Project Multi-criteria Sustainable Building Design Tool

Archive buildings are the place where the identity of a country is safeguarded. In order to keep the archival collection safe, careful attention should be given to its indoor climate. Therefore, archival regulations define strict ranges for these buildings' temperature (18 +/- 2 oC) and relative humidity (50 +/- 5 %). These strict guidelines result in very high energy consumption, and consequently high energy costs, and frequent maintenance of the energy systems. Therefore, sustainability in designing archive buildings refers to both durable cultural heritage preservation and responsible energy conservation, and consequently, creating a balance between these conflicting goals.

In the early-stage design process of sustainable archive buildings, multi-domain stakeholders such as conservators, architects, building and HVAC engineers, and building performance analysts are present. Since these stakeholders have different backgrounds, the effectiveness of their communications is reduced. Also, it is difficult to estimate the consequences of certain design decisions. However, there are currently no tools and methods to facilitate this design process and enhance stakeholder communications. Therefore, the ultimate aim of this project is to:

Develop a user-friendly Multi-Criteria Decision-Support Tool (MCDMT) for the early-stage design phase of sustainable archive buildings.

The tool has been designed through an iterative design process of performing simulations, creating mock-ups, and getting feedback from relevant stakeholders. This process has been carried out to understand the user needs and the specifications and regulations of archive buildings. Also, simulations have been performed to ensure the tool's reliability and better understand the effect of tool inputs on the trade-offs between paper lifetime and environmental impact. Consequently, requirements have been defined for the project, based on which the tool should be context-specific, user-friendly, and reliable.

The final developed decision support tool (DST) has the reliable building performance simulation (BPS) software, EnergyPlus, as its core simulation engine, and the user-friendly interface is created with streamlit. The tool has multiple inputs related to weather scenarios, building and collection size, building construction properties, paper characteristics, HVAC setpoints, HVAC source type and sizing, ventilation, and PV panels. These tool options help the user to quantify the impact of certain design choices and get familiar with essential design aspects of sustainable archive buildings. All these aspects are provided in an adjusted complexity level for early-stage design and are also made so that stakeholders from different backgrounds and domains can use them. When all inputs are selected, the user clicks the calculation button, the tool runs the modified EnergyPlus file, and the final results get generated. The tool provides outputs related to indoor climate, energy consumption, paper lifetime, and PV yield. The tool user can save these outputs for further comparisons between scenarios. Besides, definitions, help links, instruction videos and documents, and installation guidelines are provided to enhance the user’s experience.

The tool is open-access and is placed on the Gitlab page of TU/e's Building Performance Group (Link tot tool and instructions). Furthermore, outreach activities about the project and sustainable archives in a broader sense were carried out to inform and connect with future users through various platforms.