Genetic Algorithms Help to Optimise Passive Building Design

Session 4, Paper 4, CIBSE ASHRAE Technical Symposium, Dublin, Ireland 3-4 April 2014

• Growing use of passive design to meet increasingly demanding energy standards.

• Passive design lowers energy consumption but raises summer overheating risk (increased glazing, insulation and air tightness).

• Simplified "compliance-based" modelling tools cannot evaluate overheating.

• Understanding the trade-off between energy/carbon, cost and comfort using traditional modelling methods is difficult and timeconsuming when considering multiple design variables.