Energy consumption is very much to achieve comfort condition in buildings. Therefore, using and finding methods are necessary to reduce building energy consumption. First, the building energy consumption must be calculated. Computer Simulation is a method to calculate building energy consumption. In this paper energy consumption of an education building has been calculated using Energyplus software in Isalmic Azad University Tabriz branch. This building has more energy consumption according to geographical type of Tabriz city. Several parameters of this building have been changed to reduce building energy consumption. The result shows that, in optimized building, energy consumption reduces about 35.5 percent in winter, about 42.22 percent in summer and about 40 percent (3.82E+12 joule) in year. In addition, the building parameters had been changed according to minimum building cost. The result shows that, in optimized building, energy consumption reduces about 35.5 percent in winter, about 42.22 percent in summer and about 40 percent (3.82E+12 joule) in year. In addition, the building parameters had been changed according to minimum building cost.

This paper introduces an approach to detect and 3D reconstructs buildings using aerial imagery and LiDAR data. This research consisted of three phases, building detection, 2D building outline reconstruction and 3D building reconstruction. In phase building detection, firstly off-terrain objects including trees and buildings are extracted from LiDAR data. Secondly Support Vector Machines (SVMs) Algorithm is employed to differentiate trees and buildings. Training data which are used in SVMs are choose in semi-automatic procedure. After eliminating trees, K-means clustering algorithm is used to separate buildings which are not in same elevation. Results are showing our building detection method was successful in detection of small and large buildings. Completeness, Correctness and Quality for building detection results respectively are 86.60%, 99.10% and 85.92%. In phase 2D building outline reconstruction, firstly, the building boundaries have been vectorized. Then produced boundaries are generalized and unnecessary line segments are removed. After generalization, a new approach is used to build orthogonal buildings. In this research, 3D building reconstruction is done in LOD2. For detection of roof structure of buildings, the parameters of plane that have been fitted to LiDAR points within each kernel is obtained. With considering these parameters as features of each building, ISO-Data clustering has been done. The results of this clustering represent the planar surfaces of each building. So, a plane is fitted to each class (planar surface) with least squares method. Then, within the boundaries of each building, roof patches which have similar plane parameters and are close together are merged. Plane parameters of integrated roof patches again are determined. Finally, 3D models of buildings have been reconstructed with intersection of planar surfaces and obtaining of vertex points of each building. Elevation and total RMS values of specified planes for roof structure of buildings respectively are 0.4 m and 0.9 m.

In some climates, massive buildings made of stone, masonry, concrete, earth and … can be utilized as one of the simplest and most effective ways of reducing building heating and cooling loads. Very often such savings could be achieved in the design stage of the building and with a relatively low-cost. Such declines in building envelope heat losses combined with optimized material configuration and proper amount of thermal insulation in the building envelope could help to decrease the building's cooling and heating energy demands and building related co2 emission into environment. This paper presents a typical study of thermal mass buildings, especially, a kind of masonry building called YAKHCHAL, where most of the buildings are constructed out of mud or sun-dried bricks. They behave like a thermal mass building types. In this climate, there are great many buildings which have been adapted to their climatic conditions. Such traditional solutions may help to overcome the energy crisis which the mankind faces today and may face in the future.

