PhD on Bioclimatic Design of Sustainable Campuses
J. Kaempf, S. Coccolo, JL Scartezzini © 2017 A. Walch EPFL
As major consumers of energy, cities are both agents and victims of CO2 induced climate change. In her newly published PhD thesis, Silvia Coccolo investigates how bioclimatic urban planning can simultaneously reduce energy consumption and create a comfortable outdoor environment in the context of rising temperatures.
Using advanced optimisation methods, the author studied the energy demand and outdoor human comfort of urban areas located in a temperate and in a hot and arid climate: the campuses of the EPFL in Lausanne and of the Swiss International Scientific School (SISS) in Dubai.
In order to quantify outdoor environmental conditions in correlation with energy performance, a new module was developed for the software CitySim, integrating, among other, human biometeorological factors and urban greening.
Based on results for present and future climate scenarios, a set of architectural bioclimatic design recommendations invites architects to transform climatic adversities into design opportunities.
Furthermore, thanks to interdisciplinary collaboration, the SISS campus is the first building in UAE to be certified by the Minergie standard for Tropical Climates, previously developed in a joint project by EPFL Middle East, Dr. Kriesi of Kriesi Energie GmbH and the LESO-PB team.
Silvia Coccolo's PhD thesis was supervised by Prof. Jean-Louis Scartezzini of the EPFL Solar Energy and Building Physics Lab and Prof. Jérôme Kaempf of Haute école d'ingénierie et d'architecture de Fribourg.
S. Coccolo, J.-L. Scartezzini and J. H. Kämpf (Dirs.). Bioclimatic Design of Sustainable Campuses using Advanced Optimisation Methods. Thèse EPFL, n° 7756 (2017)