Improving the energy performance of the built environment: The potential of virtual collaborative life cycle tools

Advances in information and communication technologies [ICTs] offer the opportunity to improve the way energy profiling tools and techniques are used to measure and inform the energy performance of buildings throughout their life cycle. The exploitation of this potential is one of the goals of a current EU FP7 funded project, entitled "IntUBE - Intelligent Use of Buildings' Energy Information". The overall aim of the project is to improve the energy performance of new and existing buildings via the intelligent use of buildings' energy information. The main aim the energy profiling research being conducted as part of the IntUBE project is to contribute to the development of virtual collaborative 'life cycle' building tools to support energy efficient building design, operation and retrofit. In order to illustrate how this may be achieved this paper defines the functions of energy simulations within the IntUBE system, outlines the systems architecture necessary to those functions and presents a case study illustrating some of the functionality under development. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.