This paper investigates, using software modeling and numerical simulations, the annual thermal performance of a public primary school in Cairo governorate in Egypt. This investigation identifies how much time the students achieve thermal comfort in their classrooms during the whole academic year. It is also considered as an attempt to magnify the need for solutions that can enhance thermal comfort in classrooms. As a support to our computer modeling and simulation, this paper preforms also an analysis to the thermal comfort indices via field measurements for the internal temperatures and humidity of a classroom by using the Elitech UR4HC temperature-humidity data logger. The field measurements have taken place in June 2016 for a whole school day from 8:30 am until 14:30 pm. Energy Plus simulation tool has been used utilizing its modeling interface Design Builder. The numerical simulation proposed has considered the real construction aspects and parameters of the classroom case study. Measurements validate the simulation results and ensure that the tool is reliable to be used in the annual simulations, which is the main concern of this paper. This paper presents, through annual building thermal-performance simulations, the forecasting for the yearly mean indoor air temperatures, Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) model, discomfort hours, and internal heat gain balance. Simulation results indicate the existence of a high level of thermal discomfort during the whole academic year. The annual analysis also indicates around 45% of the working hours are exceeding the maximum limit of the comfort temperature range. Furthermore, the results present a high level of average annual internal heat gain balance throughout the academic year. As a main contribution of this paper, the simulation results draw attention to the importance of integrating new passive cooling strategies or energy efficient cooling systems in order to: stabilize the indoor temperature, increase the students' thermal comfort and decrease the internal heat balance for enhancing the thermal performance of school buildings in the future.

The increasing energy consumption of residential buildings in Egypt which reached about 42% of total energy consumption in latest energy statistics, affirms the need for energy conscious design of buildings. Many researches aim at guiding new buildings design to be energy-efficient, however, retrofitting existing buildings can result in significant reductions in energy consumption. This paper outlined different window glass types led to a reduction in cooling loads via the building envelope for the existing building. This paper aims to evaluate the effect of changing windows glass types to reduce energy consumption in the hot arid climate of greater Cairo. The energy analysis carried out by employing advanced simulation via DesignBuilder software for a residential building located in Cairo; this case study analyzed the performance of seven different window glass types in a residential building façade in the different cardinal orientations. The model was validated by taking a field measurement to measure and quantify the temperature of a selected room taken within three consecutive days in May and June 2019 and compared to the simulation tool results, the average error percentage was 2.15%. The results of the simulation showed that changing glass type can reduce energy consumption by up to 18.8%, indicating the significance of energy efficient retrofitting of existing residential buildings.

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Recently, Air is considered one of the most essential elements to human life as it affects indoor air quality, thermal comfort, and energy saving. At the early design stages, architects focus more on the general mass, layout, geometry, and shape of buildings and their influence on the air flow and natural ventilation than the spatial configuration. The handling of natural ventilation neglected as a base solution to achieve good internal environment for interior architectural spaces, users' health considerations, and their economic income. Therefore, this research tries to find the relationship between spatial configuration and natural ventilation, the potential of using space syntax approach to predict the effect of spatial configuration to the air movement to help architects at early design stages. The layout of a social housing unit in El-Shourouk city chosen as a case study. The results find a linear correlation between the two indicators: connectivity value and, in both building and room level.