When supply meets demand
Development of a city-wide building energy model for Boston
Christoph Reinhart
German American Smart Buildings Symposium – June 16 2015
Brianne Coston (BS)
Carlos Cerezo (PhD)
Timur Dogan (PhD)
Ali Irani (BS)
Nathaniel Jones (PhD)
Aiko Nagano (SMBT)
Christoph Reinhart
Cody Rose (SMBT)
Tarek Rakha (PhD)
Manos Saratsis (SMARCHS)
Julia Sokol (MechE)
“Our research goal is to change current sustainable design practice by
developing, validating and testing workflows and metrics that lead to
improved design solutions as far as occupant comfort and health as well
as building energy use are concerned. The premise of this work is that an
informed decision is a better decision.”
web.mit.edu/SustainableDesignLab
Building Performance Simulation
Building Performance Simulation: An computer-based attempt to model
the various energy and mass flows within a building in order to predict
one or several performance aspects of a design.
Operational Energy
Return on Investment
Solar Radiation
Occupant Comfort
Daylight
Walkability
Why BPS?
 To demonstrate code compliance and to reduce risk. (Think of
LEED Green building Certification.)
 To compare different design variants.
How often does that happen?
Question to Architects: “How frequently do simulation results influence the
design of your buildings?”
Paper
H W Samuelson, A Lantz and C F Reinhart, "Non-technical barriers to energy model sharing
and reuse", Building and Environment, 54, pp. 71-76, 2012.
Do today’s simulation programs
work?
ASHRAE thinks so.
Purpose of the Standard
 Analyzing and diagnosing building
energy
simulation
software
using
software-to-software and software-toanalytical-solution comparisons.
 Checking a program against a previous
version of itself after internal code
modifications such as an algorithmic
change.
ASHRAE 140 -2007 Standard
Method for the Evaluation of
Building Energy Analysis
Computer Programs
Uncle Sam thinks so, too.
Tax Deduction Information
Under IRS rules, taxpayers' building energy use performance must be
calculated using software that has been tested according to
ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 140 to qualify for tax deductions.
Comparison of measured and simulated
energy use for 97 LEED Buildings
Model uncertainty from weather, infiltration rate, usage schedule
and occupant behavior.
Paper
H W Samuelson, A Lantz and C F Reinhart, "Non-technical barriers to energy model sharing and reuse",
Building and Environment, 54, pp. 71-76, 2012.
But, models can be calibrated
450
DesignPhase
Models
Measured EUI (kWh/m2)
11
350
7
15
10
8
18
Final
PartiallyCalibrated
Models
1 16
250
4
9
12
6
13
17
14
2
150
# Building
Number
5
3
450
350
250
150
50
50
Predicted EUI (kWh/m 2)
Paper: H W Samuelson, A Ghorayshib & C F Reinhart, 2014, “Analysis of a Simplified Building
Energy Model Calibration Procedure for 18 Real-World Case Studies, submitted to the Journal of
Building Performance Simulation
Urban Modeling
Our task is to house 1.6
billion new city
dwellers in 16 years or
two million a week.
*) Grimond, J, 2007, The world goes to town, The Economist, May 5th 2007
Source: WIKI UN 2010 Projections
From homo sapiens to homo urbanus*
How do we live?
Goal
To develop an urban modeling platform to design and
improve new and existing neighborhoods regarding multiple
measures of urban sustainability including operational
energy use, daylighting, outdoor comfort and sustainable
transportation.
Informal Settlement
in Rio
Suburbs in Shanghai
Operational Energy
Operational Energy
Mobility
Mobility
Comfort
Comfort
Back Bay, Boston
Daylight
Daylight
Costs
Costs
Embodied Energy
Embodied Energy
Forum Vaubin, Freiburg, Germany
Combining Big Data and BPS
Photo of the MIT Campus (Google Maps).
LiDAR Data of the MIT Campus
3 dimensional point cloud (126 million points).
3D Model of the MIT Campus
Generation of a 3D model through surface triangulation.
Solar Radiation Map
Cumulative annual solar radiation.
mapdwell LLC
DIVA DAY 2013 at Thornton Tomasetti, NYC
 In 2013 we formed an MIT spinoff that develops interactive maps to
predict the potential to install PV on urban rooftops.
http://en.mapdwell.com/
 In 2014 the mapdwell map of Wellfleet, MA, supported a communitydriven solarize program: Within 3 months 10% of all households went
solar.
umi
BT Weather station on top of the MIT Green Building
 The new LEED Daylighting Credit based on spatial Daylight Autonomy
was originally developed by Christoph Reinhart and is now formalized
into a IESNA Lighting Measurement Standard.
 umi version 2.0 was released in November 2014.
http://urbanmodellinginterface.ning.com/
Workflow
 umi is a plugin for the NURBS Modeler Rhinoceros 5
Paper: C F Reinhart T Dogan, J A Jakubiec, T Rakha, A and A Sang, “umi – An urban simulation
environment for building energy use, daylighting and walkability,” Proceedings of Building Simulation
2013, Chambery , France, August 2013.
Workflow
 umi converts an urban massing model…
Workflow
 … into an urban energy model…
Workflow
 … which can be used as a design tool to improve individual or
groups of buildings …
Workflow
Cumulative Electricity and Gas Use for a Neighborhood
 … or to develop better energy supply solutions such as
microgrids.
How does it work?
1. Design a building form
2. Assign energy templates and 3. Simulation model constructed
fenestration information
Paper: C Cerezo, T Dogan and C F Reinhart, “A New Library File Format and Tool for Building
Simulation Template Editing, Management and Exchange,” Proceedings of 2014 ASHRAE/IBPSA-USA
Building Simulation Conference, Atlanta, GA, September 10-12, 2014
Autozoner
Improved Zoning Algorithms
Paper: T Dogan, C F Reinhart and M Panagotis, “Autozoner: An algorithm for automatic thermal
zoning of buildings with unknown interior space definitions,” Journal of Building Performance
Simulation (in press)
How reliable are the resulting urban
building energy models (UBEM)?
