A novel integrated workflow that simultaneously considers thermal, luminous, and ventilation autonomy for the assessment of passive strategies.

Read more about this tool

Status: Current

Project Objective

Create an integrated building design process that combines the assessment of thermal, luminous, and ventilation autonomy, which are normally separate metrics, into a single workflow.

Project Results

This problem is addressed in a recent paper by PhD candidate Won Hee Ko, which has been published in the journal Building and Environment. The paper proposes several innovations, including multiple and simultaneous environmental quality analysis, and a new ventilation autonomy metric that designers can use to evaluate designs for natural ventilation.  The new method also calls for the creation of compelling visualizations that simultaneously compare building design for these three IEQ factors, with the goal of helping designers to understand the synergies and conflicts that may arise from these concerns.

Significance to Industry

The gap between predicted and measured building performance poses an ongoing challenge for design teams and other building industry stakeholders. Because reliable methods for predicting building performance are critical to addressing this challenge, students, researchers and faculty at CBE are developing and testing new approaches to building performance simulation. This project showcases a recently published paper that describes a new and innovative simulation method.

Research Approach

Analysis for daylighting, ventilation and other metrics have been siloed, requiring separate tools and even modeling expertise, resulting in slower and less useful feedback to the design team. Won Hee Ko created and evaluated an integrated design process she describes as a ‘novel integrated workflow that simultaneously considers thermal, luminous and ventilation autonomy for the assessment of passive strategies, introducing a method to integrate all three metrics in the design process.

Publications and Reports

Share This