This paper will present a review, for a range of building design and performance issues, of the visualization language used in building design and in building simulation, and identify the overlaps and divergences in their use. There is a plethora of techniques available ranging from textual data to graphical representation, from 2D drawings to 3D representations, and from static images to interactive animations and virtual reality. The review has been undertaken using taxonomy of visualization techniques based on data type and analytic task.

Many building related products and systems such as insulation, solar shading, reflective roof coverings have an important impact on the energy performance of the building where it is installed. The commercial departments of these manufacturers get more and more inquiries about the energy related advantages of their products. They need specific tools to answer these questions.

The aim of this work is to discuss the effect of urban block and lot design in natural ventilation of self built houses in the city of Campinas, Brazil. The research was carried out with CFD simulation, using the software PHOENICS to calculate air velocities in the external regions of the residences. The case study was a surrounding in the city, the settlement São José, which was urbanized by the public organs having in mind lowincome selfbuilders.

This paper presents the development of an automated energy analysis for GSA and the results of a case study comparing two courthouse design options in the Preliminary Concept Design stage. The purpose of this study is to understand the issues around a BIM-driven concept design process that integrates building simulation for design evaluation.

The transient accessibility of supply air (TASA) and transient accessibility of contaminant source (TACS) in ventilated rooms are important indices to evaluate the effect of ventilation and the indoor air quality (IAQ). These indices can be measured by experimental method or calculated with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tools. Compared to the measurement method, the numerical method has a lot of advantages such as fast, flexible and with detailed data. In this paper, the calculation and validation of the TASA and TACS are introduced.

In the article the authors present the results of heating and cooling energy usage of earth-sheltered houses with exposed southern elevations. The results were then compared to a conventional above-ground building.

This paper presents the development of a model, using TRNSYS, of a large central cooling and heating plant. The model includes the chillers, cooling towers and pumps of the chilled water loop, and the heat recovery system from the chillers. The model is calibrated with monitored data of June 23rd to June 29th, 2008, and then tested with data over the summer season, from June 23 to September 21, 2008.

This paper established a demand control ventilation (DCV) strategy for subway platform. Firstly, steady-state CFD simulation was carried out to predict the space CO2 distribution in the platform. Secondly, both CO2 control point and base ventilation rate were determined. Then authors developed a DCV dynamic model by control processing simulation. The simulation results show that using this ventilation strategy can achieve an acceptable indoor air quality.

In this paper, the results of simulating the cooling energy demand of a reference shophouse in Jakarta, Indonesia are presented. The building reference is a two-storey shophouse, of which ground floor is used as a shop and upper floor as a dwelling. The simulation and visualization tool used was DesignBuilder v.1.8 (www.designbuilder.co.uk, 2008), an Energy Plus based dynamic thermal simulation engine. First of all, a reference building was simulated, in order to obtain its cooling energy demand.

Using a simulation application and a sample of five existing office buildings, we parametrically explored building features and measures that could improve the thermal performance of office buildings in Kumasi, Ghana. To improve the reliability of the simulation results, the simulation models were calibrated using long-term continuous measurements on environmental conditions (air temperature, relative humidity) inside and in the immediate vicinity of the selected objects. The simulation results demonstrate that changes in the building fabric (e.g.