This study is going to investigate the energy performance of a temporary building on campus and analyze it thoroughly to identify the trends on energy consumption. Then, it is going to select the best strategy that can improve its performance in this region. Next, a prototype design of a high energy performance building is going to be proposed to the university authorities to be constructed in the permanent campus in the second phase and, identify a list of the best strategies that are more appropriate for the climate of the city. Finely, a comparative study is going to be conducted by using energy analyses software (eQUEST) to find out the annual saving of the proposed design over the existing building.

Green design is now a ubiquitous term in the profession of architecture, yet the energy performance of buildings in real-world conditions is poorly documented. A large number of buildings use substantially more energy than is predicted during design, and one possible explanation is that designers do not adequately understand the impact of thermal bridging through insulation on the energy use of a building. This study proposes a methodology that uses the parametric design program Grasshopper to quantitatively analyze infrared images for the degree of thermal bridging in a wall assembly. The end result is a user-friendly tool that architects can use to study the relative energy performance of their buildings in the field, giving them an increased understanding of the energy efficiency of their designs. Case studies of various details show a ten to fifty-five percent reduction in the effective R-value of the overall wall assemblies due to thermal bridging. / 10000-01-01

Review of decades of worldwide experience using standards, codes and guidelines related to performance-based fire protection design for buildings has identified shortcomings in the interpretation, application and implementation of the performance-based design process, wide variation in the resulting levels of performance achieved by such designs, and several opportunities to enhance the process. While others have highlighted shortcomings in the past, as well as some ideas to enhance the process, it is proposed that a more fundamental change is needed. First, the political and technical components of the process need to be clearly delineated to facilitate better analysis and decision-making within each component. Second, the process needs to be changed from one which focuses only on fire safety systems to one which views buildings, their occupants and their contents as integrated systems. In doing so, the activities associated with the normal operation of a building and how they might be impacted by the occurrence of a fire event become clearer, as do mitigation options which account for the behaviors and activities associated with normal use. To support these changes, a new framework for a risk-informed performance-based process for fire protection design is proposed: one which is better integrated than current processes, that treats a fire event as a disruptive event of a larger and more complex "building-occupant" system, and that provides more specific guidance for engineering analysis with the aim to achieve more complete and consistent analysis. This Ph.D. Dissertation outlines the challenges with the existing approaches, presents the "building-occupant" system paradigm, illustrates how viewing fire (or any other hazard) as a disruptive event within an holistic "building-occupant" system can benefit the overall performance of this system over its lifespan, and outlines a framework for a risk-informed performance-based process for fire protection design. Case studies are used to illustrate shortcomings in the existing processes and how the proposed process will address these. This Dissertation also includes a plan of action needed to establish guidelines to conduct each of the technical steps of the process and briefly introduces the future work about how this plan could be practically facilitated via a web-platform as a collaborative environment.

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Provision of an understanding of the complexes and implications associated with building performance measurement in relation to supporting the organizational objectives by Tanzania facility managers. The study involved the use of questionnaire sent to both public and private organizations and literature reviews in Tanzania with the aim of developing the process associated with the assessment of building performance and the way to improve its operational processes. The study observed that BPM practices are affected by managers control over the buildings facilites because there are no specific procedures that guide the formation of BPM process due to lack of Government attention to this growing industry. The other major finding of the study is that managers concentrate mostly on the financial performance instead of the operational performance of the building, which was contrary to the expectation of this study.

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) refers to numerical methods for simulating the movement of fluid. Due to its efficiency, CFD has been widely used in aerospace engineering and automotive design since the 1970s. It also has potential in architectural design since airflow has been an important player in the design process. However, the CFD users in the building industry tend to be limited to researchers and engineers rather than architectural designers due to the complexity of the simulations including the extensive knowledge required for the processing. The benefit of using CFD would be maximized through its early application by architectural designers since the key design decisions are made in the early stages. In response to this, simulation tools specialized for the early stages of architectural design are developed recently, which offer more user-friendly interfaces. Within this context, the present study aimed to introduce and test the simulation tools for the early stages of design and establish a framework for supporting architectural designers to utilize CFD. Under this objective, a mixed-method approach was employed that includes quantitative and qualitative assessments of simulation tools, development of a knowledge set that can help the users to understand the simulation processes and results, an immersive case study for structuring the procedural model, and a Delphi method for evaluating and reaching a consensus on the proposed framework. / Doctor of Philosophy / Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is a computer simulation method for automating the calculations of the complex equations on the flow of a fluid, such as air or water, and visualizing the calculation results. CFD has been widely used in designing aircraft and cars since the 1970s because of the efficiency of this method compared to physical experiments. CFD also has potential in architectural design since airflow has been an important player in the design process. However, the CFD users in the building industry tend to be limited to researchers and engineers rather than architectural designers due to the complexity of the simulations including the extensive knowledge required for the processing. In response to this situation, more user-friendly simulation tools for non-experts, including designers, are developed recently. Considering this context, the present study tried to introduce and test the simulation tools for designers and develop a framework for supporting architectural designers to utilize CFD in their design processes. Under this objective, both quantitative and qualitative studies were conducted, including the review of relevant articles, computer simulations, a case study with an architectural project example, designed by the author, and a Delphi method in which the recruited experts in architectural design evaluate the proposed framework.

