Energy Design Performance Modelling for Multi-unit Residential Buildings: A Vancouver Case Study

Abstract

Acceleration of improvements in building energy performance will make an important contribution to Canada’s climate change reduction targets. Building energy codes and voluntary certification programs, such as LEED, have been successful at incrementally improving overall building energy performance, but do not directly address the design process that is at the core of the issue. In order for architects and integrated design teams to consistently propose building designs that drive down energy consumption and provide capacity for renewable energy generation, they must have effective tools that support evidence-based decision making. A focus on design performance modelling (DPM), rather than building energy modelling (BEM), focuses attention on individual decisions, rather than providing an evaluation of completed designs. In this thesis, analysis tools and workflows that are aligned with the rapid, iterative, non-linear design process are proposed to extract contextualized information from a database of parametric simulation results to provide evidence based support for early stage design decisions.