%0 Journal Article %J Applied Energy %D 2019 %T Forecasting district-scale energy dynamics through integrating building network and long short-term memory learning algorithm %A Wei Wang %A Tianzhen Hong %A Xiaodong Xu %A Jiayu Chen %A Ziang Liu %A Ning Xu %K Building Energy Modeling %K Building network %K Data-driven prediction %K District-scale %K Long short-term memory networks %X

With the development of data-driven techniques, district-scale building energy prediction has attracted increasing attention in recent years for revealing energy use patterns and reduction potentials. However, data acquisition in large building groups is difficult and adjacent buildings also interact with each other. To reduce data cost and incorporate the inter-building impact with the data-driven building energy model, this study proposes a deep learning predictive approach that fuses the building network model with a long short-term memory learning model for district-scale building energy modeling. The building network was constructed based on correlations between the energy use intensity of buildings, which can significantly reduce the computational complexity of the deep learning models for energy dynamic prediction. Five typical building groups with energy use data from 2015 to 2018 on two institutional campuses were selected to perform the validation experiment with TensorFlow. Based on the prediction error assessments, the results suggest that for total building energy use intensity prediction, the proposed model can achieve a mean absolute percentage error of 6.66% and a root mean square error of 0.36 kWh/m2, compared to 12.05% and 0.63 kWh/m2 of the conventional artificial neural network model and to 11.06% and 0.89 kWh/m2 for the support vector regression model.

%B Applied Energy %V 248 %P 217 - 230 %8 04/2019 %G eng %U https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0306261919307494 %! Applied Energy %R 10.1016/j.apenergy.2019.04.085 %0 Journal Article %J Energy and Buildings %D 2019 %T Incorporating machine learning with building network analysis to predict multi-building energy use %A Xiaodong Xu %A Wei Wang %A Tianzhen Hong %A Jiayu Chen %K Artificial neural networks %K Building network %K cold winter and hot summer climate %K Energy use prediction %K Machine learning %X

Predicting multi-building energy use at campus or city district scale has recently gained more attention; and more researchers have started to define reference buildings and study inter-impact between building groups. However, how to integrate the relationship to define reference buildings and predict multi-building energy use, using significantly less amount of building data and reducing complexity of prediction models, remains an open research question. To resolve this, this study proposed a novel method to predict multi-building energy use by integrating a social network analysis (SNA) with an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) technique. The SNA method was used to establish a building network (BN) by identifying reference buildings and determine correlations between reference buildings and non-reference buildings. The ANN technique was applied to learn correlations and historical building energy use, and then used to predict multi-building energy use. To validate the SNA-ANN method, 17 buildings in the Southeast University campus, located in Nanjing, China, were studied. These buildings have three years of actual monthly electricity use data and were grouped into four types: office, educational, laboratory, and residential. The results showed the integrated SNA-ANN method achieved average prediction accuracies of 90.67% for the office group, 90.79% for the educational group, 92.34% for the laboratory group, and 83.32% for the residential group. The results demonstrated the proposed SNA-ANN method achieved an accuracy of 90.28% for the predicted energy use for all building groups. Finally, this study provides insights into advancing the interdisciplinary research on multi-building energy use prediction.

%B Energy and Buildings %V 186 %P 80 - 97 %8 06/2019 %G eng %U https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0378778818319765 %! Energy and Buildings %R 10.1016/j.enbuild.2019.01.002 %0 Journal Article %J Building Simulation %D 2019 %T Performance-driven optimization of urban open space configuration in the cold-winter and hot-summer region of China %A Xiaodong Xu %A Yifan Wu %A Wei Wang %A Tianzhen Hong %A Ning Xu %X

Urbanization has led to changes in urban morphology and climate, while urban open space has become an important ecological factor for evaluating the performance of urban development. This study presents an optimization approach using computational performance simulation. With a genetic algorithm using the Grasshopper tool, this study analyzed the layout and configuration of urban open space and its impact on the urban micro-climate under summer and winter conditions. The outdoor mean Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) was applied as the performance indicator for evaluating the quality of the urban micro-climate. Two cases—one testbed and one real urban block in Nanjing, China—were used to validate the computer-aided simulation process. The optimization results in the testbed showed UTCI values varied from 36.5 to 37.3 °C in summer and from −4.9 to −1.9 °C in winter. In the case of the real urban block, optimization results show, for summer, although the average UTCI value increased by 0.6 °C, the average air velocity increased by 0.2 m/s; while in winter, the average UTCI value increased by 1.7 °C and the average air velocity decreased by 0.2 m/s. These results demonstrate that the proposed computer-aided optimization process can improve the thermal comfort conditions of open space in urban blocks. Finally, this study discusses strategies and guidelines for the layout design of urban open space to improve urban environment comfort.

%B Building Simulation %V 12 %P 411 - 424 %8 03/2019 %G eng %U http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12273-019-0510-zhttp://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12273-019-0510-z.pdfhttp://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12273-019-0510-z.pdfhttp://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12273-019-0510-z/fulltext.html %N 3 %! Build. Simul. %R 10.1007/s12273-019-0510-z %0 Journal Article %J Sustainability %D 2018 %T Performance-Based Evaluation of Courtyard Design in China’s Cold-Winter Hot-Summer Climate Regions %A Xiaodong Xu %A Fenlan Luo %A Wei Wang %A Tianzhen Hong %A Xiuzhang Fu %K aspect ratio %K courtyard design %K ecological buffer area %K ecological effect %K layout %X

Evaluates the performance of the traditional courtyard design of the Jiangnan Museum, located in Jiangsu Province. In the evaluation, the spatial layout of courtyards is adjusted, the aspect ratio is changed, and an ecological buffer space is created. To model and evaluate the performance of the courtyard design, this study applied the Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software, Parabolic Hyperbolic Or Elliptic Numerical Integration Code Series (PHOENICS), for wind environment simulation, and the EnergyPlus-based software, DesignBuilder, for energy simulation. Results show that a good combination of courtyard layout and aspect ratio can improve the use of natural ventilation by increasing free cooling during hot summers and reducing cold wind in winters. The results also show that ecological buffer areas of a courtyard can reduce cooling loads in summer by approximately 19.6% and heating loads in winter by approximately 22.3%. The study provides insights into the optimal design of a courtyard to maximize its benefit in regulating the microclimate during both winter and summer.

%B Sustainability %V 10 %P 3950 %8 10/2018 %G eng %U http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/11/3950http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/11/3950/pdf %N 11 %! Sustainability %R 10.3390/su10113950