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Concept

Building science

Related publications (23)

What is NExT? A new conceptual model for comfort, satisfaction, health, and well-being in buildings

Dusan Licina

Buildings are designed to respond to functional and regulatory needs, providing comfortable conditions to occupants, offering satisfactory environmental settings, minimising health risks, and enhancing individual and collective quality of life. Although th ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2024

Correlating long-term performance and aging behaviour of building integrated PV modules

Christophe Ballif, Alessandro Francesco Aldo Virtuani, Ebrar Özkalay

Because building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) modules are fully integrated into a building envelope, the back of the module can be exposed to little or no ventilation, resulting in increased operating temperatures. As the temperature increases, the perfo ...

Elsevier Science Sa2024

An explorative method to support design decisions based on carbon constraints and daylight sufficiency needs

Nazanin Rezaei Oghazi

The global construction industry contributes to 37% of carbon emissions associated to both building operations and construction. To help achieve the net-zero targets set by 2050, it is mandated to achieve a 50% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030. As we ...

EPFL2024

Spatial Modeling for Building Design Evaluation: from Visual Landscape Quality Assessment to Devaluation Risk Estimation

Adam Robert Swietek

Zoning reform is a crucial tool for cities to adapt to contemporary challenges. However, its implementation remains challenging. Property owners, with a vested interest in the value of their neighborhoods, are sensitive to local developments and the potent ...

EPFL2024

Autodigit-RAD: Towards an automation of the radon’s concentration dataflow in a new and innovative building

Sergi Aguacil Moreno, Sebastian Duque Mahecha

Radon is a noble, natural, and radioactive gas coming mainly from the ground which might accumulate indoors and lead each year to 200-300 deaths from lung cancer in Switzerland. A brand new and innovative living lab will be built as of 2023 in Fribourg (Sw ...

2023

Building ventilation and outdoor air pollution: Implications for health, comfort and energy

Evangelos Belias

As humans spend most of their time indoors, indoor air quality (IAQ) significantly impacts their health. In parallel, building ventilation consumes significant energy, contributing to climate change. However, the relationships between the building ventilat ...

EPFL2023

OccuVAE: Integrating unsupervised occupancy inference in data-driven energy modeling for human-centric operation

Andrew James Sonta, Yufei Zhang

Data-driven building energy modeling is an emerging solution to facilitate the implementation of energy-flexible buildings. However, its black-box nature hinders interpretation, including with respect to human-building interaction. This drawback may bring ...

Association for Computing Machinery2023

Taking a step back from glass towers facades to make them compatible with the 2050 targets

Sergi Aguacil Moreno, Bernard Paule

Skyscrapers or glass towers are an extremely common model throughout the world. In the current context of climate change and resource depletion, we need to develop new postures towards these objects, especially for existing buildings that are becoming obso ...

2023

Assessment of Monitoring Strategies for Inhalation Exposure and Occupancy in Office Environments

Seoyeon Yun

Given people's significant time spent indoors, ensuring good indoor air quality (IAQ) is essential because it significantly influences occupants' health and productivity. Office buildings consume about 50% of commercial building energy and 18% of total bui ...

EPFL2023

Experimental study of the hydrodynamic and thermal performances of ventilated wall structures

Dolaana Khovalyg, Mohammad Rahiminejad

The presence of a ventilated air gap behind the external cladding in a building envelope is known to have a tangible contribution to the overall performance of the wall assembly. In the present study, the hydrodynamic and thermal performances of ventilated ...

2023

Tuning the Solar Performance of Building Facades through Polymer 3D Printing: Toward Bespoke Thermo-Optical Properties

Stephen William Wasilewski

Facades are the primary interface controlling the flow of solar energy in buildings and affecting their energy balance and environmental impact. Recently, large-scale 3D printing (3DP) of translucent polymers has been explored as a technique for fabricatin ...

Wiley2023

Efficacy of temporal and spatial abstraction for training accurate machine learning models: A case study in smart thermostats

Rachid Guerraoui, Alexandre David Olivier Maurer

Smart thermostats are increasingly popular in homes and buildings as they improve occupant comfort, lower energy use in heating and cooling systems, and reduce utility bills by automatically adjusting room temperature according to measurements of their bui ...

ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA2023

DeepValve: Development and experimental testing of a Reinforcement Learning control framework for occupant-centric heating in offices

Dolaana Khovalyg, Amirreza Heidari

Space heating controls in offices usually follow static schedules detached from actual occupancy, which results in energy waste by unnecessarily heating vacant offices. The uniqueness of stochastic occupancy profile and thermal response time of each office ...

2023

A VR-based workflow to assess perception of daylit views-out with a focus on dynamism and immersion

Marilyne Andersen, Caroline Karmann, Yunjoung Cho

Amongst the elements often overlooked in existing studies, dynamic movement and temporal changes in the content of views-out have been suggested to have a high potential to improve its perceived quality and occupant satisfaction. Moreover, in past and ongo ...

IOP Publishing2023

Influence of outdoor air pollution on European residential ventilative cooling potential

Dusan Licina, Evangelos Belias

Residential ventilative cooling via natural ventilation is influenced by outdoor air pollution. However, relative to climate, outdoor air pollution is not comprehensively considered in determining the ventilative cooling potential of buildings. To assess t ...

ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA2023

Impact of Standard versus Tracked-based User Behavior into Energy Simulations of Open-Space Offices

Dolaana Khovalyg, Verena Marie Barthelmes, Arnab Chatterjee

This simulation-based study aimed to contribute to gaining knowledge on how much the deviation between occupant-related input by the national standard and by insitu measurements might impact predictions of heating/cooling needs in offices. Analysis was per ...

2023

Influence of future climate scenarios on the sizing of Building-Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) installations. Case study of a new research-center building in Switzerland

Sergi Aguacil Moreno

This paper analyzes the findings obtained when applying a multi-criteria performance-based method for sizing a BIPV installation considering different weather files, representing historical data (TMY; typical meteorological year) and prospective data (thre ...

2023

A new chapter of healthy indoor air: antiviral air treatments

Shannon Christa David

Aerosol transmission remains a major challenge for the control of respiratory viruses. To date, prevention strategies include masks, vaccinations, physical distancing, travel restrictions, and lockdowns. Such measures are effective but come with heavy soci ...

Wiley2023

Reaching Thermal Comfort Zone Limits for Resilient Building Operation: A Winter Case Study for Offices

Dolaana Khovalyg, Verena Marie Barthelmes, Arnab Chatterjee

A specific range of acceptable indoor thermal conditions is stipulated by building performance standards to assure minimum dissatisfaction of occupants. Thus, the operation of buildings in practice tends to follow a cautious approach by setting the indoor ...

Routledge2022

Reinforcement Learning for proactive operation of residential energy systems by learning stochastic occupant behavior and fluctuating solar energy: Balancing comfort, hygiene and energy use

François Maréchal, Dolaana Khovalyg, Amirreza Heidari

When it comes to residential buildings, there are several stochastic parameters, such as renewable energy production, outdoor air conditions, and occupants’ behavior, that are hard to model and predict accurately, with some being unique in each specific bu ...

2022