A collaborative platform for sustainable building design based on model integration over the internet

Abstract

Considerable potential exists for reducing life cycle environmental impacts of buildings in Japan. While energy consumption during the operation stage of a building's lifetime is usually dominant, indirect energy use and pollutant emissions associated with production and disposal of building materials during construction and demolition are significant. For sustainable building design, interactions between the performance and dynamics of the building structure and energy systems must be considered. A collaborative platform based on the distributed object-based modeling environment, DOME, and a set of component models for sustainable building design analysis is presented. Integration examples of the component models to study particular building designs are described.

Integrating Distributed Computational Models as Dynamic Expressions of Knowledge: The Case for Evaluating Measures for Urban Ecosystem Sustainability

“…We have been using the DOME modeling integration architecture to construct systems of computational models for studying a number of urban ecosystem processes [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14]. While the model integration approach has enabled us to draw together a wide range of expert knowledge from researchers in different academic domains, we have encountered several reoccurring problems when actually trying to integrate computational models that have been developed by different researchers for different research objectives.…”

“…By combining the boundary-condition models with the technology and policy models, we can more comprehensively assess how the introduction of new technologies and policies might impact on environment, economy and society. We have described applications of the platform to the evaluation of specific technologies in Tokyo and other parts of Japan, from introduction of roof-top mounted photovoltaics to comprehensive plastic separation, collection and reuse system [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14]. In this paper, we focus on issues related to construction of the platform from a software engineering perspective, and we present some of the techniques we have used to address those issues.…”

Integrated Environmental Assessment of Supply‐Side and Demand‐Side Measures for Carbon Dioxide Mitigation in Tokyo, Japan

“…We then demonstrated the effectiveness of the platform by integrating several models developed by different collaborating research groups to assess the CO 2 emissions reductions and associated cost for scenarios describing the introduction of rooftop PV cells in Tokyo. Subsequent to that article, we have presented several other applications of integrated modeling for assessing the effectiveness of technologies in mitigating environmental and sustainability problems in urban regions (Kraines et al 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005a).…”