Experiences testing enhanced building performance simulation prototypes on potential user group

Previous work involving literature review, simulation tool analysis and interviews with world leading building performance consulting engineers and designers has shown that building performance simulation (BPS) is mostly limited to code compliance checking of the final building design whilst it could provide useful information and guidelines throughout the entire design process [Hopfe et al., 2005/ 2006].  It is aim of this research to enhance the current use of building performance simulation (BPS) in practice and therefore to build up a multi-aspects prototype simulation-based design environment for optimization of buildings and systems among others.  For that reason, three prototypes were developed in the past addressing simple uncertainty/ sensitivity analysis, decision making under uncertainty/ sensitivity, and the use of optimization techniques for multi-objective optimization. An online survey was prepared to check how designers feel satisfied with the different prototypes, the guided set-up and the varying outcome. This paper summarizes the results of the user reaction to the three approaches.