Efficient Buildings, Efficient Communities

As environments around the globe urbanize at unprecedented rates, it is critical to consider the urban fabric within which buildings operate. Sustainable planning addresses the context of the individual building, seeking to advance, guide and coordinate the systems that underlie sustainable urban developments, including energy codes. Assessment systems should be expanded and modified to extend beyond the individual building to infrastructure systems that influence the efficiency of entire communities.

Goals

• Develop and evaluate tools to enable implementation, improvement, and compliance with energy-efficient practices and codes
• Refine and test the next generation of regulations, such as outcome-based codes, that will ensure on-going building performance
• Develop computational models and framework to design and manage sustainable communities and cities