unusual that in practice the designer often moves on the edge of the required criteria in order to reduce the cost of constructions and its parts. In this article, we selected 4 blindly chosen cases of flats where complaints from residents about high levels of impact noise were recorded although the construction meets the requirements set out in the standard. Based on the obtained documentation of in-situ performed measurements by different consulting companies, BEM and FEM models were created, and the distribution of acoustic pressure in an enclosed space and compared different methods of spatial averaging of the resulting acoustic pressure were simulated. The aim of this analysis is to point some of the reasons for possible user complaints about the impact noise despite normative requirements. The usual problems are benevolent national requirements and the issue of measuring noise in the low frequency range and underestimating its significance. The article also discusses the currently set requirements for the evaluation of floor structures in selected countries.
An OpenBIM workflow to support collaboration between Acoustic Engineers and Architects
Authors: McGinley Tim Pat , Vestergaard Thomas , Jeong Cheol-Ho , Pind Finnur 
Published: December 2021

Abstract
Architects require the insight of acoustic engineers to understand how to improve and/or optimize the acoustic performance of their buildings. Normally this is supported by the architect providing digital models of the design to the acoustic engineer for analysis in the acoustician’s disciplinary software, for instance Odeon. This current workflow suffers from the following challenges: (1) architects typically require feedback on architectural disciplinary models that have too much geometric information unnecessarily complicating the acoustic analysis process; (2) the acoustician then has to waste time simplifying that geometry, (3) finally, this extra work wastes money which could otherwise be spent on faster design iterations supported by frequent feedback between architects and acousticians early in the design process. This paper focuses on the architect / acoustician workflow, however similar challenges can be found in other disciplines. OpenBIM workflows provide opportunities to increase the standardization of processes and interfaces between disciplines by reducing the reliance on the proprietary discipline specific file formats and tools. This paper lays the foundation for an OpenBIM workflow to enable the acoustic engineer to provide near real time feedback on the acoustic performance of the architectural design. The proposed workflow investigates the use of the international standard IFC as a design format rather than simply an exchange format. The workflow is presented here with the intention that this will be further explored and developed by other researchers, architects and acousticians.
Too Hot to Stay at Home: Residential Heat Vulnerability in Urban India
Authors: Agarwal Aditi , Samuelson Holly 
Published: December 2021

Abstract
Rising temperatures may lead to deadly heat waves in India. Combined with a growing urban population and mass production of affordable housing, this can sharply accelerate the demand for space cooling. India’s voluntary Energy Conservation Building Code - Residential (ECBC-R) or Eco Niwas Samhita 2018 limits thermal transmittance of the envelope. This research considers and critiques this approach through building simulation and an analysis of indoor comfort and severity of overheating during the summer months (April-May-June), in hot-dry and warm-humid climate zones. Code requirements neither vary with climate zones, nor is it adapted to future climate conditions. Our building simulations and analysis show that soon (2030s) parts of the country are likely to suffer from overheating 74% of time in summer. A minimally code compliant building would need air conditioning 90% of summer while a highly efficient iteration could reduce this by a third, in the hot-dry climate zone. Further, commonly used envelope assemblies are uncomfortably hot 77% (in the hot-dry zone) and 23% (in the hot-humid zone) of time in summer, on average. This analysis illustrates the vulnerability of current construction techniques to extreme heat and aims to avoid a long-term lock-in of inefficient, high energy consuming residential buildings.
A field study on summertime overheating of six schools in Montreal Canada
Authors: Xie Zihan , Shu Chang , Reich Ben Zegen , Wang Lin , Baril Daniel , Ji Lili , Yang Senwen , Bai Xuechen , Zmeureanu Radu , Lacasse Michael , Wang Liangzhu , Ge Hua 
Published: December 2021

