COMPUTER MODELLING OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS

Group leaders: Nicolas Morel, Darren Robinson

Summary

By itself, building physics is concerned with rather elementary physics. But the construction, operation and demolishment of a building is connected with many different aspects, and their interactions makes the complete system complex. The complexity is even increased when dealing with a whole district or even a city, instead of only one building.

This research domain includes two different aspects:

• the modelization of building behaviour where non-deterministic aspects must be considered, such as the behaviour of the users (occupancy, individual preferences relative to comfort, etc) or the stochastic nature of the weather conditions;
• the modelization of large groups of elementary buildings, where the complexity arises from the numerous interactions between the individual objects (buildings).

This domain is closely linked with the domain Sustainable Urban Development: notably, both domains cover the study of similar objects (urban districts or a whole city), and they are concerned with the modelling of similar phenomena (eco-systemic modelling, interaction with the environment).

Recent research projects:

• European project SUNtool (funding: Swiss Federal Office of Education and Science)