A collaborative decision model for low energy building design optimization

It is noted that improving energy efficiency in buildings is a major priority worldwide. The design groups from different disciplinary may have different design concepts to choose design variables and formulate constraints accordingly. Currently, the building design process treats different disciplines independently which overlooks the coupled relations between different disciplines. In order to bridge these research gaps, a collaborative decision process for an interdisciplinary low energy building design is proposed. Correspondingly, a collaborative decision model, with two disciplines at the subsystem level which focus on an initial envelope investment and total energy consumption respectively and one system agent at the system level assessing the overall energy performance, is developed. A case study is designed based on a residential building in Columbus, Mississippi. The experimental result demonstrates that the proposed decision model can fundamentally improve the existing building design process while reducing energy consumption and cost.