Advanced Building Simulation

Trends in building simulation 5
communications between remote simulation experts and other design team members
has surfaced as the real challenge. After an overview of the maturation of the building
simulation toolset in Section 1.2, we will discuss the changing team context of
simulation in Section 1.3.
Simulation is also becoming increasingly relevant in other stages of a project, that
is, after the design is completed. Main application opportunities for simulation are
expected during the commissioning and operational facility management phases.
Meanwhile, the “appearance” of simulation is changing constantly, not in the least as
a result of the Internet revolution. This is exemplified by new forms of ubiquitous,
remote, collaborative and pervasive simulation, enabling the discipline to become
a daily instrument in the design and operation of buildings. The traditional consultancydriven
role of simulation in design analysis is also about to change. Design analysis
does not exist in isolation. The whole analysis process, from initial design analysis
request to model preparation, simulation deployment and interpretation needs to be
managed in the context of a pending design, commissioning or maintenance decision.
This entails that associations between decisions over the service life of a building and
the deployment of building simulation must be managed and enforced explicitly
across all members of the design, engineering and facility management team. A new
category of web-enabled groupware is emerging for that purpose. This development
may have a big impact on the simulation profession once the opportunities to embed
simulation facilities in this type of groupware are fully recognized. Section 1.4 will
look at the new roles that building simulation could assume over the next decade in
these settings. It will also look at the developments from the perspective of performance
based design, where simulation is indispensable to quantify the new “metrics” of
design quality. Finally in Section 1.5, emerging research topics ranging from new
forms of calibration and mold simulation to processes with embedded user behavior
are briefly discussed.
1.2 The maturation of the building simulation toolset
Simulation involves the “creation” of behavioral models of a building for a given stage
of its development. The development stage can range from “as-designed” to “as-built”
to “as-operated”. The distinction is important as correctness, depth, completeness and
certainty of the available building information varies over different life cycle stages.
The actual simulation involves executing a model that is deduced form the available
information on a computer. The purpose of the simulation is to generate observable
output states for analysis, and their mapping to suitable quantifications of “performance
indicators”, for example, by suitable post-processing of the outputs of the
simulation runs. The post-processing typically involves some type of time and space
aggregation, possibly augmented by a sensitivity or uncertainty analysis.
Models are developed by reducing real world physical entities and phenomena to an
idealized form at some level of abstraction. From this abstraction, a mathematical
model is constructed by applying physical conservation laws. A classic overview of
modeling tasks in the building physics domain can be found in Clarke (2001).
Comparing simulation to the design and execution of a virtual experiment (Figure 1.1)
is not merely an academic thought experiment. The distinction between computer
simulation and different means to interact with the behavior of a building can become