Delivering Building Simulation Information via New Communication Media

Participants in building simulation supported projects are diverse (e.g. design teams, clients, project managers and simulation practitioners) and often geographically dispersed. There is much about conventional approaches to building performance assessments and work practices that reduces productivity and obscures useful indicators of performance. Often, the goal of understanding how the building works and the impact of design decisions is hampered by limitations in the presentation of performance data. Contemporary results display is often constrained to what was considered good practice some decades ago rather than in ways that preserve the richness of the underlying data. This paper reviews a framework for building simulation support that addresses these presentation limitations as well as making a start on issues related to distributed team working. The framework uses tools and communication protocols that enable concurrent information sharing and provide a richer set of options for understanding complex performance relationships.