Regarding the substantial increase of energy consumption in the building sector, it is necessary to consider construction characteristics in the policymaking processes in order to improve the building energy efficiency. Basically, it is infeasible to improve the energy efficiency of the building industry based on the energy characteristics of individual buildings. Political strategies are developed based on the study of building typologies following the climatic conditions of each region. There are limited studies on the types of residential buildings, most of which emphasize on architectural concepts and building formation. Lack of research in the field of housing typology in Iran highlights the necessity to develop an approach toward energy-efficient residential buildings. This study aims to recognize the typologies of residential buildings, focusing on the parameters affecting energy consumption, in Babolsar City, which is selected as a city representative of the humid and mild climate in North of Iran. This paper also tries to evaluate and improve the thermal performances of the recognized typologies based on the Iranian National Building Code (Part 19: Energy Efficiency). The methodology is completed into four main sections: 1) Reviewing the literature in order to identify and select the criteria for developing residential building typologies 2) Conducting a survey on a number of residential samples based on the statistics and distribution of residential buildings in Babolsar city 3) Classifying buildings and presenting plan typologies based on statistical and pictorial analyses 4) Investigating the heat transfer coefficient of the recognized typologies and introducing the optimal patterns according to the Iranian National Building Code (Part 19: Energy Efficiency). Using a descriptive-analytical strategy, this research is based on statistical methods of quantitative analysis and simplifies residential building plan concepts. The data are collected on the field by investigating 384 residential buildings constructed in a period between 1963 and 2016 in Babolsr City. Each sample is scrutinized by completing a questionnaire. The questionnaires are created in two parts: 1- the building general information including, the architectural type (apartment or villa), the age of the building, the number of families, the neighborhood type, the building gross area, the number of bedrooms and building type (flat/apartment, attached/ semi-attached); and 2. the construction details including, the physical parameters of the building such as materials, windows/glazing type,  overhang size, thermal insulation, indoor space height, area of external surfaces / controlled / uncontrolled spaces, heating and cooling system, and building envelope details. In other words, all required information and parameters affecting the building energy consumption are included. The residential building samples are classified into ten categories based on the number of families, building type, and neighborhood unit. Typologies are divided into two groups of “villa” and “apartment” housing. Each group has four subsets numbered as A, B, C, and D which differs in terms of total plan area and the position of conditioned/ unconditioned zones. In order to determine a typical plan for each category, all possible plan concepts for each group were designed and codified. Then, the plans of all 384 samples were simplified and codified and categorized in their relevant groups. Finally, a group of higher frequency was chosen as the group representing the typical plan.  The eight recognized typologies of this research can be used as reference in any research on housing for evaluating and predicting thermal performance, cost, and energy analysis. The analysis of the thermal performance of the building typologies demonstrated that none of the typologies comply with the Iranian National Building Code (Part 19), in terms of conformity with heat transfer coefficient. Adding a 5-cm thermal insulation, with a heat transfer coefficient of λ = 0.041, to the external wall, and also replacing windows with double-glazed ones are necessary to improve their energy efficiency and achieve the minimum requirement of the building code. The results of this study can be used as a basis for further investigations on energy-efficient building design, in order to improve the thermal performance of buildings rather than developing a regional energy efficiency building code for building construction in the mild climate in north of Iran. The presented typologies can be used as a reference for energy auditing, retrofit actions, and refurbishment measurements, and for quantifying the energy-saving potentials of existing buildings. They can be applied to the existing buildings stock to increase energy performance by considering the optimal tradeoff between policymaking and cost. The results are also important for developing and modifying regulations. Further studies are required to make the result of this study applicable to other climatic regions in Iran.

Buildings have a great contribution in the consumption of energy and resources available on the planet earth. Given the importance of the sustainable development and the preservation of resources and lands for future generations, the idea of adaptive reuse of existing buildings is addressed globally. Adaptive reuse of the existing buildings is an approach to restore the life of buildings at the end of their useful and service life, by determining a suitable use based on their potential and characteristics. Adaptive reuse of existing buildings through maximum use of building material, social, cultural, structural and physical potential, avoid of unnecessary extension of cities and use of lands and resources, is well align with sustainable development main goals. But, despite all the benefits and advantages of adaptive reuse, there are cases that adaptive reuse is not suitable and demolition is inevitable. Therefore we need some criteria to evaluate buildings potential for adaptive reuse. For buildings which have a high potential for adaptive reuse, we also need some criteria to determine a (re)use in compliance with the existing building features. By determining such criteria, it is possible to modify the life cycle of buildings through adaptive reuse. Based on such a perspective, the authors investigated the literature and scholars view points and criteria which are addressed in different scientific documents. The literature shows a confusing variety of criteria. Through this study the adaptive reuse related criteria are identified and by an analytical approach and according to similarity between these criteria, they are classified in two areas. The first area includes the criteria in concern to examine existing buildings adaptive reuse potential. The authors identified eight comprehensive criteria for this area. The second area includes the criteria related to the determining a match reuse for existing buildings. The authors identified six comprehensive criteria for this area. The presented comprehensive criteria, covering all criteria in the literature, can be considered as a new framework and foundation for future studies on existing buildings adaptive reuse. In this way this study will contribute in buildings sustainability. According to presented criteria, buildings life cycle is modified. The traditional buildings life cycle include these phases: design, construction, operation, maintenance, demolition and new construction. It should be noted that such an approach to the buildings life is a linear approach, while regarding the increasing importance of sustainable development, attempt to restore buildings into the life cycle is a more acceptable approach. According to this, after the end of buildings useful life and before the demolition, buildings potential for adaptive reuse should be considered according to the related criteria and only when a building dos not have a good potential for adaptive reuse, it can be demolished. This approach will extend buildings life span and can lead to avoid of premature demolition. Premature demolition of buildings has many disadvantages. Of the disadvantages of this approach are wastes production, waste of buildings’ embodied energy, unnecessary use of resources and materials. Therefore the proposed buildings life cycle can leads to a more sustainable environment.

