Sustainable Building Optimization Model for Early-Stage Design

Buildings represent the largest potential for carbon reduction worldwide. This highlights the need for a simulation and optimization method for energy management. The early design stage of buildings represents an important phase in which choices can be made to optimize design parameters. These parameters can focus on multiple areas, including energy and thermal comfort. This paper introduces the optimization of early-stage sustainable building design considering end-user energy consumption. It proposes an optimization model that integrates multiple layers, which consist of a parametric energy simulation, artificial neural network, and genetic algorithm. The proposed optimization model considers a single objective function to obtain the optimal design. The targeted goal is to obtain minimal energy consumption for residential buildings during the early design stages. Key design parameters of the building were identified for optimization and feasible ranges for them were obtained using genetic algorithms. Finally, the results of this paper include the identification of the optimal building design for the thermal comfort analysis and optimal energy performance. The model was applied to a case study in Egypt and the results showed that using the developed optimization model can lead to a 25% reduction in energy consumption.