Jean-Marie Hauglustaine

Multicriteria and Multiple Actors Tool Aiding to Optimise Building Envelope at the Architectural Sketch Design

The PC software AMCE is proposing building actors (owner, project authors ...) a Mul- tiple Criteria Decision Aid procedure (MCDA) to optimise the building envelope about cost and energy performances, during the sketch design. Two main modules are linked, where the user interactively goes: - the first one manages parameters describing the project requirements; - the graphic pen-based module allows to draw the sketch; it calculates geometric parameter values and put them back in the first module. Permanently informed on forseeable performances, the user can any time search for optimal sce- nario giving best satisfaction (monoactor optimisation) or most preferred compromise (muliactors optimisation).

European Passive Solar Modelling Sub-Group

The task of selecting reliable computer programs to simulate the performance of passive solar buildings has been assigned to a specialized subgroup. This group has selected a detailed program for large computers, which will be used as a reference for the analysis of a set of simple models. those for mini/micro computers, pocket calculators, and manual calculations.

Interactive tool visualising and optimising building envelope performances during the architectural sketch design

The PC software AMCE provides building actors (owner, project authors...) with a multiple criteria decision aid (MCDA) procedure to optimise the building envelope cost and energy performance, during sketch design, when most important choices are fixed. Two main modules are linked: (i) the first manages parameters describing the project requirements; (ii) the graphic pen-based module allows one to draw the sketch, it calculates geometric parameter values and puts them back in the first module. Informed about foreseeable performances, the user can, at any time, search for the optimal scenario giving the best satisfaction (monoactor optimisation) or most preferred compromise (multiactor optimisation), he is given a lot of graphs illustrating the performance sensitivity to parameter variations, as well as an optimisation procedure using a genetic algorithm to find the most efficient parameter set.

Computer aided design of low-energy houses: practial experience of designing, building and monitoring 25 houses on site

A first research work carried out for the Commission of the European Communities has produced a manual design methodology (1). Mainly orientated to the conception of low-cost houses, it integrates some fundamental thermal concepts into the design process.