An Integrated HBIM Simulation Approach for Energy Retrofit of Historical Buildings Implemented in a Case Study of a Medieval Fortress in Italy

The Italian building stock consists of buildings mainly constructed until the mid-20th century using pre-industrial construction techniques. These buildings require energy refurbishment that takes into account the preservation of their architectural heritage. In this view, this work studies an innovative integrated modelling and simulation framework consisting of the implementation of Historical Building Information Modeling (HBIM) for the energy retrofit of historical buildings with renewable geothermal HVAC system. To this aim, the field case study is part of a medieval complex in Central Italy (Perugia), as representative ancient rural offshore architecture in the European countryside. The system involves of a ground source heat pump, a water tank for thermal-energy storage connected to a low-temperature radiant system, and an air-handling unit. The building heating energy performance, typically influenced by thermal inertia in historical buildings, when coupled to the novel HVAC system, is comparatively assessed against a traditional scenario implementing a natural-gas boiler, and made inter-operative within the HBIM ad hoc platform. Results show that the innovative renewable energy system provides relevant benefits while preserving minor visual and architectural impact within the historical complex, and also in terms of both energy saving, CO2 emissions offset, and operation costs compared to the traditional existing system. The integrated HBIM approach may effectively drive the path toward regeneration and re-functioning of heritage in Europe.

Download Full-text

Facility Energy Management Application of HBIM for Historical Low-Carbon Communities: Design, Modelling and Operation Control of Geothermal Energy Retrofit in a Real Italian Case Study

Energies ◽

10.3390/en13236338 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 13 (23) ◽

pp. 6338

Author(s):

Cristina Piselli ◽

Alessio Guastaveglia ◽

Jessica Romanelli ◽

Franco Cotana ◽

Anna Laura Pisello

Keyword(s):

Central Italy ◽

Energy Performance ◽

Information Modeling ◽

Geothermal System ◽

Historical Buildings ◽

Building Stock ◽

Energy Retrofit ◽

Adsorption Heat Pump ◽

Heritage Buildings

The highest challenge of energy efficiency of building stock is achieving improved performance in existing buildings and, especially, in heritage buildings which per se are characterized by massive limitations against the implementation of the most sophisticated solutions for energy saving. In Italy, historical buildings represent more than 30% of the building stock and the vast majority require energy retrofit, while ensuring the preservation of the heritage value and acceptable comfort conditions. In this context, historical buildings must be retrofitted and re-functioned by introducing innovative technologies aimed at reducing energy consumption and improving human comfort, health, and safety. To this aim, this study implements the Historic Building Information Modeling (HBIM) approach for the integrated modeling, monitoring, management, and maintenance of a novel geothermal system involving horizontal ground source heat exchangers (GHEXs) coupled to an adsorption heat pump for the energy refurbishment of historical buildings. In detail, a rural building part of a medieval complex in Perugia, Central Italy, is considered as a pilot case study. The analysis stresses the potential of the Facility Management (FM) applications of HBIM to provide a tool for the human-centric operational management control of the building energy performance and indoor comfort when combined with the building monitoring and supervision system. Therefore, this integrated HBIM approach may drive the path towards the user-centric re-functioning of heritage buildings.

Download Full-text

A case study to explore the synergy between HBIM and BEM for maintenance of historical buildings

International Journal of Building Pathology and Adaptation ◽

10.1108/ijbpa-03-2021-0033 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽

Author(s):

Ana Carolina Franco De Oliveira ◽

Cristiano Saad Travassos do Carmo ◽

Alexandre Santana Cruz ◽

Renata Gonçalves Faisca

Keyword(s):

