Overall Evaluation of Indoor Climate and Energy for Alternative Office Designs Using the Eco‐factor

Abstract

To facilitate the decision‐making and communication, an evaluation method has been devised that incorporates environmental effects of the energy use with thermal and atmospheric indoor climate in a score on an absolute scale from 0–100 %, called the “Eco‐factor”. This factor is based on indicators of physical properties. For the indoor climate part these include mainly the indoor temperature, velocity, and concentration fields. The energy part considers the energy distributed to energy sources, and the environmental effects of the resulting airborne emissions evaluated by Life Cycle Assessment (given by default figures from a database). The tool is used to make an overall assessment of the quality of design alternatives, where the “costs” (energy) is compared to the “benefit” (indoor climate), and to identify possibilities for improvement. The paper shows a model case study of an office building, where choices are considered that must be made in an early design phase.

Building simulations supporting decision making in early design – A review

“…In the field of sustainable energy decision-making, the simple method of equal criteria weights are the most popular followed by the more comprehensive Analytical Hierarchy Process [67]. Similar trends may apply to the field of building design, where weighting systems is demonstrated by Bjørn and Brohus [68], Iwaro et al [69], and Østergård et al [24]. Moreover, weighting frameworks, such as DGNB, LEED, and BREEAM, are getting increasingly popular.…”

“…The need to address multiple, contradicting objectives emphasizes a holistic approach during all stages of the design process. The means to do so are diverse and include weighted scoring systems [68][69], improved CAD-BPS interoperability, analytical hierarchy processes [24] [70], and sensitivity charts of multiple objectives [53].…”