An appraisal of knowledge based systems for building performance simulation

The useful integration of building performance simulation (BPS) to support building design requires the successful implementation of existing knowledge and experience. One comment regularly made by practitioners during interviews conducted, was that limited design information is available during the early design stages which does not provide the required detail for a virtual building and system representation. The exchange of non software specific knowledge and information between BPS users is limited to email lists and design guides published by professional/ public bodies. This paper is dedicated to knowledge systems to facilitate the exchange of non software specific design experience by providing a parametric data pool to support concept generation and optimization. A literature review was carried out identifying a number of systems which were compared and assessed based on their applicability to the problem domain. Initial results will be presented addressing issues such as organizational behavior, user needs and information structure.