In naturally ventilated buildings, occupants play a key role in the performance and energy efficiency of the building operation, mainly through the opening and closing of windows. To include the effects of building occupants within building performance simulation, several useful models describing building occupants and their window opening/closing behaviour have been generated in the past 20 years. However, in these models, the occupants are classified based on the whole population or on sub-groups within a building, whilst the behavioural difference between individuals is commonly ignored. This research project addresses this latter issue by evaluating the importance of the modelling and prediction of occupants window behaviour individually, rather than putting them into a larger population group. The analysis is based on field-measured data collected from a case study building containing a number of single-occupied cellular offices. The study focuses on the final position of windows at the end of the working day. In the survey, 36 offices and their occupants were monitored, with respect to the occupants presence and window use behaviour, in three main periods of a year: summer, winter and transitional. From the behaviour analysis, several non-environmental factors, namely, season, floor level, gender and personal preference, are identified to have a statistically significant effect on the end-of-day window position in the building examined. Using these factors, occupants window behaviour is modelled by three different classification methods of building occupants, namely, whole population, sub-groups and personal preference. The preference-based model is found to perform much better predictive ability on window state when compared with those developed based on whole population and sub-groups. When used in a realistic building simulation problem, the preference-based prediction of window behaviour can reflect well the different energy performance among individual rooms, caused by different window use patterns. This cannot be demonstrated by the other two models. The findings from this research project will help both building designers and building managers to obtain a more accurate prediction of building performance and a better understanding of what is happening in actual buildings. Additionally, if the habits and behavioural preferences of occupants are well understood, this knowledge can be potentially used to increase the efficiency of building operation, by either relocating occupants within the building or by educating them to be more energy efficient.

"An organization of a variety of useful references and tools for evaluating typical situations that have to be addressed in a performance based fire safety design are structured in this project. The chapters in this paper are arranged the same way as the situations may appear in fire scenarios. Each chapter discusses relevant issues for regulatory required sub evaluations in fire safety engineering. In this paper the sub evaluations are named; Fire spread within the origin, Barriers and fire spread beyond the origin, Fire detection and initial action, Automatic sprinkler systems, Smoke movement, control and toxicity, Structural frame, Fire brigade intervention and Life safety. The paper addresses standards and publications to evaluate fire safety in buildings. The tools and references presented are an assortment from a variety of methods and correlations that have been developed through the years in order to achieve knowledge of the dynamics of the fire and how to control its severity. The topics for the sub evaluations are codes and standards, design fire development, fire protection efficiencies in fires, reliability issues, building and construction characteristics, occupant characteristics, evaluation tools and evaluation software."

This study developed and applied a field test to evaluate the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE)/Chartered Institute of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE)/United States Green Building Council (USGBC) Performance Measurement Protocols (PMP) for Commercial Buildings in a case-study office building in central Texas. As the first integrated protocol on building performance measurement, the ASHRAE PMP accomplished its goal of providing the standardized protocols for measuring and comparing the overall performance of a building, including energy, water, thermal comfort, Indoor Air Quality (IAQ), lighting, and acoustics. However, several areas for improvement were identified such as conflicting results from different procedures or benchmarks provided in the ASHRAE PMP; limited guidelines for performing the measurements; lack of detailed modeling techniques, graphical indices, and clear benchmarks; and some practical issues (i.e., high cost requirements and time-intensive procedures). All these observations are listed as the forty issues, including thirteen for energy, five for water, and twenty-two for Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ). Recommendations were developed for each issue identified. For the selected high-priority issues, twelve new or modified approaches were proposed and then evaluated against the existing procedures in the ASHRAE PMP. Of these twelve new or modified approaches, the following are the most significant developments: a more accurate monthly energy use regression model including occupancy; a monthly water use regression model for a weather-normalized comparison of measured water performance; a method how to use a vertical temperature profile to evaluate room air circulation; a method how to use LCeq – LAeq difference as a low-cost alternative to estimate low frequency noise annoyance; a statistical decomposition method of time-varying distribution of indices; and a real-time wireless IEQ monitoring system for the continuous IEQ measurements. The application of the forty recommendations and the twelve new or modified approaches developed in this study to the ASHRAE PMP is expected to improve the applicability of the ASHRAE PMP, which aligns the overall purpose of this study. Finally, this study developed a new single figure-of-merit rating system based on the ASHRAE PMP procedures. The developed rating system is expected to improve the usability of the protocols.

The vaccine cold chain is an integral part of the process of storing and distributing vaccines prior to administration. A key component of this cold chain for developing countries is the primary vaccine storage warehouse. As the starting point for the distribution of vaccines throughout the country, these buildings have a significant amount of refrigerated space and therefore consume large amounts of energy. Therefore, this thesis focuses on analyzing the relative importance of parameters for the design of an energy efficient primary vaccine storage warehouse with the end goal of achieving Net-Zero Energy operation. A total of 31 architectural design parameters, such as roof insulation U-Value and external wall thermal mass, along with 14 building control parameters, including evaporator coil defrost termination and thermostat set points, are examined. The analysis is conducted across five locations in the developing world with significant variations in climate conditions: Buenos Aires, Argentina; Tunis, Tunisia; Asuncion, Paraguay; Mombasa, Kenya; and Bangkok, Thailand. Variations in the parameters are examined through the implementation of a Monte Carlo-based global uncertainty and sensitivity analysis to a case study building layout. A regression-based sensitivity analysis is used to analyze both the main effects of each parameter as well as the interactions between parameter pairs. The results of this research indicate that for all climates examined, the building control parameters have a larger relative importance than the architectural design parameters in determining the warehouse energy consumption. This is due to the dominance of the most influential building control parameter examined, the Chilled Storage evaporator fan control strategy. The importance of building control parameters across all climates examined emphasizes the need for an integrated design method to ensure the delivery of an energy efficient primary vaccine warehouse.