James O Donnell

University College Dublin | UCD · School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering

Interactions between built infrastructure are complex and nuanced; changes to any one component can have disproportionate effects on the system as a whole. For instance, adoption of heat pumps or electric vehicles by a significant proportion of a population in an urban centre would place new demands on both electricity transmission and distribution...

Increased urban air temperature considerably affects the health, comfort and consequently the quality of life in urban spaces. Urban design and planning studies, therefore, face an increasing challenge as they aim to improve Outdoor Thermal Comfort (OTC) and microclimate conditions of urban environments. Analysing OTC is more challenging when compa...

Purpose Effective information management can help real estate operators improve asset performance during use, reducing environmental impact. The purpose of this exploratory study is to identify and prioritise key drivers, challenges and opportunities relating to information management, from the point of view of a diverse cohort of facilities practi...

In the context of the European building stock, more than 50 % of buildings were built before 1960, and it has been estimated that 75 % of the current building stock will still exist in 2050. A typical approach to estimate energy consumption at multiple scales is by using archetypes which are the cohort of representative buildings with similar chara...

The development of building energy performance simulation models often requires significant time and effort to achieve an acceptable degree of prediction accuracy. As such, energy modelers introduce various simplifications and assumptions that require a high degree of modeling literacy to avoid any errors in energy predictions. Previous studies rel...

Occupancy information plays a key role in analysing and improving building energy performance. The advances of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies have engendered a shift in measuring building occupancy with IoT sensors, in which cameras in Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) systems can provide richer measurements. However, existing camera-based oc...

Climate change, increasing emissions and rising global temperatures have gradually affected the way we think about the future of our planet. Urban areas possess significant potential for reducing the energy consumption of the overall energy system. In recent years, there is an increasing number of research initiatives related to Urban Building Ener...

We investigate the use of Semantic Web Technologies within the Facilities Management domain. Though the technologies are seeing application within industry, we find that little research has focussed on the practitioner viewpoint to-date, an avenue for future work.

Demand Side Management (DSM) programmes promote energy flexibility, cost reduction and resilience in both grids and buildings, which can be supported by integrating Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Building Automation System (BAS). Despite recent advances in the field, research to date remains limited in defining data requirement structures...

Grey-box models are extensively employed in building energy simulations. Although these models bridge the gap between statistical and physical modeling, grey-box model development is typically case-specific. The non-scalable nature is tackled through reduced-order lumped-parameter model identification using influential building metrics. This study,...

With a drive towards achieving an integrated energy system, there is a need for holistic and scalable building modelling approaches for the commercial building stock. Existing grey-box modelling approaches often fail to produce a generalised network structure, which limits the suitability of models for different applications. Furthermore, existing...

The world has witnessed a significant population shift to urban areas over the past few decades. Urban areas account for about two-thirds of the world’s total primary energy consumption, of which the urban building sector constitutes a significant proportion approximately 40%. Stakeholders such as urban planners and policy makers face substantial c...

Cross-domain information is essential for building energy performance assessment. The heterogeneous nature of this information is a major source for inefficient assessments. The semantic web provides a flexible pathway for addressing recognised interoperability issues. However, further implicit knowledge in cross-domain information could provide me...

Buildings now incorporate increasing levels of renewable energy to the point where net zero energy buildings (NetZEBs) and net zero energy clusters (NetZECs) have the potential to become widely used. Information exchange among stakeholders is essential to enable energy sharing among buildings that form a NetZECs. However, traditional, centralised e...

The Insights Series has been developed to highlight key findings arising from Energy Systems Integration Partnership Programme (ESIPP) research in decarbonised energy systems. These publications share new insights into various aspects of energy decarbonisation that have been gained from a multidisciplinary team of researchers in ESIPP from institut...

The evolution of information and communication technology in the construction domain has yielded a variety of heterogeneous data sources. While bespoke approaches have been developed to explore data merging for a variety of purposes, few have explored how to develop a multipurpose information organisation that can be reconfigured on a per-project b...

Urban planners, local authorities, and energy policymakers often develop strategic sustainable energy plans for the urban building stock in order to minimize overall energy consumption and emissions. Planning at such scales could be informed by building stock modeling using existing building data and Geographic Information System-based mapping. How...

The Insights Series has been developed to highlight key findings arising from Energy Systems Integration Partnership Programme (ESIPP) research in decarbonised energy systems. These publications share new insights into various aspects of energy decarbonisation that have been gained from a multidisciplinary team of researchers in ESIPP from institut...

The sophistication of building energy performance tools has significantly increased the number of user inputs and parameters used to define energy models. There are numerous sources of uncertainty in model parameters which exhibit varied characteristics. Therefore, uncertainty analysis is crucial to ensure the validity of simulation results when as...

