Research

ecsc continually develop and bring to market new projects and products to further sustainable energy and reduce the effects of climate change.

A Computer Based Framework to Assist with The low Carbon Building Design Process

The objective of the ECSC, LSBU project is to specify and develop design decision support tools, which integrate low carbon principles with the procurement, planning and design process itself and embed energy analysis at the critical pre-design and early design stages of the process.

Predictive energy performance analysis has an increasingly important role to play in informing the planning, procurement and design processes which result in low carbon buildings. Decision makers need the right tools and data at the right time in order identify and assess potential low energy design solutions. However, although a range of algorithms and simulation tools are available today which are capable of performing predictive building energy assessment, the relatively low level of adoption of these tools by building designers suggests that there are some barriers to their successful application to the building procurement and design process.

Research and consultation suggests that this disconnection between the needs of users and many currently available computer based analysis tools can be attributed more to an incompatibility with the design process itself than a lack of adequate technology. As a result existing tools are not well adapted to the way that architects work and are rarely used to inform critical early design decisions but tend to be deployed at a later stage to confirm the performance of an already formulated concept.

Integration with the Design Process

The framework will provide a user friendly “front-end” which will integrate a number of analysis tools and map them onto the building design process

To find out more about this project, please contact on Aidan Dunsdon on 020 7922 1667  or aidan.dunsdon@ecsc.org.uk