An approach for capturing requirements of collaborative design teams to facilitate evaluation of energy efficient retrofit design options

Four and a half million non-residential buildings in the U.S are estimated to be suitable candidates for energy retrofits (McGraw Hill, 2009). The current process of evaluating design alternatives for energy efficient retrofit projects uses drawings and 3D renderings together with documents to share energy simulation results and associated assumptions. Due to document-based information exchange, it is challenging for collaborative design teams to interpret energy implications of every design option, perform integrated analyses of design information with energy model results, and compare these energy implications with those of other design options. Immersive and interactive workspaces could improve the process by allowing teams to easily visualize assumptions and energy simulation results integrated with 3D models. Various parties are involved in collaborative design teams and each has a unique role, necessitating communication of task-specific assumptions and information requirements. Hence, there is a need to first identify what engineered information that collaborative teams should share in enabling design alternative evaluation and what visualization forms design teams would need. This paper presents an approach for capturing the information/visualization requirements of collaborative design teams as they implement and leverage immersive and interactive visualization settings. An iterative approach was taken within which virtual mockups were created using information requirements identified through brainstorming with energy modeling experts and then presented to collaborative design teams in order to acquire more information/visualization requirements. This research is part of a larger effort in the Energy Efficient Buildings (EEB) Hub at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and uses Building 661, currently undergoing retrofit, as a case study. This paper presents the initial use case, information requirements identified, and virtual prototypes developed.