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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
1

Establishing a hierarchy of retrofit measures for existing solid wall houses to reach an 80% CO2 emission reduction by 2050

Keig, Peter Richard January 2014 (has links)
The 2008 Climate Change Act commits the UK to a legally binding long term framework to reduce C02 emissions by 80% by 2050. To meet this target around eight million pre-1919 solid wall houses will need to be retrofitted over the next four decades. The research aim was to create a hierarchy of viable non-conflicting energy efficiency retrofit measures suitable for solid wall houses that reduces the risk of 'unintended negative consequences. The feasibility of reducing C02 emissions by 80% in a Victorian solid wall mid-terrace project house located in Belfast, Northern Ireland which was retrofitted as part of the UK Technology Strategy Board Retrofit for the Future program was investigated. This project enabled the design and post-retrofit operational performance to be analysed and the cost-effectiveness of domestic retrofitting versus a 'low-energy' new build replacement house to be examined. Subsequent research investigated the air change rate of four solid wall houses created by building envelope air leakage using a tracer gas decay technique and the porosity of party walls using zone pressure diagnostics. Results show a close correlation between the design and operational performance of the project house which enabled the energy saving potential of each retrofit measure to be analysed. The subsequent research results indicate that the assumed air change rate of solid wall houses is 9ften overestimated which impacts on ventilation strategies and a retrofit hierarchy for existing houses. The overarching conclusion is that it does not appear possible to achieve an operational CO2 reduction of 80% in the UK solid wall housing stock without decarbonisation of the electricity grid and the implementation of low-carbon heat. A further conclusion is that the 'conventional' fabric-first approach to domestic retrofitting promoted in the UK may not be suitable for solid wall houses and an alternative two stage integrated retrofit strategy is proposed.
2

A framework for improving building operations decisions for energy efficiency

Lewis, Angela January 2013 (has links)
Energy efficiency of commercial and institutional buildings is a topic that continues to gain interest as sustainability, green and high performance buildings attract the attention of building owners, facility managers, engineers, architects and other professionals within the built environment. To support this area of interest, tools are needed. The aim of this research is to develop and test the A Framework to Improving Building Operations Decisions for Energy Efficiency. The Framework was developed through an analysis of existing literature, case studies and questionnaire findings, and insight from industry experts. The Framework links energy and maintenance management decisions for heating, ventilating and air-conditioning (HV AC) systems to help facility managers and others within the built environment transition from reactive to pro active practices to support sustainability and energy efficiency goals. Review of existing literature found that energy and maintenance management practices are often researched and applied in practice separately. However, as evidenced by current practices, even if the most energy efficient equipment is installed, without proper maintenance, it will not remain energy efficient. Thus, the Framework seeks to help decision makers consider both energy and maintenance management within the same decision making process. The Framework consists of a Needs Assessment, Framework Architecture, Decision Support System and Implementation Evaluator. The Needs Assessment is a decision tree to quickly evaluate if the Framework will be useful to a potential user. The Framework Architecture provides a visual representation of the independency between energy and maintenance management. The Decision Support System, the main part of the Framework, consists of a set of multiple choice questions, a series of processing algorithms and a Recommendations Report. To use the Decision Support System, a user answers the set of questions. After the researcher uses a set of algorithms to processes the user's responses, the user receives a Recommendations Report. The Recommendations Report contains 1) three recommended actions that the user can evaluate and determine if the actions can be implemented within his/her facility to improve energy and/or maintenance management practices and 2) a Proactive/Reactive IV Score. This quantitative score compares how pro active or reactive the practices at the facility the question set was completed for to perceived best in class practices. The Decision Support System was tested by 56 industry participants and evaluated by 31 of the test participants. The [mal part of the Framework, the Implementation Evaluator, is a process map to help Framework users evaluate and implement the Framework recommendations and move towards continuous improvement within their facility management organization. The results of the Framework testing found the Framework was helpful or very helpful to over 60 percent of evaluators, and that the framework was especially helpful for making combined energy and maintenance management decisions. However, like many testing process involving user evaluations, it is important to acknowledge that the results likely reflect a non-response bias, as well as an optimum bias. Contributions to knowledge resulting from the research include identifying and documenting the interdependency between energy and maintenance management; documentation of 35 energy, maintenance and human factors practices and documenting the importance of goal setting and use of goals to support. effective energy and maintenance management. Some of the practices documented include the development of a maintenance plan, the need to regularly calibrate sensors and meters, the use of metrics for energy and maintenance management decision making, benchmarking energy performance and providing energy and maintenance training. v
3