This paper addresses the increasing number of disparate data resources used for urban modelling. The objective of this work is to provide a standardized approach for processing these resources for urban energy modelling studies. This paper details the approach of a collaborative project to standardize categorization, acquisition and processing of d...

Prediction of building energy use, when performed at urban scale, is influenced by the choice of modelling approach, as well as the quality of available data. In the case of data scarcity, one of the main limitations of current urban scale building energy simulation models, is the use of deterministic approaches to specify modelling inputs for enti...

Urban planners face significant challenges when identifying building energy efficiency opportunities and developing strategies to achieve efficient and sustainable urban environments. A possible scalable solution to tackle this problem is through the analysis of building stock databases. Such databases can support and assist with building energy be...

Photovoltaic systems (PV) are one of the most promising renewable energy technologies for on-site generation. Most of the techno-economic studies consider distributed standalone photovoltaic generation with little consideration of community-based standalone photovoltaic systems. Location-based case studies are required to provide economic and relia...

A well-recognised gap exists between measured and predicted building energy performance. Some practical assessment approaches offer the potential to reduce this gap using multiple indicators that evaluate building performance. Such approaches rely on subjective analysis of indicators’ relative weights but are typically limited to a fixed assessment...

Current processes that create Building Energy Performance Simulation (BEPS) models are time consuming and costly, primarily due to the extensive manual inputs required for model population. In particular, generation of geometric inputs for existing building models requires significant manual intervention due to the absence, or outdated nature of av...

Strategic planning for efficient and sustainable urban environments necessitates identification of scalable energy saving opportunities for the buildings sector. A possible resolution is the analysis of building energy use data at urban scale, although the available data is often sparse, inconsistent, diverse and heterogeneous in nature. Over the p...

Energy Performance Certificates (EPC) provide an indication of buildings' energy use. The creation of an EPC for individual building requires information surveys. Hence, these ratings are typically non-existent for entire building stock. This paper addresses these information gaps using machine-learning models. Developed models were evaluated with...

As building energy modelling becomes more sophisticated, the amount of user input and the number of parameters used to define the models continue to grow. There are numerous sources of uncertainty in these parameters especially when a modelling process is being performed before construction and commissioning. Therefore, uncertainty quantification i...

Globally the building sector accounts for a significant portion of the overall energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions of any country. The most common approach for the collection of modeling and benchmarking data that can be used for predictions of energy performance at a national or urban scale is through classification of the building stock in...

Energy-efficient retrofits have become crucial in building sector as approximately 80% of buildings in developed countries are over 10 years old. Building simulation tools are now being used to provide estimates of energy consumption and implement various models which differ on the basis of enclosed details. Not all of these models are effective in...

The use of information and communication technologies facilitates energy management (EM) at both district and building levels, but also generates a considerable amount of data. To gain insights into such data, it is essential to resolve the cross-domain data interoperability problem and determine an approach to exchange performance information and...

To achieve housing retrofit targets, traditional house-by-house approaches must scale. Neighbourhood retrofit also facilitates community participation. This paper aims to quantitatively characterise the heat energy demand of similar homes in a post-retrofit neighbourhood. The method employs the Modelica AixLib library, dedicated to building perform...

The most common approach for urban building energy modeling (UBEM) involves segmenting a building stock into archetypes. Development Building archetypes for urban scale is a complex task and requires a lot of extensive data. The archetype development methodology proposed in this paper uses unsupervised machine learning approaches to identify simila...

Buildings play a significant role in driving the urban demand and supply of energy. Research conducted in the urban buildings sector indicates that there is a considerable potential to achieve significant reductions in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. These reductions are possible through retrofitting existing buildings into more ef...

Expensive control technology coupled with absence of a proper framework result in buildings that operate independently for their entire operating life. This paper introduces a framework to assess the potential of buildings to function together using heat load demand patterns and buildings thermal mass. Buildings are characterized as possessing vari...

A pronounced gap often exists between expected and actual building performance. The multi-faceted and cross lifecycle causes of this performance gap are found in design assumptions, construction issues and commissioning and operational compromises. Some important factors are firmly rooted in the lack of interoperability around building information....

Abstract The process of preparing building energy performance simulation (BEPS) models involves repetitive manual operations that often lead to data losses and errors. As a result, BEPS model inputs can vary widely from this time consuming, non-standardised and subjective process. This paper proposes a standardised method of information exchange be...

The formulation of energy policies for urban building stock frequently requires the evaluation of the energy use of large numbers of buildings. When urban energy modelling is utilised as part of this process, the identification of building groups and associated representative buildings can play a critical role. This paper outlines a novel methodolo...

