The webinar is thematically related to Chapter 4 (authored by A. Mahdavi and F. Tahmasebi) of the book ‘Building Performance Simulation for Design and Operation’ Edited by Jan L.M. Hensen, Roberto Lamberts.

Ardeshir Mahdavi is a University Professor of Building Physics and Building Ecology at TU Wien, Vienna, Austria. Professor Mahdavi has researched in the fields of building physics, building performance simulation, building ecology, and human ecology. His has contributed to research on building data ontologies, predictive building systems control, urban microclimate and urban energy modelling, probabilistic room acoustics methods, and models of building users’ presence and behaviour in buildings. Professor Mahdavi has published over 700 scientific papers and has supervised over 60 doctoral students. Professor Mahdavi is a fellow of IBPSA (International Building Performance Simulation Association) and the recipient of the IBPSA Distinguished Achievements Awards.

IBPSA University is happy to present one of the best entries of BS2019 Student Modelling Competition titled ‘PENTATHLON’. Five students from Carleton University, Canada explained their entry during webinar. As part of the 16th IBPSA International Conference and Exhibition IBPSA organized a student modelling competition. The aim was to facilitate wider participation in the conference and to provide a competitive forum for student members of the building simulation community. IBPSA Newsletter Volume 29 No 1 and http://buildingsimulation2019.org/competitions contains more information about the competition.

The competition is set up as a simulation pentathlon and consists of:

1. Model and simulate the existing building;
2. Assess the buildings energy consumption and indoor environmental quality;
3. Redesign using retrofit measures to enhance the building’s performance;
4. Assess the building daylighting performance and visual comfort;
5. Optimize the building performance using previously assessed performance measures, parametric design, sensitivity analysis or multi-objective optimization.

IBPSA University is happy to present one of the best entries of BS2019 Student Modelling Competition titled ‘PENTATHLON’. Four students from Free University of Bolzano & University of Trento will explain their entry during upcoming webinar. As part of the 16th IBPSA International Conference and Exhibition IBPSA organized a student modelling competition. The aim was to facilitate wider participation in the conference and to provide a competitive forum for student members of the building simulation community. IBPSA Newsletter Volume 29 No 1 and http://buildingsimulation2019.org/competitions contains more information about the competition.

The competition is set up as a simulation pentathlon and consists of:

1. Model and simulate the existing building;
2. Assess the buildings energy consumption and indoor environmental quality;
3. Redesign using retrofit measures to enhance the building’s performance;
4. Assess the building daylighting performance and visual comfort;
5. Optimize the building performance using previously assessed performance measures, parametric design, sensitivity analysis or multi-objective optimization.

The team vision to accomplish these five contests is to attempt the improvement of the performance of the palace, while also preserving as much as possible its artistic heritage. This has been possible implementing an optimization process that other than minimizing the energy consumption and maximizing the indoor environmental quality, minimize also the architectural impact of the retrofit. Moreover, to be consistent with the cost optimality approach suggested by the European Energy Performance of Building Directive (EPBD), the students used the net present value to guide the choice of the optimal retrofit among the Pareto front resulting from the optimization.

Joe Clarke is the Director of the Energy Systems Research Unit and BRE Centre of Excellence in Energy Utilisation at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. He is a founder member and past President of the International Building Performance Simulation Association and presently leads the organisation’s Futures Committee, which addresses the evolution of energy performance assessment tools.

His research interests range from the efficient utilisation of energy within the built environment through options for sustainable energy supply, considering the range of technical and social issues that impact on decision-making. His work involves the development and dissemination of software tools for options appraisal to help reduce energy demand, accelerate the take-up of new and renewable energy technologies, mitigate environmental impacts and improve human well-being.

Clarice Bleil de Souza is a Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer – UK)at the Welsh school of Architecture (Cardiff University), teaching architecture technology, research methods and coordinating MSc dissertations. Research interests in different aspects of design decision making: the use of digital tools in the design process, user-centric simulation, machine learning in design and community based design.

Simon Tucker is a Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer – UK)at Liverpool John Moores University teaching building physics, environmental design, and architectural design studio. Research interests in low carbon and sustainable building design, design methods, user oriented building simulation, performance of ecological building materials.