Bioclimatic integration into the architectural design

Maciel, Alexandra Albuquerque January 2007 (has links)
No description available.
4

The integration of environmental sustainability issues in the design process of contemporary architectural practice

Trebilcock, Maureen E. January 2007 (has links)
No description available.
5

The 'veil' of control : exploring the attitudes and perceptions of UK design controllers

Black, Philip January 2012 (has links)
In the UK, architectural design is regulated through a system of design control for the public interest, which aims to secure and promote ‘quality’ in the built environment. Design control is primarily implemented by locally employed planning professionals with political oversight, and independent design review panels, staffed predominantly by design professionals. Design control has a lengthy and complex history, with the concept of ‘design’ offering a range of challenges for a regulatory system of governance. A simultaneously creative and emotive discipline, architectural design is a difficult issue to regulate objectively or consistently, often leading to policy that is regarded highly discretionary and flexible. This makes regulatory outcomes difficult to predict, as approaches undertaken by the ‘agents of control’ can vary according to the individual. The role of the design controller is therefore central, tasked with the responsibility of interpreting design policy and guidance, appraising design quality and passing professional judgment. However, little is really known about what influences the way design controllers approach their task, providing a ‘veil’ over design control, shrouding the basis of their decisions. This research engaged directly with the attitudes and perceptions of design controllers in the UK, lifting this ‘veil’. Using in-depth interviews and Q-Methodology, the thesis explores this hidden element of control, revealing a number of key differences in how controllers approach and implement policy and guidance, conceptualise design quality, and rationalise their evaluations and judgments. The research develops a conceptual framework for agency in design control – this consists of six variables (Regulation; Discretion; Skills; Design Quality; Aesthetics; and Evaluation) and it is suggested that this could act as a ‘heuristic’ instrument for UK controllers, prompting more reflexivity in relation to evaluating their own position, approaches, and attitudes, leading to better practice and increased transparency of control decisions.
6

Design process and environmental information : applicability of design support tools

Dutra, Luciano January 2010 (has links)
The architectural design process is a fuzzy and imprecise generalisation of each architect's own and unique way of designing. The environmental design process comprises issues related to environmental comfort, energy efficiency and sustainability. As this process improves the building behaviour, hardens the understanding about how so many variables get into the design process end take part in the results. To help understanding this, new Environmental Design Support Tools (EDSTs) are available each year. Over the last decade, these tools have been aimed more specifically toward designers and given friendlier interfaces. Whilst this has made them more usable by designers, it has also highlighted continuing fundamental weaknesses in terms of applicability in the design process and design support. The bigger problem seems to be related to the inadequacy between the operability of such tools and the complexity and plurality of ways in which designers design. Most tools, although named as environmental design support tools, are actually simple simulation tools. They facilitate design tasks that would otherwise demand time but still do not support analysis and interpretation of results. This thesis investigates the problems inherent to supporting the building design process through environmental design support tools. The works of some architects carried out as an academic exercise were analysed as a pilot study for this research. A graphical tool named as "Dica Diagram" was created to scrutinise fundamental issues related to the design process and how architects take account of environmental concepts in it. Several interesting behaviours were detected during this experiment and were investigated further with two different groups of students of architecture carrying out other two experiments as case studies for this research. The experiments test twelve hypotheses through nonparametric statistical tools in order to verify some issues that could, then, help in the creation of a framework for a designer friendly support tool for implementing these features in EDSTs.
7

