Building Energy End-use

citymodel mockup stviewearthBEES: Building Energy End-use project. 3D visualisation of building resource use, Wellington (New Zealand) 2014

Victoria University, Wellington

This pilot project explores the means by which research data on building resource use can be added to a 3D city visualisation of central Wellington. Ultimately, this data and other related publically available information about the built environment could be presented in this highly accessible form. All information would be database driven, so automatically update-able. From this basic platform, applications that permit people to compare their own private records with public norms are easily constructed: a world where a building owner can compare their energy records with benchmarks for similar buildings and take action to improve if necessary or to advertise accomplishments.

This project is part of a masters thesis project which proposes a reinvention of the means of presenting data about 3D urban environments. Conventional GIS use of 3D ’enhances’ hard to understand 2D maps with even harder-to-understand histograms of data. The goal is to demonstrate the means by which data on energy and water-use in buildings can be used to enhance familiar 3D interactive city environments and be made accessible to the widest possible audience.

VUW Researchers: Dr Michael Donn

PhD Candidate: Shaan Cory

Masters Building Science Candidates: Claire Dykes, Anthony Gates, Quentin Heap, Alex Hills, Chi Yao (Henry) Hsu, Hayley Koerbin, James Thompson

Research Assistants: Mina Samy Fakhry Abdel Nour, Shaan Cory, Claire Dykes, Koryn Evans, Anthony Gates, Alana Hamill, Chi Yao (Henry) Hsu, Nicola Jackson, R.D Jamal, Carrie Speirs, Chris S, Victoria Toner, Andrew Turner, Chris Van der Veen, Kate Walker, Kaiyi (Eugene) Zhang

Consulting statistician: John Jowett

BRANZ: Lynda Amitrano, Dr Michael Babylon, Dr Lee Bint, Nikki Buckett, Lisa Burrough, Michael Camilleri, Nigel Isaacs, Andrew Pollard, Johannes Roberti

Centre for Research, Evaluation & Social Assessment: Kay Saville-Smith, Ruth Fraser

Energy Solutions Ltd: Rob Bishop

Sponsors: NZ Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), the Building Research Levy, NZ Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA)

Research Question: Is it possible to create an open source automated 3D city visualisation that renders the invisible (building resource use) visible? How can building energy and water-use benchmarks be reliably applied to a 3D building stock model? Will this improve accessibility to information which would otherwise remain invisible and unintelligible?

Link: BEES


New Zealand, Architecture, 11-50, Postgraduate, Years, Sponsorship, Building Science, Commissioned, Propositional, Curricular, Students with researcher, Victoria Univ. Wellington