ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how simulation supports performance-based building through different lifecycle stages, with a focus on the design stage. As design evolves, a building project invokes many intermittent and recurring dialogues between stakeholders that engage in the definition and subsequent negotiation of performance requirements and their fulfillment. This requires, among others, an agreement about how to quantify performance, i.e. how to choose an adequate measurement method. Measurement methods not only quantify performance criteria but also de facto define them. The aim of this chapter is to show how any objective specification of performance criteria and their measurements can be derived while avoiding subjective bias in their interpretation. In any real life design case, a set of criteria needs to be introduced to manage the many performance aspects of design situations. As these need to be dealt with simultaneously, design decision making rests on the careful balancing of different, and sometimes conflicting, performance targets. It is shown that a rigorous, system-theoretic definition of performance measures is necessary to prepare a rational decision process. The treatment in this chapter is an attempt to lay the basis for this and at the same time explore the role of building simulation in the quantification of the performance criteria.
