Future of analysis techniques

Future of analysis techniques

Energy usage in the modern architecture plays a great role nowadays. For example, in America, buildings consume 39% of primary energy and account for 68% of electricity. Thus, energy-efficient building designs are required and analysis techniques focusing on saving energy becomes more and more important. Based on my reading of “greener building through energy analysis tools”, three aspects of improvement should be placed in the future.

First, an overall software should be developed to fulfill the demands from both architects and engineers. One of the problems presented today is communication: there are several tools with different functions for architects and engineers so they can hardly communicate to each other. Architects focus on design and tend to use some simply energy tools such as EcoDesigner, Ecotect and Green Building Studio and leave complicate calculation to engineers who might use Energy Plus etc. Without good consulting the energy waste might be determined at the beginning. For example，“A building that’s 80% glass is not going to perform like a 30% glass building, no matter how efficient you make the HVAC system,” said Pulley of HOK. In order to change the situation, in the future, the software might have the function of interaction. Once the architects want to design a building contained glass, he only needs to make changes in the software, and the signal should be delivered to engineers at once. The relationship between portion of glass and the minimum cost should be estimated by engineers and delivered to architects at once. Based on the estimation, architects could make their judgement.

Another improvement is high compatibility. As mentioned in the blog of our group member Gabrielle, one major drawback is the delay incorporation of engineers in the design process. The reason for that is accurate calculation needs lots of time. Also, with the improvement of compatibility, experts can get the desired data sources through the overall software and make calculations in their special analysis software, then the outputs are simple displayed on the overall software. People can pick up data sources without transform from one type of code to another.

Thirdly, AI should be used in the analysis techniques. The AI can combine the experiences together to give optimal advice. Because even for a simple design, a great amount of variables are needed to be determined to balance the cost and people comfort. The advices and recommendation come from the shared platform. However, with bunch of information, decision can be hardly made. The analysis method should have the function of digging useful information and combine them together to give optimal advice. Additionally, it should be applied in the operation interface. When people describe the requirement of building, it can automatically distribute necessary analysis calculation to specific group. 

sources:http://www.aecbytes.com/buildingthefuture/2010/EnergyAnalysisTools.html