Over the past few decades, the world has experienced a major population shift towards urban areas resulting in environmental degradation and increased energy consumption. To combat these challenges, energy efficiency measures are being deployed to improve the performance of different entities within urban built environments. However, effective impl...

Research into home energy retrofit is important because most existing homes will operate in 2050. A lack of funding or incentives often prevents home energy retrofit, particularly of social housing. This study analysed retrofitted Irish social housing and their gas meter data, including pre-payment meters that require regular “top-ups” purchased fr...

Developing BEPS models which predict energy usage to a high degree of accuracy can be extremely time consuming. As a result, assumptions are often made regarding the input data required. Making these assumptions without introducing a significant amount of uncertainty to the model can be difficult, and requires experience. Even so, rules of thumb fr...

Buildings are major consumers of global energy resources. Approximately 80% of the energy used in commercial office spaces, is typically used for maintaining optimal comfort levels through delivery of heating, cooling, ventilating, and lighting. Building Information Modelling (BIM) has seen a significant up-take by designers in pursuit of sustainab...

Commercial buildings during operation are dynamic environments where changes to control strategies and space usage regularly occur. As a result of these and other issues, a performance gap between design intent and actual building performance emerges. This paper seeks to address the operational performance gap and enhance operational building perfo...

Integrated energy management at both the district and building scales can potentially improve multi-level energy efficiency, but such a solution requires the exchange and analysis of energy performance information from different stakeholders. With the complexities of energy management, there are numerous potential stakeholders and a considerable am...

Energy consumption in buildings forms a major part of the total energy demand of any geographical area with a large proportion required to meet heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) needs. With the advent of new energy efficient measures to reduce these needs, it has become essential to understand and control the dynamics associated with...

In this paper the traditional use of data-driven models (DDM) as forecasting tools is coupled with paramet-ric simulation to create a building modelling framework for demand profiling of a large number of buildings of the same typology. Most studies to date util-ising DDM have been conducted on single buildings, with less evidence of the role that...

Recent changes in peoples’ lifestyles have contributed to a perceived improvement in their quality of life. However, this advance has been accompanied by a reduction in outdoor activities and reflected in issues of human health and well-being. When designing and creating a working or living space, the provision of thermal comfort for a building's o...

When designing and creating a working or living space, the provision of thermal comfort for a building’s occupants remains a key objective. However, energy consumption associated with the delivery of indoor environmental conditioning in the commercial building stock is not necessarily translated into improved thermal comfort conditions. When collab...

Recent demand for higher energy efficiency within the building sector has led to the use of Building Energy Performance Simulation (BEPS) tools. These powerful predictive tools enable investigation of environmental and energy performance for different design and retrofit design alternatives. However, integrating BEPS with Building Information Model...

Buildings tend to not operate as intended, and a pronounced gap often exists between measured and predicted environmental and energy performance. Although the causes of this ‘performance gap’ are multi-faceted, issues surrounding data integration are key contributory factors. The distributed nature of the Architecture, Engineering and Construction...

TGA-Kongress 2016 - Innovationen in der Raumlufttechnik, Forschung und Wissenschafton, Berlin (Germany), 14 Apr 2016 - 15 Apr 2016

Data driven models are widely used to perform prediction of energy consumption at building level and are of increasing importance as a complementary tool to traditional energy simulation approaches. A limited number of studies have tried to address the challenge of providing energy related information for large numbers of buildings within an urban...

The ability to predict building energy consumption in an urban environment context, using a variety of performance metrics for different building categories and granularities, across varying geographic scales, is critical for future energy scenario planning. The increased quantity and quality of data collected across urban districts facilitates the...

Very often, building managers face the challenge of having to operate a building in the absence of the appropriate information about how it should function. This problem is one of the many reasons why buildings operate inefficiently and tend to consume excessive amounts of energy. Building Information Modelling (BIM) is an emerging technology which...

Buildings rarely perform as well in practice as anticipated during design, and often consume 20-30% more energy than necessary. One of the main causes of inefficient operation is the lack of data integration and system interoperability inherent in the AEC/FM industry. In many cases, the assumptions and specifications defined during design are not t...

Narrowing the performance deficit between design intent and the real-time environmental and energy performance of buildings is a complex and involved task, impacting on all building stakeholders. Buildings are designed, built and operated with increasingly complex technologies. Throughout their life-cycle, they produce vast quantities of data. Howe...

Many building energy performance Simulation (BEPS) tools use custom schema definitions as opposed to standardised schema definitions (defined in XSD, EXPRESS, and so forth). A Simulation Domain Model (SimModel) was therefore previously developed and is representative of a new interoperable XML-based data model for the building simulation domain. In...