Building Performance and Decision Making Research Programme

The built environment is responsible for approximately 40% of global energy consumption. Non-domestic buildings are responsible for 17% of the carbon emissions in the UK. Robust building performance assessment methods are therefore paramount for reducing energy consumption in the built environment.

Building Performance and Decision Making Research Programme 2013-2018 is a £330,000 research project funded by industry and EPSRC VEIV EngD programme. This programme aims to improve the process of decision making, the accuracy of building performance predictions and to improve communication between design teams and clients by:

• developing life cycle analysis protocols and visualisation tools which would take into account creative reuse of the existing building and wellbeing, performance and productivity of its occupants; as the urban planning is shifting gradually from ‘managing building stock growth’ to ‘managing saturated steady state situation’ this project funded by EPSRC and Hawkins Brown aims to provide answers on one of the major research questions: Life Cycle Extension or Replacement of Existing Buildings
• investigating performance gap in offices using uncertainty, sensitivity and calibration techniques to understand in more detail the difference between models and operational consumption data from a building systems perspective including: building, environmental, activity and objective systems; this project is funded by EPSRC and Buro Happold.
• understanding and assessing the significance of the materials/structural systems choice in a building’s life cycle and developing new optimisation approaches and strategies for higher levels of integration between materials, structures and environmental indicators; this project is funded by EPSRC and Price & Myers

People

PI: Dejan Mumovic

CoI: Rokia Raslan, Catalina Spataru, Paul Greening

R: Yair Schwartz, Chris van Dronkelaar, Stathis Eleftheriadis