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The purpose of this paper is to examine the feasibility and design of zero-energy buildings (ZEBs) in cold and semi-arid climates. In this study, to maximize the use of renewable energy, energy consumption is diminished using passive solar architecture systems and techniques.

The case study is a residential building with a floor area of 100 m² and four inhabitants in the cold and semi-arid climate, northeast of Iran. For thermal simulation, the climate data such as air temperature, sunshine hours, wind, precipitation and hourly sunlight, are provided from the meteorological station and weather databases of the region. DesignBuilder software is applied for simulation and dynamic analysis of the building, as well as PVsyst software to design and evaluate renewable energy performance.

The simulation results show a 30% decrease in annual energy consumption of the building by complying with the principles of passive design (optimal selection of direction, Trombe wall, shade, proper insulation selection) from 25,443 kWh to 17,767 kWh. Then, the solar energy photovoltaic (PV) system is designed using PVsyst software, taking into account the annual energy requirement and the system’s annual energy yield is estimated to be 26,291 kWh.

The adaptive comparison of the values obtained from the energy analysis indicated that constructing a ZEB is feasible in cold and semi-arid conditions and is considered an effective step to achieve sustainable and environmentally friendly construction.

In this chapter the potential to use water-based Trombe walls to provide heated water for building applications during the summer months is investigated. Design Builder software is used to model a simple single-story building with a south-facing Trombe wall. The effects of using different thermal storage mediums within the Trombe wall on building heating loads during the winter and building cooling loads during the summer are modeled. The amount of thermal energy stored and temperature of water within the thermal storage medium during hot weather conditions were also simulated. On a sunny day on Toronto, Canada, the average temperature of the water in a Trombe wall integrated into a single-story building can reach ∼57°C, which is high enough to provide for the main hot water usages in buildings. Furthermore, the amount of water heated is three times greater than that required in an average household in Canada. The results from this work suggest that water-based Trombe walls have great potential to enhance the flexibility and utility of Trombe walls by providing heated water for building applications during summer months, without compromising performance during winter months.

Due to technological improvement and development of the vehicle-to-home (V2H) concept, electric vehicle (EV) can be considered as an active component of net-zero energy buildings (NZEBs). However, to achieve more dependable results, proper energy analysis is needed to take into consideration the stochastic behavior of renewable energy, energy consumption in the building and vehicle use pattern. This study aims to stochastically model a building integrating photovoltaic panels as a microgeneration technology and EVs to meet NZEB requirements.

First, a multiobjective nondominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) was developed to optimize the building energy performance considering panels installed on the façade. Next, a dynamic solution is implemented in MATLAB to stochastically model electricity generation using solar panels as well as building and EV energy consumption. Besides, the Monte Carlo simulation method is used for quantifying the uncertainty of NZEB performance. To investigate the impact of weather on both energy consumption and generation, the model is tested in five different climatic zones in Iran.

The results show that the stochastic simulation provides building designers with a variety of convenient options to select the best design based on level of confidence and desired budget. Furthermore, economic evaluation signifies that investing in all studied cities is profitable.

Considering the uncertainty in building energy demand and PV power generation as well as EV mobility and the charging–discharging power profile for evaluating building energy performance is the main contribution of this study.

This paper aims to provide a bibliometric analysis of advances in building information modeling (BIM) research globally. It provides a recent state-of-the-art assessment on trends as it relates to the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry. Being a vastly emerging research area, there is a need for the appraisal of research trends.

A comprehensive bibliometric analysis was conducted using a dual step filtering system on an initial volume of 2347 documents in the first stage between 2010 and 2020, and of 311 publications in the final stage of the analyses which emphasized more on 2015–2020 from the WoS database. Frequency analyses on the sources, affiliations, authors and country/ region of publication were assessed in the first stage of the analyses. Co-authorship and evidence of author collaboration were also examined. The second stage included a co-occurrence keyword network analysis. Further, text mining/mapping of the abstract of the documents was performed.

Emerging trends in the field of BIM research include but are not limited to historical building information modeling (h-BIM) applications, the use of blockchain technology, digital twin, Construction Operations Building information exchange (COBiE), Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), dynamo-bim, energy plus software and BIM laser scanning innovations. The possibility of these innovations solving some current BIM challenges were also discussed.

The study provides an insight into the BIM research trends globally while identifying existing challenges. The study uses text mining of unstructured abstracts, which has not been reported in BIM research.

This paper, using energy softwares, designed of Iran and optimized a residential villa in Saman city located in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province.

