1,720,987 research outputs found
Towards resilient building performance: definitions, frameworks, and metrics
No full textIn recent years, resilience has become a relevant issue in the context of building performance, owing to the diverse future events, which includes climate change, extreme weather events, energy supply disturbances, and pandemics. In traditional building designs, building performance is typically estimated under a fixed set of assumptions. However, significant external factors can impact building performance during its operational phase but have not been considered by designers. Failure to protect building performance against these changes can lead to serious short- and long-term challenges, such as fails in meeting the demands of building occupants. Therefore, the resilience of building performance needs to be investigated such that its sensitivity to external factors, like climate change, is reduced.
In this thesis, a building is defined as resilient if it is able to prepare for, absorb, adapt to, and recover from disruptive events. Despite the potential of resilient building designs and their growing interest, an agreed-upon definition for resilience in the context of building performance requires further research, along with the development of methodologies for resilience quantification. This situation is partly due to the polysemic background of the resilience definition that is interpreted differently in various fields.
This thesis investigates resilience in the context of building performance and develops methodologies, frameworks, and metrics for the quantification of resilience on the building scale. This paper-based thesis first focuses on adapting the existing resilience definitions to the context of building performance. This procedure begins with four questions related to the concept of resilience, which are resilience of what? resilience to what, resilience in what state, and resilience based on what? The answers to these questions allow designers to establish the key parameters for a resilient design.
Resilient systems usually have a combination of attributes that influence resilience and contribute to the quantification of resilience level through the derivation and validation of a function form in regard to functionality and time. The second research activity identifies robustness and flexibility as two important attributes of resilient building design and develops methodologies for their quantification.
As the final step, a methodology is developed, focusing on a framework for the quantification of resilience itself. This step introduces a single metric for thermal resilience quantification in the scale of buildings. The metric is implemented for resilience labelling. In the quantification methodologies,
IDA Indoor Climate and Energy software (IDA-ICE) is used as a building performance simulation tool, and MATLAB is used as a numerical analysis tool. The developed quantification methodologies were tested on a case study of a Norwegian single-family house.
The results of this research led to seven peer-reviewed papers, in which four comprise the core of the thesis and are listed as primary papers. The other three papers, which are from collaborations with other researchers, are listed as supporting papers in this thesis. The results highlight the suitability of the proposed methodologies and metrics for the quantification of resilience and its attributes. For example, for the considered case study building in Norway, it has been shown that upgrading building design from the current minimum design to a passive design has a significant impact (71% improvement) on the thermal resilience against power failure during winter. Furthermore, the results of the case study implied that various building designs with the same energy consumption can behave differently when facing uncertainties in the future, such as changes in weather conditions, occupant behaviour, and energy prices.
Uncertainties of the future highlight that the evaluation of energy performance by itself will not be enough in the energy performance certificates in the near future. Therefore, the evaluation of other concepts, such as building resilience (robustness and flexibility), is also needed. This thesis takes one step forward in this regard by developing metrics, quantification frameworks, and methodologies for the evaluation of robustness, flexibility, and resilience that can be easily used by architects, building designers, decisionmakers, etc. to benchmark different building designs and technologies from these perspectives
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Thermal resilient buildings: How to be quantified? A novel benchmarking framework and labelling metric
No full textThe resilient building design has become necessary within the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme disruptive events associated with climate change. Since thermal comfort is one of the main requirements of occupants, evaluating building resilience from a thermal perspective during and after disruptive events is necessary. Most of the existing thermal resilience metrics focus on thermal performance only during disruptive events. Building designers are still seeking metrics that can capture thermal resilience in both phases (i.e. during and after the disruptive events). This paper introduces a novel benchmarking framework and a multi-phase metric for thermal resilience quantification. The metric evaluates thermal resilience concerning building characteristics (i.e. building envelope and systems) and occupancy. It penalises for thermal performance deviations from the targets based on the phase, the hazard level , and the exposure time of the event. The introduced methodology is validated by quantifying the thermal resilient performance of six building designs against a four-day power failure as a disruptive event. The six designs represent minimum and passive building requirements with and without batteries or photovoltaics as resilience enhancement strategies. For the considered case study, upgrading the building from the minimum to the passive design has a huge impact (71%) on resilience improvement against power failure in winter. The application of the battery and PVs can improve the thermal resilience of the two designs in the range of 19%–27% and 44%–60%, respectively. Findings can provide a useful reference for building designers to benchmark the building’s thermal resilience and constitute resilience enhancement measures
