Challenges in the Modeling and Simulation of Green Buildings

Green buildings are environmentally bearable and economically viable buildings that are designed, constructed, and operated in order to minimize their environmental impact on the planet and maximize the quality of human life. Achieving a green building is hence a wide, complex, and ambitious challenge that requires close cooperation of all the stakeholders involved in the life cycle of the building, multidisciplinary competencies and field experience, as well as extensive computational skills. In this last regard, building performance simulation, which is a computer-based and multidisciplinary mathematical model of given aspects of building performance, is emerging as a promising support for designers and consultants. Unfortunately, although building performance simulation is renowned to be a powerful, comprehensive, flexible, and scalable tool, its use is not trivial, and, even today, modelers have to face several challenges for employing it to support the design and operation of green buildings. In this chapter, the main features of green buildings will be, first, mentioned. Next, typical mistakes, errors, and uncertainties that can spoil a building model will be presented. Then, a few modeling and simulation challenges - ranging from the model creation, through modeling under aleatory uncertainty, quality assurance, tool integration, simulation-based optimization, visualization and communication issues, to the selection of an appropriate tool - will be presented. Finally, a few final conclusions and future directions are drawn.