Energy Consumption ◽

Building Information Modeling ◽

Energy Performance ◽

Energy Modeling ◽

Information Modeling ◽

Historical Buildings ◽

Content Type ◽

Building Information ◽

Terrestrial Photogrammetry

PurposeIn developing countries, such as Brazil, the construction sector is consistently focused on the construction of new buildings, and there is no dissemination of the preservation, restoration and maintenance of historic buildings. Idle buildings, due to the use and lack of maintenance, present pathological manifestations, such as moisture problems that compromise specially their thermal and energy performance. With this in mind, the purpose of this work is to create a digital model using terrestrial photogrammetry and suggest retrofit interventions based on computer simulation to improve the thermal and energy performance of a historical building.Design/methodology/approachThe proposed methodology combined terrestrial photogrammetry using common smartphones and commercial software for historical buildings with building information modeling (historic building information modeling (HBIM)) and building energy modeling (BEM). The approach follows five steps: planning, site visit, data processing, data modeling and results. Also, as a case study, the School of Architecture and Urbanism of the Fluminense Federal University, built in 1888, was chosen to validate the approach.FindingsA digital map of pathological manifestations in the HBIM model was developed, and interventions considering the application of expanded polystyrene in the envelope to reduce energy consumption were outlined. From the synergy between HBIM and BEM, it was concluded that the information modeled using photogrammetry was fundamental to create the energy model, and simulations were needed to optimize the possible solutions in terms of energy consumption.Originality/valueFirstly, the work proposes a reasonable methodology to be applied in development countries without sophisticated technologies, but with acceptable precision for the study purpose. Secondly, the presented study shows that the use of HBIM for energy modeling proved to be useful to simulate possible solutions that optimize the thermal and energy performance.

Download Full-text

Integrated Seismic and Energy Retrofit Interventions on a URM Masonry Building: The Case Study of the Former Courthouse in Fabriano

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13179592 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (17) ◽

pp. 9592

Author(s):

Amedeo Caprino ◽

Filippo Lorenzoni ◽

Laura Carnieletto ◽

Leonardo Feletto ◽

Michele De Carli ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Seismic Vulnerability ◽

Central Italy ◽

Unreinforced Masonry ◽

Performance Criteria ◽

Masonry Building ◽

Seismic Capacity ◽

Building Stock ◽

Energy Retrofit ◽

Regulatory Frameworks

Following the 2016 central Italy earthquakes, the high seismic vulnerability of existing buildings is once again at the center of the debate. Indeed, the majority of the Italian building stock (around 60%) was built before adopting the first seismic provisions (1974) and in a territory entirely characterized by medium to high levels of seismic hazard. On the other hand, the first provisions addressing thermal performance criteria were introduced in 1976 but with limited impact. A consistent reduction in energy consumption was further achieved in 1991, when even more buildings were erected. As a consequence, the Italian building stock is characterized by reduced seismic capacity and poor energy efficiency and, to optimize the available resources, combined retrofit interventions approaches are required. In this context, a synergic strategy for the seismic and energy retrofit of a unreinforced masonry (URM) building was proposed. The former Courthouse in Fabriano (Ancona, Marche), a strategic, three-story, unreinforced masonry building in the network of permanent monitoring systems of the Italian Department of Civil Protection, was selected as a case study. The overall effectiveness of various solutions of combined structural refurbishment and energy retrofit interventions, having different levels of invasiveness on the building, was assessed. In addition, a common methodology based on the expected annual losses allowed evaluating the financial feasibility of the proposed integrated interventions and estimating the changes in the return of the retrofitting investment in various seismic and climate zones. The results also show how the payback period could be significantly reduced by incentives and regulatory frameworks that currently favour the execution of integrated interventions.

Download Full-text

Decision-Making Processes in Controlling Exposure to Sunlight Supported by Simulation Tools: A Case Study in Warm Weather

Energies ◽

10.3390/en14144100 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 14 (14) ◽

pp. 4100

Author(s):

