Tools for quality control in simulation

This research examines the nature of environmental design information used by building designers. The goal is to identify commonality in the types of information that design tools should produce. It presumes that improving the use of design tools will lead to improved building performance. Through practitioner interviews, it investigates application of design decision support tools by building designers. It proposes a means of increasing designers’ use of these tools. This proposal derives from observation that systematic quality assurance (QA) systems are seldom used with simulation-based tools. The proposal is a QA system comprising (a) a simulation veracity test akin to the Turing test of computer intelligence; (b) an internet database of building performance information; (c) post-analysis tools that define the reliability of design tool output.