OpenStudio: an open source integrated analysis platform

High-performance buildings require an integrated design approach for all systems to work together optimally; systems integration needs to be incorporated in the earliest stages of design for efforts to be cost and energy-use effective. Building designers need a ful-l featured software framework to support rigorous, multidisciplinary building simulation. An open source framework—the OpenStudio Software Development Kit (SDK)—is being developed to address this need. In this paper, we discuss the needs that drive OpenStudio’s system architecture and goals, provide a development status report (the SDK is currently in alpha release), and present a brief case study that illustrates its utility and flexibility.