Having used the ideas of Climate Consultant software, the basic designing was conducted by Design Builder Software, and the cooling and heating loads and lighting tools and equipment were calculated. Then, the amount of consuming of heating, cooling and lighting load of the building was optimized through insulation of walls and ceiling, using green roof, double glazing UPVC windows, light intensity sensor and variable refrigerant flow (VRF) system.

Simulation results for the stated scenarios showed an annual reduction in energy consumption of 21.1, 7.9, 26.41, 27.3 and 72.3 per cent, respectively. Also, by combining all the five scenarios, an optimal state was achieved which, from the results, brought about an annual reduction of 86.9 per cent in the energy consumption.

The authors hope that the results of the current paper could be helpful for designers and engineers in reduction of energy consumption for designing a building in similar climatic conditions.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the performance of eight perylene diimide pigments as a hypothetical building facades using EnergyPlus.

A hypothetical building located in Tehran is modeled using EnergyPlus, and the effectiveness of the pigments was examined. Furthermore, the performance of the pigments was compared with those of common commercial black (carbon black) and red (iron oxide) pigments.

The results show that the studied black pigments reduce the cooling energy demand up to 37 per cent in comparison with carbon black paint and the red ones, which reduce the value by as much as 32 per cent in comparison to iron oxide.

This study demonstrates that the application of cool paints rather than common paints will significantly reduce the cooling energy demand and subsequent costs.

This paper aims to present the result of a scientometric analysis conducted using studies on high-performance computing in computational modelling. This was done with a view to showcasing the need for high-performance computers (HPC) within the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry in developing countries, particularly in Africa, where the use of HPC in developing computational models (CMs) for effective problem solving is still low.

An interpretivism philosophical stance was adopted for the study which informed a scientometric review of existing studies gathered from the Scopus database. Keywords such as high-performance computing, and computational modelling were used to extract papers from the database. Visualisation of Similarities viewer (VOSviewer) was used to prepare co-occurrence maps based on the bibliographic data gathered.

Findings revealed the scarcity of research emanating from Africa in this area of study. Furthermore, past studies had placed focus on high-performance computing in the development of computational modelling and theory, parallel computing and improved visualisation, large-scale application software, computer simulations and computational mathematical modelling. Future studies can also explore areas such as cloud computing, optimisation, high-level programming language, natural science computing, computer graphics equipment and Graphics Processing Units as they relate to the AEC industry.

The study assessed a single database for the search of related studies.

The findings of this study serve as an excellent theoretical background for AEC researchers seeking to explore the use of HPC for CMs development in the quest for solving complex problems in the industry.

This study aims to analyze the technical, environmental, economic and thermal comfort impacts of implementing passive measures and heating systems in Ciudad Verde, a large-scale social housing project located at the periphery of Bogota, Colombia.

A system dynamics (SD) model is proposed to evaluate scenarios through counterfactual experiments, including technical, environmental and economic components. Model inputs are obtained from building energy simulation models and data collected from official reports, public policy documents and construction records.

Results suggest that the use of heating systems is the best choice to achieve thermal comfort conditions throughout the day. However, both the capital expenditures and CO₂ emissions associated with such system make their adoption very difficult. In line with that, the use of heating systems in combination with passive measures stands out as a viable solution since their costs are affordable and their use contributes to reducing CO₂ emissions.

The proposed model recreates the dynamics underlying social housing construction processes, the adoption of heating systems and passive measures in low-income dwellings and their corresponding impact on CO₂ emissions and indoor thermal comfort conditions. The model can be employed as a support tool in the formulation of social housing policies associated with thermal comfort specifications. In this way, the model represents a first step toward incorporating thermal-related variables into the decision-making processes related to social housing planning and development.

This study explores the utilization of simulation tools for building performance assessments among design professionals in Ghana.

A quantitative approach was used to obtain responses from 104 design professionals in Ghana through a structured questionnaire. The questionnaire was generated through a critical review of the related literature on the subject matter. Data from respondents were analyzed through descriptive and inferential statistics.

Results from the analysis indicated that design professionals in Ghana possessed a low level of awareness of the simulation tools used for building performance assessments. Subsequently, the findings also revealed that the design professionals' level of usage of the simulation tools was low.

Practically, the establishment of this study informs design stakeholders, educational institutions and researchers in Ghana. For design professionals, these findings will focus on enhancing their use of simulation tools for evaluating building performance in Ghana. For educational institutions, these findings will enable them to implement the necessary strategies for incorporating the concept of building performance simulation into their curriculum in order to boost awareness and utilization. Finally, researchers will also use the study's findings to identify any research gaps for future studies.

The findings from this study pioneer knowledge on an under-investigated topic within the Ghanaian construction industry. It also provides insight into the developing state-of-the-art technology employed in the built environment.