Sensitivity Analysis Applied in Design of Low Energy Office Building

Building performance can be expressed bydifferent indicators as primary energy use,environmental load andlor the indoorenvironmental quality and a building performancesimulation can provide the decision maker with aquantitative measure of the extent to which anintegrated design solution satisfies the designrequirements and objectives.In the design of sustainable Buildings it isbeneficial to identify the most important designparameters in order to develop more efficientlyalternative design solutions or reach optimizeddesign solutions.A sensitivity analysis makes it possible to identifythe most important parameters in relation tobuilding performance and to focus design andoptimization of sustainable buildings on thesefewer, but most important parameters. Thesensitivity analyses will typically be performed ata reasonably early stage of the building designprocess, where it is still possible to influence theimportant parameters. The methodology ispresented and an application example is given fordesign of an office building in Denmark.