A Computational Approach for Checking Compliance with European View and Sunlight Exposure Criteria

Abstract

The paper presents open-source computational workflows for assessing the "Exposure to sunlight" and "View out" criteria as defined in the European standard EN 17037 "Daylight in Buildings", issued by the European Committee for Standardization. In addition to these factors, the standard document also addresses daylight provision and protection from glare, both of which fall out of the scope of this paper. The purpose of the standard is stated as 'encouraging building designers to assess and ensure successfully daylit spaces'. The standard document proposes verification methods for performing such assessments, albeit without recommending a simulation procedure for computing the aforementioned criteria. The workflows proposed in this paper are arguably the first attempt to standardize these assessment methods using de-facto open-source standard technologies currently used in practice. The approach of this work is twofold: establish that the compliance check can be systematically performed on a 3D model by a novel simulation tool developed by the authors; and highlighting the additional assumptions that need to be implemented to build a robust and unambiguous tool within existing open-source frameworks. 1 KEY INNOVATIONS• Formulating procedures for computational assessment of EN 17037 criteria for sunlight exposure and view out • Standardizing inputs and outputs for the proposed computational assessment procedures • Devising Python workflows utilizing the Radiance simulation engine and Honeybee from Ladybug Tools for running sunlight exposure and view analyses PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONSThe tool presented in this paper offers an open-source solution to check compliance with EN 17037 criteria for "View out" and "Exposure to sunlight". The tool will be made available to designers, consultants and researchers. Furthermore, the paper presents suggestions to policy-makers on how the compliance procedures could be made more robust and better integrated into computational design workflows.