A semiotic framework for buildings performance assessment

Ma, Yu January 2011 (has links)
Human beings are facing the unprecedented challenges of energy sustainability. A major part of the challenge is due to increasingly demands of an improved built environment arising from both the construction industry and building users. An increasing number of countries and organizations have a strong desire to find solutions for the construction industry to mitigate the negative impact on the built environment and to provide a higher quality of workplace. Many construction concepts have emerged, e.g. Intelligent Buildings (IBs), Green Buildings (GBs), Bio-Hornes, which intend to offer human beings enlightening methods and a passport to getting through the new construction generation in new buildings and refurbishments. All of these construction concepts focusing on improved energy efficiency for buildings, whilst improving the built environment's effect on well-being, are commonly recognized across the world as 'sustainable development' or 'sustainability'. To measure the degree of the 'performance' of buildings, various building assessment methods have been developed as the building environmental performance assessment methods. Building environmental performance assessment methods can provide good ways to reach the improvements in the building energy efficiency and environmental sustainability, to benefit the building users' productivities, as well as the business performance of the organizations. Building performance has to be measured and compared against best performing practices in the construction industry. However, most current building performance assessment methods are pre-defined environmental standards with the perspective of limited stakeholders. It is doubtful that the existing building assessment methods can have a comprehensive and objective set of Performance Indicators (PIs), to present the changing built environment and changing building stakeholders' expectations and requirements. This leads to failing to address identification and integration of multiple perspectives. Therefore the performance assessment method increasingly requires a comprehensive and objective approach, which is geared to both the stakeholders' requirements and sustainable development. In the construction industry, the understanding and selection of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in building environmental performance assessment has a significant III impact on the assessment result and improvement practices. There are many environmental assessment methods currently being used globally, most of them address certain pre-defined environmental standards and requirements, which have inevitably been developed with some constraints and limitations. However, many questions are raised on how these performance indicators were selected and how these indicators were used to measure the rate of building performance improvement. The KPIs to be used in existing building performance assessment are usually decided upon by senior managers and building experts (designers, developers, contractors, etc.), and this leads to a subjective assessment result. Thus KPIs should be determined for each building process area and given weightings by expert groups to display their importance and relevance within construction organisations. A semiotics-based framework for assessing building performance is established in this research, which aims to provide an innovative approach for generating construction project KPIs from listed PIs, that deal with an increasing number of requirements from the construction industry and building users. This research will use the semiotics six layers framework and lead to the use of affordances as a method of generating KPls according to the built environment and stakeholders' requirements. It will define the PIs from building's affordances in the six semiotic layers, then range from physical properties and functions to social value. The proposed framework takes a more scientific and systematic approach to the building performance assessment. This research is an attempt that has been made to the semiotics theory for generating KPls in building environment performance assessment methods. Further practical implementations will be suggested by describing each PI using affordances as the application of the method of semiotics. IV.
8

Development of an assessment framework for eco-building design indicators

Vakili-Ardebili, Ali January 2005 (has links)
No description available.
9

Modelling the energy resource for buildings and the use of appropriate low carbon technologies