UBEM Workflow
Block 8 Al Quidiziah, Kuwait City
SECTION 8
18 blocks
220 villas
205,000 m2
Al Qadisiyah district, Kuwait City
200 houses
Measured Energy Use
Paper: C Cerezo, J Sokol, C F Reinhart, A Al-Mumin, “Comparison of three methods for the characterization of building
archetypes in urban scale energy simulation. The case study of a residential neighborhood in Kuwait,” submitted to Building
Simulation 2015
Block 8 Al Quidiziah, Kuwait City
1 Building Type from Literature
Paper: C Cerezo, J Sokol, C F Reinhart, A Al-Mumin, “Comparison of three methods for the characterization of building
archetypes in urban scale energy simulation. The case study of a residential neighborhood in Kuwait,” submitted to Building
Simulation 2015
Block 8 Al Quidiziah, Kuwait City
2010s code villa
1960/70s retrofitted villa
Different Building Types from Neighborhood Walkthroughs
Paper: C Cerezo, J Sokol, C F Reinhart, A Al-Mumin, “Comparison of three methods for the characterization of building
archetypes in urban scale energy simulation. The case study of a residential neighborhood in Kuwait,” submitted to Building
Simulation 2015
Block 8 Al Quidiziah, Kuwait City
Savings form retrofitting measures
1 Building Type from Literature
4 Building Types from
Neighborhood Walkthroughs
Occupancy Behavior Model
Paper: C Cerezo, J Sokol, C F Reinhart, A Al-Mumin, “Comparison of three methods for the characterization of building
archetypes in urban scale energy simulation. The case study of a residential neighborhood in Kuwait,” submitted to Building
Simulation 2015
Net Zero Growth
Aiko Nakano, Denise Rivas, Manos Saratsis, Julia Sokol
MIT Office For Sustainability
Modeling
the MIT Campus
Testing SIMLIB
MIT Campus Energy Model
MIT campus energy model (Source: Nakano A, D Rivas, E Saratsis and J Sokol, 2014)
Paper: C F Reinhart, “Managing Building Energy-Efficiency at the Neighborhood/Campus Level,” MIT Energy Initiative White
Paper for: Large Opportunities, Complex Challenges: Seizing the Energy Efficiency Opportunity in the Commercial Buildings
Sector, May 2014.
Boston Building Energy Study
 In collaboration with the Boston Redevelopment Authority with support from the
Massachusetts Clean Energy Center we are scaling our modeling capabilities
up to whole cities. The final Boston model will include over 100,000 buildings.
 Together with Lincoln Laboratory we are exploring new energy supply
technologies for Boston such a mircogrids and district heating/cooling.
Embodied Energy
Source: Carlos Cerezo
Embodied Energy
 umi can also be used to predict the embodied energy use of a
neighborhood.
Paper: C Cerezo and C F Reinhart, “Urban energy lifecycle: An analytical framework to evaluate the
embodied energy use of urban developments,” Proceedings of Building Simulation 2014, Chamberry,
France, August 2013
Daylighting
 Other outputs are access to daylight throughout a neighborhood,…
Paper: T Dogan and C F Reinhart, “Urban daylight simulation: Calculating the daylit area of urban
designs’,” Proceedings of SimBuild 2012, Madison, Wisconsin, USA
umi - Outdoor Comfort
Tair > 28 °C & dir solar
Tair < 5 °C & without dir solar
hours / yr
 … outdoor comfort conditions throughout the year,…
hours / yr
Riyadh Study – Interactivity
Impression for a test use of the interface at the ADA in March 2015
 Between 2013 and 2015 we collaborated with the KACST-MIT CCSE and the MIT
Media Lab on a tangible user interface that supports the interactive development
of sustainability concepts by non-experts based on building energy costs, access
to natural light and walkability suing a custom Saudi-Index.
Paper: C M Rose, M Saratsis, S Aldawood, T Dogan , C F Reinhart, “A tangible interface for collaborative urban design for
energy-efficiency, daylighting and walkability,” submitted to Building Simulation 2015
Closing Thoughts
 Information based design (using BPS) is diffusing into decisionmaking processes at all levels related to the built environment from
architecture to urban planning and policy.
 We need to educate stakeholders, practitioners and students as to
what the capabilities and limitations of these tools are.
 BPS will become a common tool linked to GIS and BIM to design and
maintain our built environment.
Thank You
Contact
Christoph Reinhart
Associate Professor MIT
Email: creinhart@mit.edu
MIT Sustainable Design Lab
Carlos Cerezo
Timur Dogan
Jeff Geisinger
Nathaniel Jones
Aiko Nagano
Tarek Rakha
Cody Rose
Manaos Saratsis
Julia Sokol
Modeling Urban Sustainability - Energy, Daylight and Walkability
August 17-21 2015
Ex Ed Program MIT Architecture
http://architecture.mit.edu/event/modeling-urban-sustainabilityenergy-daylight-and-walkability
Solemma LLC
Alstan Jakubiec
Kera Lagios
Jeff Niemasz
Jon Sargent
Mapdwell LLC
Eduardo Berlin
Alstan Jakubiec
Nicolás Waissbluth
Alumni
Karthik Dondeti, Elliot Glassman, Seth Holmes, Cynthia Kwan, Diego Ibarra, Alstan Jakubiec, Rohit
Manudhane, Rashida Mogri, Azadeh Omidfar, Debashree Pal, Krista Palen, Tiffany Otis, Holly W
Samuelson, Jennifer Sze, John Sullivan