Over the past few decades, the world has experienced a major population shift towards urban areas resulting in environmental degradation and increased energy consumption. To combat these challenges, energy efficiency measures are being deployed to improve the performance of different entities within urban built environments. However, effective implementation of such measures often requires a holistic approach to account for existing interrelated and complex relationships between entities at the urban scale. This paper presents a distillation of salient facts and approaches for energy performance evaluation of districts. The studies are reviewed in three sections; (1) concepts defining district energy performance, (2) approaches and methodologies for district energy performance evaluation and (3) system interactions between district entities. The state of the art review reveals that several challenges exist in the initial stages of energy performance assessment of districts. The suggested framework in this paper addresses this issue through pre-processing of data related to entities such as transportation systems and buildings. The framework classifies the available information under three potential categories, namely, 'Subject and Scope', 'Input Data Management' and 'Methods'. This categorisation results in easier integration of multidisciplinary aspects of entities involved in district energy performance assessment.

No abstract

Indoor Environmental Quality is an important issue in educational buildings since it is directly related to students' well-being and learning activities. Indoor Environmental Quality parameters have been assessed in three representative campus building typologies (old, new, and retrofitted), in Tehran, Iran, by measurements and questionnaire (n = 842) from July 2016 to April 2017. Results have been compared to the students' overall satisfaction level and recommended standards. According to results, minimum attention to local standards with regard to Indoor Air Quality, acoustic, and lighting, especially in the old and retrofitted buildings, seems the main reason of low environmental quality in the studied cases. Fitting a multiple regression model to the questionnaire data, a mathematical model is developed to predict the overall comfort (Indoor Environmental Quality index). Studied buildings have been ranked based on the Indoor Environmental Quality index from high quality: I (building C) to out of the comfort range: IV (building A). Moreover, results reveal that the acceptable range of each Indoor Environmental Quality parameters, especially with regard to thermal and acoustic comfort, is broader in real condition in comparison with the standards. Finally, the buildings' annual energy consumption is used to propose a Retrofit Potential Index in order to assess the impact of comfort parameters on energy consumption by integrated analyses.

No abstract

No abstract