Girard, Aymeric January 2011 (has links)
This thesis investigates the feasibility of the use of Low or Zero Carbon Energy Sources (LZCES) in the built environment and the development of an innovative Integrated Renewable Energy Planner (IREP) tool. It can be divided into four main research areas; an investigation into the on-site renewable energy resource, an analysis in the building energy usage profile, a development of a decision-making tool for the rapid identification of the most appropriate LZCES option and a post occupancy monitoring and modelling of a building. This research work details the following considerations of LZCES: passive solar space heating modelling (PSSH); performance of building integrated including solar water collector (SWH); solar photovoltaic (SPV); wind technology (WT); ground source heat pump (GSHP); tri-generation (TriG); biomass (BioH) and rainwater harvesting (RWH). Recorded Chartered Institute of Building Services Engineer (CIBSE) data from fourteen cities around the UK were used to assess the wind, solar electric, solar passive thermal, solar water thermal, ground source and rain resource. As part of this project, an unoccupied solar house was monitored for one summer and one winter month in East Whitburn, Scotland. A detailed investigation into the effect of external temperature, irradiance and thermal mass was conducted on building perFormance and indoor temperature. It was found that the estimated internal temperature simulation was between 2% to 10% different from the monitored temperature. It could be improved if the thermal mass and ventilation rate were estimated more accurately. A collection of manufacturers' data from 10 WTs, 10 SWHs, 3 SPVs, 2 GSHPs, 2 BioHs, 3 Tries and 2 RWHs was carried out in order to test the performance of the IREP tool. Energy, economy and CO2 saving simulations were done on a number of LZCES systems. A final assessment of the number of different options and their impact on the cost, energy and CO2 saving was performed in order to assess the best combination possible. Future development of the IREP tool may aim to assess more accurately the output of each technologies, develop a more user-friendly facade and integrate more technologies such as light pipes, earth duct, solar wall, concentrated solar power, energy storage, UTES, waste-to-energy plant, fuel cells and to extend potentially to recycled materials. Other weather data from rest of the world could make IREP usable for other project scales and countries.
10

Vers une approche intégrée de la conception architecturale des tours pour optimiser leur performance énergétique et environnementale / Towards an integrated approach of tall buildings architectural design to optimize their energy and environmental performance

Alkhouli, Marwan 16 June 2015 (has links)
Notre thèse veut démontrer les limites des définitions de nouveaux concepts et de nouvelles générations de tours qui sont développées par les professionnels et les chercheurs. Notre approche consiste à mettre l’accent sur la performance énergétique et environnementale, une notion qui n’est pas suffisamment abordée jusqu’à présent dans les tours et que nous cherchons à définir. Nous montrerons les limites et les barrières de l’introduction des mesures de performance dans l’évolution historiques des différentes générations de tours. Nous prenons position des systèmes d’évaluation environnementale et de la réglementation en vigueur dans différents contextes culturels et climatiques. Nous aborderons la question de la performance à plusieurs échelles afin de démontrer que l’équilibre de l’équation de la performance doit être pris dans une perspective de développement durable, et ce en prenant en considération les différentes dimensions du projet. Notre approche analytique et comparative cherche à combler le décalage entre le discours et la réalité, les intentions de départ et les finalités achevées. Enfin nous montrerons comment le processus de conception linéaire actuel des tours doit évoluer afin de viser une conception intégrée où la question de la performance doit être mise au cœur d’une nouvelle approche innovante et collaborative tout au long du cycle de vie du projet. Notre approche critique et analytique vise à démontrer en quoi la tour est-elle performante ? Dans quel contexte ? Avec quelles mesures ? Et comment faire pour améliorer sa performance afin qu’elle puisse mieux intégrer l’environnement urbain de nos villes contemporaines. / Our thesis aims to demonstrate the limitations of new concepts definitions and new generations of towers that are developed by professionals and researchers. Our approach is to focus on the energy and environmental performance, a notion that has not been addressed enough and we are trying to define. We show the limitations and barriers for the introduction of performance measures in the historical evolution of different generations of towers. We take a position of environmental assessment systems and regulations in different cultural and climatic contexts. We address the performance concept at multiple scales to demonstrate that the balance of the performance equation must be understood in a context of sustainable development. Our analytical and comparative approach seeks to bridge the gap between rhetoric and reality, the original intentions and purposes completed. Finally we show how the linear process of current projects must evolve to foster an integrated design where the issue of performance should be placed in the heart of a new innovative and collaborative approach throughout the life cycle of project development. It is important to note that our research work doesn’t aim to defend or refute the potential for energy efficiency and environmental quality of the architectural object of the tower, nor lead to a unique successful model which could be proposed to designers and professionals in the real estate market. Our critical and analytical approach is to demonstrate how the performance is it round? What is its context and measures? How improve it to better integrate the urban environment of our contemporary cities.

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