Accelerating Net-Zero Housing at Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Hertfordshire
Department Name: School of Creative Arts
Abstract
As agreed with AHRC please see the Case for Support attachment for the full application information
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Ljubomir Jankovic (Principal Investigator) |
| Description | Numerous local authorities in the UK have declared climate emergency and are developing strategies for achieving net-zero emissions, in some cases by 2030. However, this requires expert knowledge that is not readily available to local authorities (Jankovic et al., 2021). It has become apparent that such expert knowledge in the field of building design can be generated by advanced evolutionary computation within academic research setting and transferred to local authorities in a condensed and easy to use form of dropdown menus. A project between Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council (WHBC) and the University of Hertfordshire has been carried out in order to address this problem. The project has developed a specific workflow, that enables the knowledge and design interventions from experts to be converted into information that non-experts can use and achieve net-zero housing design with equal performance, but without expert tools and knowledge. Using computer modelling and evolutionary computation - computation that ensures the survival of the fittest combinations of building design parameters, the workflow enables the results of nearly 900,000 design possibilities created by experts to be converted into a handful of dropdown menus for housing design specification by non-expert users. First, a computer model was created in IES Virtual Environment (IES, 2022) by extracting an inner terrace from an existing construction project at WHBC, originally not designed for net-zero performance, and adding thermal insulation, triple glazing, and solar photovoltaic panels. This created a pre-set design for further analysis of design interventions towards achieving net-zero performance. The model was subsequently exported into a simulation tool called DesignBuilder (DesignBuilder Software Ltd, 2022), which prepared it for a transformation towards evolutionary computing in JEPlus (Zhang, 2022) using EnergyPlus as a simulation engine (National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 2022). Evolutionary computation is similar to natural selection, where survival of the fittest enables successful species to live and thrive, and condemns unsuccessful species to die. This is achieved by setting a number of design parameters in the evolutionary model. Thus, there were 6 wall types, 5 floor types, 5 roof types, 8 glazing types, 249 air tightness types, and 3 PV types. A product of all these parameters, namely 6 x 5 x 5 x 8 x 249 x 3, creates a total of 896,400 possibilities for a single building design, using different combinations of the design parameters. If all of these computations are carried out, which involves annual simulation of each design combination on an hourly basis consisting of 8760 hours, that would take a very long time, possibly tens of years. However, evolutionary computation, using a genetic algorithm called NSGAII (Deb et al., 2002) within JEPlus, reduces the number of cases to be simulated to just under 790, carried out on a fast remote server at the University. A table of evolutionary solutions is subsequently exported into Excel spreadsheet in which the research team had created a menu structure. Once these solutions 'hit' the Excel file, they are automatically converted into a series of dropdown menus, from which the user can select net-zero design solutions. Thus, the project has converted detailed expert modelling and simulation knowledge into a dropdown menu based specification of net-zero housing design. This enables WHBC to apply the methodology and the workflow without having to develop expert knowledge. References Deb, K., Pratap, A., Agarwal, S., Meyarivan, T., 2002. A fast and elitist multiobjective genetic algorithm: NSGA-II. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation 6, 182-197. https://doi.org/10.1109/4235.996017 DesignBuilder Software Ltd, 2022. DesignBuilder [WWW Document]. URL https://designbuilder.co.uk/ (accessed 1.25.22). IES, 2022. VE 2022. Jankovic, L., Bharadwaj, P., Carta, S., 2021. How can UK Housing Projects be Brought in Line With Net-Zero Carbon Emission Targets? Front. Built Environ. 7, 754733. https://doi.org/10.3389/fbuil.2021.754733 National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 2022. EnergyPlus [WWW Document]. URL https://energyplus.net/ (accessed 1.14.22). Zhang, Y., 2022. JePlus+EA [WWW Document]. URL http://cms.ensims.com/ (accessed 1.15.22). |
| Exploitation Route | This project has created an opportunity for a continuing collaboration with WHBC. As the project has established a workflow for pre-set net-zero house designs, this will enable the University to assist WHBC in the future, where they will be able to select net-zero housing from a series of dropdown menus. As a consequence of this project, another local authority, St Albans City and District Council has approached the University with a request for help on developing a Zero carbon action plan and a Buildings decarbonisation plan. We have prepared draft proposals to St Albans City and District Council for these two separate projects of the duration of 6 months each. Discussions about development of the new project for St Albans is underway. Interest for this research has also arisen in the discussions with The Hertfordshire Climate Change and Sustainability Partnership (HCCSP), consisting of 10 districts and the county council, plus the Local Enterprise Partnership, and a related funding proposal is being prepared for September 2022. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Energy,Environment |
| Description | The project has developed a specific workflow, that enables the knowledge and design interventions from experts to be converted into information that non-experts can use and achieve net-zero housing design with equal performance, but without expert tools and knowledge. Using computer modelling and evolutionary computation - computation that ensures the survival of the fittest combinations of building design parameters, the workflow enables the results of nearly 900,000 design possibilities created by experts to be converted into a handful of dropdown menus for housing design specification by non-expert users. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2022 |
| Sector | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Energy,Environment,Government, Democracy and Justice |
| Impact Types | Policy & public services |
| Description | Accelerating Net-Zero Housing at Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council |
| Geographic Reach | Local/Municipal/Regional |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to new or improved professional practice |
| Impact | Expert modelling and simulation and evolutionary approach to achieving net zero design is converted into dropdown menus. This creates workflow for new housing designs. Expert design knowledge has been converted into accessible format for WHBC. This enables WHBC informed decision making in the housing specification. |