Design improvement is critical for achieving a low-cost and high energy-efficient building with low carbon emissions. Thus, designers need to consider many factors (such as energy, economic and environmental performance) in the early design stage. This paper presents a multi-objective analysis...

Solar shading devices play a significant role in reducing building energy consumption and maintaining a comfortable indoor condition. In this paper, a typical office building with internal roller shades in hot summer and cold winter zone was selected to determine the driving factor of control...

Current energy designs for a building in China focus on the energy efficiency of the whole building and thus often neglect the energy difference between different housing units in apartment buildings. The best design technique in terms of energy savings is not only to decrease whole building...

This paper provides an insight into the impact of ventilation on building energy consumption and indoor thermal comfort. Four variable ventilation modes and one fixed ventilation mode were considered. Results show that variable ventilation modes bring a more comfortable indoor thermal...

In this research, critical infrastructure protection against intentional attacks is modeled as a discrete simultaneous game between the protector and the attacker, to model the situation that both players keep the information of their resource allocation secret. We prove that keeping the...

Drought is one of the most devastating natural hazards faced by the Southern United States (SUS). Drought events and their adverse impacts on the economy, society and environment have been extensively reported during 1895–2007. Our aim is thus to characterize drought conditions in the SUS and...

The planning and management decisions often involve multiple objectives and multiple parties with conflicting interests due to the complexity of inter-basin water transfer systems. In this paper, the objectives, the groups involved and the corresponding conflicting interests that characterize...