An assessment of the use of Builing energy performance simulation in early design

Meaningful building energy performance (BEP) simulation requires the use of a large amount of data. Some of those data are readily available from reliable sources. Other data must be transformed from their original content, form and/or format. If not available at all, data are improvised. This paper discusses the possible impact of input data quality and availability on the results of simulation. It illustrates possible modeling scenarios when critical data are missing, and describes potential significance of arbitrary input data use on simulation results. The paper concludes with a discussion of the meaning of BEP prediction in early design.