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Symposium on Putting Health and Wellbeing Research Findings into Practice

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The average American working full time spends more than one-third of their day, five days per week, in their workplace. These spaces must support our physical and mental health and wellbeing, while also enabling the desired business outcomes of collaboration, innovation and productivity. While many noteworthy and applicable findings from health research have been released in recent years, ongoing challenges remain for disseminating these findings, for helping practitioners to integrate advanced research into understandable and actionable concepts, and ultimately for impacting workplace outcomes.  Read more →

CBE Panel Session Explores Innovative Methods for Monitoring Indoor Environments

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An expected benefit of the Internet of Things (IoT) in buildings will come from an improved ability to monitor indoor environments in ways that lead to actionable insights. A panel session hosted by UC Berkeley’s Center for the Built Environment (CBE) explored three innovative methods to monitor buildings using the latest in sensing and communicating technologies. The ideas range from futuristic to immediately applicable, with a focus on measuring CO2. Understanding CO2 concentrations in buildings is important, as several recent studies suggest that high levels of the gas may have negative effects on our cognitive performance, yet there are challenges to measuring it in a reliable and comprehensive manner.  Read more →

ZNE Symposium 2017 October Banner

Symposium on Zero Net Energy Buildings and Beyond: Balancing Building and Grid Objectives

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In a zero-net energy world, operation of both buildings and the electric grid need to be more flexible and responsive. This symposium explored the interaction of ZNE buildings, DERs and the increasingly renewable-rich electrical grid. It brought together engineering and design professionals, policy experts, researchers and other thought leaders to address how recent successes are changing existing ZNE paradigms, and how our policies, building energy standards, and aspirational ‘Big Bold Energy Strategies’ should evolve to deliver deep greenhouse gas reductions and a healthy economy in the next decade. Read more →

CBE focus group at HOK's San Francisco office

Collaboration is Key as CBE Celebrates 20 Years

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Since CBE’s launch in 1997, collaborations with industry and government partners have been central to our work, and have led directly to many of CBE’s most important and far-reaching results. The center began then with ten partners (consortium members), a requirement set by the National Science Foundation for funding as an Industry/University Collaborative Research Center; membership has grown in recent years to almost 40 members. CBE’s membership consortium continues to provide a nimble and fluid platform for collaboration, without the typical administrative burdens required with project-based funding. Read more →

CBE China visit group in Xian

Visit to China Reveals New Opportunities for China-US Research Collaborations

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CBE Director Edward Arens and Research Specialist Hui Zhang made a visit to China this summer to explore new research opportunities with several leading universities and a developer of residential towers. The trip was organized by former CBE visiting scholars who made important contributions to CBE’s work, who are now developing new research laboratories and programs China, leading research of relevance to CBE and its industry partners. Read more →

NREL's ZNE Research Support Facility

ZNE and Passive Survivability at LF17

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At the Living Future 17 “unConference” that took place recently in Seattle, CBE research staff collaborated with two principals from Integral Group on a panel session that explored new developments and synergies that exist when designing for zero-net energy and passive survivability. The session included speakers Dave Ramslie and John Andary, both Principals with Integral Group, and Prof. Gail Brager and David Lehrer (as moderator) of CBE.  Read more →

Symposium on Resilient Design for Buildings, Communities and Cities: May 3, 2017

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Dangers from climate change, more frequent extreme weather events and resulting power outages represent growing concerns for government agencies, building owners and design professionals. This session explored how stakeholders are addressing resilience at multiple scales, presenting tools and design strategies at the scale of individual buildings; and ideas for infrastructure, policy and community-building for cities and communities. The session also touched on the inherent synergies between resiliency, sustainability and social equity.

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