Sara Alsaadani is a Assistant Professor of architectural engineering at Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport (Smart Village Campus, Cairo, Egypt) teaching foundational design studios, environmental design and research methods. Her research interests include architect-engineer collaborations, collaborative design, bridging the gap between BPS and architectural design and interdisciplinary approaches in architectural education.

Clarice Bleil de Souza is a Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer – UK)at the Welsh school of Architecture (Cardiff University), teaching architecture technology, research methods and coordinating MSc dissertations. Research interests in different aspects of design decision making: the use of digital tools in the design process, user-centric simulation, machine learning in design and community based design.

Roya Rezaee is co-director of Energy Lab at Perkins+Will. She has a PhD. in High-Performance Building, with an expertise in design and different areas of building technology including energy performance, daylight performance, parametric design, building information modeling (BIM), model-based system engineering, risk assessment, and data analysis in building performance prediction.

Jason Brown is a lecturer in the School of Architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia USA where he teaches building physics, facades engineering, environmental systems, and building energy modeling. Research interests include early design decision making and urban scale energy modeling.

Dr. Nathaniel Jones is a building scientist, educator, and software developer. He is currently an Advanced Technology & Research analyst at Arup and teaches building science at the University of San Francisco. His background spans architectural design, engineering, and computer science, with emphasis tools that aid informed decision making in early design. He is the developer of Accelerated, a suite of open-source GPU-based lighting and daylighting simulation tools used by architects, engineers, and educators around the world. Dr. Jones is active in the building science community and serves as chair of the International Building Performance Simulation Association-USA chapter’s Research Committee and the subcommittee on Emerging Simulation Technologies. He is the author of multiple journal and conference papers related to building energy and daylighting simulation, and he has regularly been an invited speaker on the application of parallel computation to building simulation.

One of the promising use cases of building performance simulation (BPS) is its role as a virtual laboratory in research and development (R&D) projects that aim to bring innovative building components from an initial idea towards market introduction. This webinar will highlight opportunities and potential pitfalls of the use of BPS in this application domain. First, the characteristic properties of exploration-driven R&D projects are contrasted with more conventional BPS projects using a systematic requirements engineering approach. Then, the process and outcomes of three R&D projects of innovative façade systems are discussed. Finally, the lessons learned from these studies will be summarized.

Roel Loonen is an Assistant Professor at the Unit Building Physics and Services, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. His research and teaching focus on the development and application of modeling and simulation strategies to provide decision support for designing buildings that combine high indoor quality with low or no impact on the environment. Roel collaborates with SMEs in various R&D projects, aspiring to accelerate the process of bringing innovative building envelope technologies and renewable energy systems to the market.

Ian Beausoleil-Morrison is a Professor in the Faculty of Engineering and Design at Carleton University in Ottawa (Canada), where he heads the Sustainable Building Energy Systems laboratory. He is co-founder and has been Co-Editor of the Journal of Building Performance Simulation since its establishment in 2008. He has been a Director of IBPSA since 2004, was IBPSA Vice-President from 2006 to 2010, and IBPSA President from 2010 to 2015. In 2015 he was awarded the grade of Fellow of IBPSA.

About Webinar: For energy analysts, one of the most difficult challenges is condensing a great deal of data into an intelligible format so architects can understand it. For architects, one of the challenges in working with analysts is not knowing what performance-related questions can be asked and answered. A solution that connects both of these is IBPSA USA’s Project Stasio, a crowd-sourced, a public website that connects performance questions with graphics from simulation outputs that succinctly answers the question. This webinar will offer insights into Project StaSIO!

About presenters:
Supriya Goel is a Research Engineer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Her current research is focused on the development of building energy codes and standards and simulation tools for analysis of buildings.

Amarpreet Sethi is a Principal leads the Energy and Sustainability team at tk1sc.

Aman Singhvi is a New York-based Building Scientist with over 7 years of research and professional experience in building science and architecture.

Pieter de Wilde is Professor of Building Performance Analysis at the University of Plymouth in the UK. He serves on the Board of IBPSA and is Chair of EG-ICE, the European Group for Intelligent Computing in Engineering. He is a Fellow of IBPSA and CIBSE, and member of ASHRAE.