Mariana Huskinson ◽

Antonio Galiano-Garrigós ◽

Ángel Benigno González-Avilés ◽

M. Isabel Pérez-Millán

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Global Analysis ◽

Energy Performance ◽

Information Modeling ◽

The European Union ◽

Evaluation Tool ◽

Simulation Tools ◽

Building Information ◽

The Impact

Improving the energy performance of existing buildings is one of the main strategies defined by the European Union to reduce global energy costs. Amongst the actions to be carried out in buildings to achieve this objective is working with passive measures adapted to each type of climate. To assist designers in the process of finding appropriate solutions for each building and location, different tools have been developed and since the implementation of building information modeling (BIM), it has been possible to perform an analysis of a building’s life cycle from an energy perspective and other types of analysis such as a comfort analysis. In the case of Spain, the first BIM environment tool has been implemented that deals with the global analysis of a building’s behavior and serves as an alternative to previous methods characterized by their lack of both flexibility and information offered to designers. This paper evaluates and compares the official Spanish energy performance evaluation tool (Cypetherm) released in 2018 using a case study involving the installation of sunlight control devices as part of a building refurbishment. It is intended to determine how databases and simplifications affect the designer’s decision-making. Additionally, the yielded energy results are complemented by a comfort analysis to explore the impact of these improvements from a users’ wellbeing viewpoint. At the end of the process the yielded results still confirm that the simulation remains far from reality and that simulation tools can indeed influence the decision-making process.

Download Full-text

Energy Rehabilitation of Social Housing in Vulnerable Areas. Case study: a 1950s Building in a Medium-sized Mediterranean City

International Journal of Environmental Science & Sustainable Development ◽

10.21625/essd.v4i1.490 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

pp. 44

Author(s):

Ruá María José ◽

Huedo Patricia ◽

Cabeza Manuel ◽

Saez Beatriz ◽

Civera Vicente

Keyword(s):

Low Income ◽

Social Housing ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Optimal Solution ◽

Energy Performance ◽

Urban Context ◽

Building Stock ◽

Performance Simulation ◽

Urban Level

In the urban context, buildings play a key role as they are energy consumers. In well-established cities with a high percentage of aged building stock, the focus should lie on sensitive urban areas where the weakest population sectors and the worst physico-economic conditions are usually encountered. In this work, the energy refurbishment of social housing is proposed. A block of municipally owned buildings is selected as a case study to consider that public buildings play an exemplary role according to Directive 2012/27/EU. The group is formed by 12 buildings, which account for 120 dwellings.This study is grounded on two levels. First the urban level. The building is located in a prioritised urban Area of Rehabilitation, Renovation and Urban Regeneration (ARRU), according to the new local Land Plan. This area presents multidimensional vulnerability and considers urban, building, socio-demographic and socio-economic features. Second, the building presents very low energy performance. It was built in 1959 when a high demand of dwellings and the economic resources then available led to low-quality buildings that are far from meeting today’s standards.Some proposals are made, having in mind the specific features of the urban context. The energy refurbishment of the building is proposed, selecting the optimal solution, considering technical, environmental and economic criteria. The energy performance simulation shows a remarkable improvement of the energy performance, resulting in an improvement of the thermal comfort of the dwellers. Besides, a reduction in the energy consumption is reached, which would reduce the energy bills and, on the other hand, a reduction of the carbon emissions to the atmosphere, contributing to a better environment quality. Having in mind that the building is intended for social housing, energy poverty situations could be avoided, as dwellings are inhabited by low-income dwellers.

Download Full-text

Urban building energy modeling considering the heterogeneity of HVAC system stock: A case study on Japanese office building stock

Energy and Buildings ◽

10.1016/j.enbuild.2019.109590 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 207 ◽

pp. 109590

Author(s):

Bumjoon Kim ◽

Yohei Yamaguchi ◽

Shun Kimura ◽

Yumei Ko ◽

Kosuke Ikeda ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Building Energy ◽

Energy Modeling ◽

Office Building ◽

Hvac System ◽

Building Energy Modeling ◽

Building Stock

Download Full-text

Outsourcing energy retrofitting of hotel buildings: the decision-making process

MATEC Web of Conferences ◽

10.1051/matecconf/201926601016 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 266 ◽