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Quantification of Energy Flexibility and Survivability of All-Electric Buildings with Cost-Effective Battery Size: Methodology and Indexes
No full textAll-electric buildings are playing an important role in the electrification plan towards energy-neutral smart cities. Batteries are key components in all-electric buildings that can help the demand-side energy management as a flexibility asset and improve the building survivability in the case of power outages as an active survivability asset. This paper introduces a novel methodology and indexes for determining cost-effective battery sizes. It also explores the possible trade-off between energy flexibility and the survivability of all-electric buildings. The introduced methodology uses IDA-ICE 4.8 as a building performance simulation tool and MATLAB® 2017 as a post-processing calculation tool for quantifying building energy flexibility and survivability indexes. The proposed methodology is applied to a case study of a Norwegian single-family house, where 10 competitive designs, 16 uncertainty scenarios, and 3 dynamic pricing tariffs suggested by the Norwegian regulators are investigated. The methodology provides informative support for different stakeholders to compare various building designs and dynamic pricing tariffs from the flexibility and survivability points of view. Overall, the results indicate that larger cost-effective batteries usually have higher active survivability and lower energy flexibility from cost- effectiveness perspective. For instance, when the time of use tariff is applied, the cost-effective battery size varies between 40 and 65 kWh (daily storage). This is associated with a cost-effective flexibility index of 0.4–0.55%/kWh and an active survivability index of 63–80%
Thermal resilient buildings: How to be quantified? A novel benchmarking framework and labelling metric
Full text linkThe resilient building design has become necessary within the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme disruptive events associated with climate change. Since thermal comfort is one of the main requirements of occupants, evaluating building resilience from a thermal perspective during and after disruptive events is necessary. Most of the existing thermal resilience metrics focus on thermal performance only during disruptive events. Building designers are still seeking metrics that can capture thermal resilience in both phases (i.e. during and after the disruptive events). This paper introduces a novel benchmarking framework and a multi-phase metric for thermal resilience quantification. The metric evaluates thermal resilience concerning building characteristics (i.e. building envelope and systems) and occupancy. It penalises for thermal performance deviations from the targets based on the phase, the hazard level , and the exposure time of the event. The introduced methodology is validated by quantifying the thermal resilient performance of six building designs against a four-day power failure as a disruptive event. The six designs represent minimum and passive building requirements with and without batteries or photovoltaics as resilience enhancement strategies. For the considered case study, upgrading the building from the minimum to the passive design has a huge impact (71%) on resilience improvement against power failure in winter. The application of the battery and PVs can improve the thermal resilience of the two designs in the range of 19%–27% and 44%–60%, respectively. Findings can provide a useful reference for building designers to benchmark the building’s thermal resilience and constitute resilience enhancement measures.publishedVersio
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
T-ROBUST METHOD. Robustness-based multi-criteria decision-making methodology: Description and example of application
Full text linkThe focus on performance robustness has become paramount in the context of buildings and neighbourhoods, where uncertainties from variables like occupancy and weather scenarios significantly impact their performance.
Selecting a building/neighbourhood design that excels in both performance and robustness poses a challenge, particularly when multiple performance criteria must be met. In general, this requires a three stages process involving performance evaluation, robustness assessment, and multi-criteria decision-making.
This report introduces a novel robustness-based decision-making approach, which integrates robustness assessment and decision-making steps, offering greater transparency compared to existing methodologies. The developed approach has been previously described and applied in scientific dissemination, while this report strives to simplify the communication for a slightly broader audience than the scientific community, while alsoproviding practical guidance and instructions for implementing the method.
This approach has been tested for assessing different responsive building envelope (RBE) technologies within a Norwegian zero-emission building (ZEB lab). The approach evaluates five competitive RBE designs (including building integrated photovoltaics, phase change material, and electrochromic windows) across eight occupancy and climate scenarios, considering three performance indicators, i.e., energy use, thermal comfort, and load matching.
Results show that the suggested approach can effectively support the choice of a building/-neighbourhood design that is both high-performing and robust, requiring less analysis effort. Moreover, the proposed approach exhibits a high level of reliability, by selecting solutions in alignment with defined targets and demonstrating less dependency on scenario conditions.publishedVersio
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