Simulation optimisation towards energy efficient green buildings: Current status and future trends

Abstract

© 2020 Elsevier Ltd The increasing global importance of climate change has been clearly recognised in the last few years. The building industry contributed to a large proportion of the global energy use and carbon emissions across material production, construction, operation and end-of-life. Utilizing computer simulation and optimisation to minimize the building life cycle environmental impacts has gained increasing attentions recently. There were researches on different kinds of computational optimisation in various contexts, but a critical review to identify and compare the optimisation approaches is still lacking and needed to demonstrate their strengths/weaknesses and to highlight the future research challenges. Therefore, the objective of this paper was to critically review the computer simulation and optimisation studies for minimizing the life cycle energy consumption and carbon emissions in buildings, with the aim of identifying the current practices and future research need in this field. The common research streams and methods (e.g., innovative structural systems and materials, energy retrofitting measures) were compared, with an in-depth analysis on the importance and benefits that come with their usages. Life cycle design optimisation with the consideration of production, operation and end-of-life of building systems has a growing importance for the sustainable development of the future towards resource-based circular economy. Moreover, emerging digital technologies (such as machine learning, data-driven design, and parametric 3D modelling) enable greater automation in early design exploration and advance decision marking in design optimisation. As human factors (e.g., energy-related occupant behaviours) become important metrics in the built environment, multi-disciplinary design should be adopted to generate social-technical solutions that encompass both environmental sustainability and human wellbeing.