TY - JOUR

T1 - Uncertainty Analysis of Life Cycle Energy Assessment in Early Stages of Design

AU - Harter, Hannes

AU - Singh, Manav Mahan

AU - Schneider-Marin, Patricia

AU - Lang, Werner

AU - Geyer, Philipp Florian

N1 - Funding Information: This research is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the research project ‘MultiSIM (FOR 2363)’ – project number: 271444440. The computational resources and services used in this work were provided by the VSC (Flemish Supercomputer Center), funded by the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO) and the Flemish Government – department EWI. We additionally thank the Ferdinand Tausendpfund GmbH & Co. KG for permission to use their office building as a test case in the scope of the project as well as for providing building-related information for our calculations and pictures.

PY - 2020/2/1

Y1 - 2020/2/1

N2 - During building design and especially in early stages, important decisions influencing the lifecycle-based energy demand of buildings are made. Life Cycle Energy Assessment (LCEA) is used to evaluate this energy demand already in early stages of design. However, at that point, the building design and the related information can quickly change and are subject to potentially large uncertainty. This uncertainty in building information influences the LCEA and therefore decisions taken by the designer. Due to the uncertainty, it is difficult to distinguish between the performance of different design variants to decide for the best option. This study presents a method to perform LCEA and to assess and consequently strategically reduce the influence of uncertainties in buildings’ information on the LCEA in early design stages. Uncertainty analysis is used to assess the influence of uncertainty on LCEA and to prioritize decisions to reduce uncertainty. The method is embedded in a multi-Level of Development (LOD) modelling approach covering the development of the building during the early stages of design. The method is applied to seven different building shapes as a proof of concept. It is concluded that the method renders valid results to assess the project-specific uncertainty in LCEA results.

AB - During building design and especially in early stages, important decisions influencing the lifecycle-based energy demand of buildings are made. Life Cycle Energy Assessment (LCEA) is used to evaluate this energy demand already in early stages of design. However, at that point, the building design and the related information can quickly change and are subject to potentially large uncertainty. This uncertainty in building information influences the LCEA and therefore decisions taken by the designer. Due to the uncertainty, it is difficult to distinguish between the performance of different design variants to decide for the best option. This study presents a method to perform LCEA and to assess and consequently strategically reduce the influence of uncertainties in buildings’ information on the LCEA in early design stages. Uncertainty analysis is used to assess the influence of uncertainty on LCEA and to prioritize decisions to reduce uncertainty. The method is embedded in a multi-Level of Development (LOD) modelling approach covering the development of the building during the early stages of design. The method is applied to seven different building shapes as a proof of concept. It is concluded that the method renders valid results to assess the project-specific uncertainty in LCEA results.

KW - Early design stages

KW - Life cycle assessment (LCA)

KW - Life cycle energy assessment (LCEA)

KW - Sustainable building development

KW - Uncertainty analysis

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85076010882&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.enbuild.2019.109635

DO - 10.1016/j.enbuild.2019.109635

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85076010882

VL - 208

JO - Energy and buildings

JF - Energy and buildings

SN - 0378-7788

M1 - 109635

ER -