Special Issue "Selected Papers from BS2019 – Building Simulation"

The Building Simulation Conference is the premier international event in the field of building performance simulation. The 17th Building Simulation Conference is held in Rome in 2019 and is dedicated to the latest advancements on the building simulation, validation, interpretation of results and teaching. The role of building simulation is of the foremost importance to meet the requirements of energy efficient and high performance design of buildings, to evaluate the level of sustainability of buildings and settlements and to carry out some post-construction activities in continuous commissioning or energy refurbishment contexts. Applications of building simulation are not limited to the design calculations (e.g. thermal loads), but include the prediction of the building performance in actual operating conditions, as well as the forecast of thermal and visual comfort conditions. At the same time, even though spreading in the professional practice, the research challenges of building simulation are continuously expanding since the complexity of models and optimization techniques require more computational power and new simulation tool. Among the topics of the BS 2019 Conference, this special issue addresses the following ones: commissioning and control, developments in simulation, education, simulation of HVAC, simulation of the human behaviour, new software development, optimization, simulation to support regulations, simulation vs reality, validation, calibration and uncertainty, and Zero Energy Buildings (ZEB).