Tajin Biswas

Modeling Water Use for Sustainable Urban Design

Achieving sustainability on an urban scale is an overwhelming problem. We can address this by dividing the problem into manageable proportions. Environmental impacts of urban design fall into measurable categories, for example, air quality, biodiversity, solid wastes, water and wastewater, hazardous materials, and impacts of nonrenewable energy use. Such measures are incorporated into building rating systems as a way of codifying sustainability. In this chapter, to illustrate such codification, we examine water use as well as generated wastewater according to the requirements of a specific sustainable building rating system. Conventional calculations are coupled with building information modeling to illustrate the overall effects of parametrically selecting fixtures, systems and materials to control the use of potable water. We further demonstrate how this approach of combining parametric building information modeling with measures of their environmental impacts can be employed on an urban scale, thereby, guiding the design of sustainable urban spaces.

Data Sharing for Sustainable Building Assessment

Sustainable design assessment requires information, which is aggregated from different phases of a building design, and evaluated according to criteria specified in a ‘sustainable building rating system.’ In the architecture engineering and construction (AEC) domain much of the necessary information is available through open source data standards such as Industry Foundation Classes (IFC). However, no single standard that provides support for sustainability assessment completely suffices as a data structure. This paper explores the augmentation of the Construction Operations Building information exchange (COBie) model, as an intermediary data structure, to bridge between requirements of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system and a building information model. Development of a general framework for data sharing and information management for LEED assessments is illustrated through an implementation of a prototype using functional databases. The prototype checks and augments available data as needed, which is used to populate LEED submission templates.

An online platform to automate LEED energy performance evaluation and submission process

Purpose – This study aims to develop a web-based tool – LEED Energy Performance Online Submission Tool (LEPOST) to reduce the submission cost of the leadership in energy and environmental design (LEED) application process and facilitate green building design. Lifecycle cost reduction is a major driver for designing green buildings. LEED rating system has been well recognised and widely used in the green building industry. However, certification cost incurred in time and money is often a deterrent for some projects. Design/methodology/approach – LEPOST automatically maps EnergyPlus and eQUEST energy simulation results to the LEED energy performance requirement submission templates using an extensible markup language (XML) data structure. It incorporates the Energy Star Target Finder online engine and current utility data to calculate points required to assess LEED Energy and Atmosphere Prerequisite 2 and Credit 1 automatically. Findings – A comparative case study is conducted using an office building proje...