Abstract
Due to global climate change, the world has been experiencing significant increases in average temperatures and the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as heatwaves. The overheating problem in indoor spaces of buildings has become a concern to the comfort and health of building occupants, especially vulnerable populations such as the elderly, children, or the sick. A field monitoring network consisting of rooftop weather stations and indoor sensors has been set up on 11 buildings of different types in Montreal, Canada. This paper presents the results of field measurements of indoor thermal conditions of six school buildings to assess the risks of summertime overheating. These six primary school buildings were built in 1930-1966 with window-wall-ratios between 10-30% and limited mechanical ventilation. The indoor dry-bulb air temperature, relative humidity, and CO2 concentrations are measured by indoor wireless sensors. The weather conditions, including dry-bulb temperature, relative humidity, solar radiation, rainfall, wind speed, and wind direction, are measured by rooftop weather stations. Measurements presented in this paper are collected from July to September 2020, which include four different time intervals: (a) during two heatwaves, (b) during summer break when schools were closed, and (c) when schools were reopened, and windows were intermittently opened. Data analysis shows that the indoor and outdoor temperature difference has a strong linear correlation with the outdoor temperature observed for all school buildings. This correlation is also affected by building operations, such as opening windows, closing blinds, and the micro-climate of their surroundings.
Relaxing and working from home: associations between heating, ventilation and cooling system typologies and indoor soundscape evaluation
Authors: Torresin Simone , Albatici Rossano , Aletta Francesco , Babich Francesco , Oberman Tin , Stawinoga Agnieszka Elzbieta , Kang Jian 
Published: December 2021

Abstract
Data from an online survey conducted in January 2021 by 464 participants living in London and working from home (WFH) after the COVID-19 outbreak were analysed, focusing on: (1) types of building services at home, (2) perceived sound dominance of building services, and (3) the perception of the indoor acoustic environment (i.e. the indoor soundscape) in relation to two main activities, i.e. WFH and relaxation. Results show that most of participants’ houses had radiators for heating and relied on window opening for ventilation and cooling. Air systems (e.g., HVAC systems) resulted in higher perceived dominance compared to other systems, but only when evaluated for WFH. Sound dominance from building services was in turn related to soundscape evaluation. Spaces with less dominant sounds from building services were more appropriate for both WFH and relaxation, and spaces with fewer dominant sounds were assessed better, but just for WFH. Participants’ evaluations generally did not differ according to building service typology. The presence of air-cooling systems was associated with better perceived sound environments, most likely due to better acoustics conditions in newly built or retrofitted dwellings, more probably equipped with air cooling systems. Preliminary findings point out the importance of carefully considering the dominance of sounds by building services, especially for air systems, in relation to traditional and new uses of residential buildings.
Comfortable and safe environments for people with autism: preliminary analysis of risks and definition of priorities in the design phase
Authors: Zaniboni L , Marzi A , Caniato M , Gasparella A 
Published: December 2021

Abstract
People with autism deserve specific attention as concern environmental comfort, well-being and accessibility of environments, not only because they are a significant and growing share of the total population, but also because they can show special sensitiveness to the variation and value of several environmental parameters. In this work, the main building-related critical issues connected to the special environmental sensitivity in the autism spectrum condition are highlighted and analysed. By means of a questionnaires’ survey among parents and caregivers of people with autism, their sensitivity to different thermal, visual, acoustic and indoor air quality stimuli was evaluated. Then, a list of risk factors was prepared for a residential context, classifying them into environmental risks, leading to discomfort and dangerous response for people with autism; and accidental risks, deriving from unpredictable events, even more dangerous for people with special perceptual disorders. According to the outcomes of the survey and based on literature considerations, probability and severity of environmental and accidental risks were estimated on a scale from 1 to 5 in the different rooms of residential buildings. This permitted to draw up a hypothetical system of possible interventions and solutions to be considered during the design phase, establishing a different priority in the different rooms of a dwelling, in order to increase the occupant’s comfort, safety and autonomy, and improving physical and psychological well-being.