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Formal simulation model to optimize building sustainability
Fonseca i Casas P., Fonseca i Casas A., Garrido-Soriano N., Casanovas J. Advances in Engineering Software69 62-74,2014.Type:Article
Date Reviewed: Aug 26 2014

This paper presents a topical and innovative application of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU, formerly the International Telephone and Telegraph Consultative Committee (CCITT)) standard specification and description language (SDL) to model and simulate energy use in buildings.

SDL is a graphical language with a fully formal definition, which means that it is both accessible to different members of interdisciplinary teams and is well supported by tools to simulate proposed systems and to generate code for deployment in embedded systems.

A cradle-to-cradle model of the life of a building is built, from materials through production, transport, use, and recycling, and back again to materials. SDL provides a hierarchical structure in which blocks to represent the building and its immediate environment are enclosed in a system, and processes (modeled as extended finite state machines) enable dynamic simulation of the behavior of the building in terms of its structure, climate, energy demand, environmental impact of materials used, and economic costs throughout the life of the building.

The paper presents a case study in which more than 4000 experiments were run on a model of a prototype of highly energy efficient housing. The model was found to be accessible to the interdisciplinary team who carried out the work, and the approach shows promise for future use in modeling social impacts of the built environment and in defining the processes needed to compensate for energy used during the life of the building. The paper includes a small error: SDL the ITU standard (Z.100 series) is not the same as SDL the (more recent) International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard (ISO/IEC 27034-1:2011).

Reviewer:  Edel Sherratt Review #: CR142654 (1411-0966)
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