pp. 01016 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

M.F.F. Fasna ◽

Sachie Gunatilake

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Energy Performance ◽

Decision Making Process ◽

Existing Buildings ◽

Energy Retrofit ◽

Energy Efficiency Improvement ◽

Adoption And Implementation ◽

Energy Service ◽

The Right

Poor energy performance of existing buildings worldwide has led to a crucial need to retrofit existing buildings to minimise energy consumption. Among the existing buildings, hotels use as much as 50% of their total expenses on energy and offer significant opportunities for energy efficiency improvement. Yet, comparatively the level of implementation of energy retrofits found to be low, which has attributed to, inter alia, the absence of a clearly defined process for ensuring the delivery of energy retrofit projects and lack of proactive guidance for project teams to ensure that they make the right decisions at the right time to achieve the desired outcomes. Since many energy retrofit projects in existing hotels are carried out with the involvement of an external contractor, or an Energy Service Company (ESCO), this study focuses on investigating the decision-making process in implementing energy retrofits when the project is outsourced to an external party. An in-depth case study is used to obtain insights into the critical decisions to be taken and key activities to be performed throughout the decision-making process. The findings are used to propose a step-by-step decision-making process comprising of three key phases: i.e., pre-retrofit, retrofit implementation and post-retrofit. It is hoped that the decision-making process developed in this study will serve as a roadmap for the effective adoption and implementation of energy retrofits in existing hotel buildings when an external contractor is involved.

Download Full-text

The application of the EN ISO 52016 standard and its Italian National Annex to assess the heating and cooling needs of a reference office building

E3S Web of Conferences ◽

10.1051/e3sconf/202131206003 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 312 ◽

pp. 06003

Author(s):

Franz Bianco Mauthe Degerfeld ◽

Ilaria Ballarini ◽

Giovanna De Luca ◽

Vincenzo Corrado

Keyword(s):

Building Energy ◽

Energy Performance ◽

Office Building ◽

Dynamic Calculation ◽

Building Stock ◽

Existing Building ◽

Building Energy Performance ◽

Heating And Cooling ◽

Energy Simulations

The EN ISO 52016-1 standard presents a new simplified dynamic calculation procedure, whose aim is to provide an accurate energy performance assessment without excessively increasing the number of data required. The Italian National Annex to EN ISO 52016-1, currently under development, provides some improvements to the hourly calculation method; despite many works can be found in literature on the hourly model of EN ISO 52016-1, the National Annexes application has not been sufficiently analysed yet. The aim of the present work is to assess the main improvements introduced by the Italian National Annex and to compare the main results, in terms of energy need for space heating and cooling. To this purpose, an existing building representative of the Italian office building stock in Northern Italy was selected as a case study. The energy simulations were carried out considering both continuous and reduced operation of the HVAC systems. The options specified in the Italian National Annex were firstly applied one by one, and then all together. The variation of the energy need compared to the international base procedure is finally quantified. For the premises and the scope above discussed, the present work is intended to enhance the standardisation activity towards the adoption of more accurate and trustable calculation methods of the building energy performance.

Download Full-text

Energy Efficient Improvements of Existing Buildings through Building Envelope Upgrade Case Study of High Rise Block of Flats on 76, Boulevard Partizanski Odredi in Karpos IV, Skopje

South East European Journal of Architecture and Design ◽

10.3889/seejad.2016.10020 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 2016 ◽

pp. 1-180

Author(s):

Katerina Petrushevska

Keyword(s):

Energy Efficiency ◽

Energy Efficient ◽

Energy Performance ◽

Building Envelope ◽

Living Room ◽

Building Stock ◽

Existing Building ◽

High Rise ◽

Class B

AIM: This research examines the important issue of energy efficient improvements to the existing building stock through building envelope upgrade. To facilitate this, the energy performance characteristics of the existing building stock were identified with a view to establishing an existing building stock type, where building envelope upgrades can contribute to a higher level of energy efficiency improvements. The literature review along with the selected building precedents was used to establish the best current practice for building envelope upgrades.MATERIAL AND METHODS: Established building precedents and identified best practice for building envelope upgrade, a high rise block of flats was identified and used as a case study, with the current and predicted, following building envelope upgrade, energy performance of the building calculated. This has allowed us to identify the possible energy efficiency improvements for this type of building following the building envelope upgrade. RESULTS: In the projected case, the building with energy class - "D" become class "B". In addition, increased quality of the living room in the attic was enabled. It was possible to obtain a decrease of the heating energy from 130.76 kWh/m²a to 37.73 kWh/m²a or to jump in the class "B" of energetic passport.CONCLUSION: This research contributes to the local implementation of the global agenda for sustainable development, design and construction, and it demonstrates the possible way and level of energy efficiency improvements to the least efficient building stock through existing building envelope upgrade.

Download Full-text