Considering upward trend of traffic congestion in mega cities، construction of urban tunnels (road or metro) is inevitable. The reciprocal effect of tunneling-induced ground settlement and surface buildings is an important factor during shallow tunneling design procedures in urban areas. Hence، the effective factors in this reciprocal relationship need to be appraised prior to the construction phase. In this paper، the major characteristics of buildings were numerically simulated using 3D finite element approach. It has been demonstrated that weight and length of buildings have showed parallel correlation with surface settlements. However، building width have had reverse trend with surface settlements. The main purpose of this research is the study of influence of building weight and geometry on the surface settlement due to sequential excavation method، and interaction between buildings and tunnel. It investigated by simulating of systematic construction process of tunnel using numerical method. Methodology and Approaches: In this paper، the major characteristics of buildings were numerically simulated using 3D finite element method. In addition، results of a study on field data of the Nyayesh tunnel are presented. Results and The results have proved that the existence of surface buildings has reciprocal effects on ground settlement troughs. The increase of the building weight will result in increase of surface settlements. On the contrary، by ignoring building weight، presence of surface building foundations will cause a less settlement compared to the green field condition which is due to increase of the rigidity of building foundation and thereby ground improvement. The increase of building width reduces the surface settlements، and the increase of the building length leads to more surface settlement، although the building width is a more effective parameter، which controls the overall tunneling-building interaction behavior than building length. Thus، building weight and geometry effectively influences the surface settlements troughs in urban tunneling.

Many cities in the world are involved with air pollution and environmental pollution. The consumption of fossil fuels in buildings has an enormous impact on the pollution. About 40% of the total energy is spent on heating, cooling and lighting of buildings. The use of solar energy is one of the ways that reduce the thermal load of buildings. One of the factors that affect this utilization is the ratio of the height of the building to its side street width or sky view factor (SVF). By increasing this ratio, the possibility of using solar energy decreases and this possibility increases by decreasing the ratio. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the criteria of the detailed plan of Hamadan regarding the method of determining the height of buildings in terms of their use of solar energy and determining the quality rating of the buildings with different latitudes of solar energy. Based on Hamedan's detailed plan, the fourteen main options, along with the subset modes, each of which totally comprise eighteen modes, were analyzed in four effective indicators of energy consumption in buildings based on Tapsis method for North and South buildings. these indicators include the average angle of view of the barriers to solar radiation outside the outer shell, the ratio of the total surface of the shell exposed to outdoor to the total building volume, the ratio of the surface of the ceiling to the total surface of the outer shell on the south face, and the ratio of the thermal bridges in the facade to the total surface is the outer shell of the building. The results show that, generally, southern buildings in narrow dtreet, and northern buildings in widespread street have a better use of solar energy than other ones. According to the results, among the northern buildings, the buildings located in side of the 75-meter streets have the best Productivity and the buildings located in side of the 10-meter streets with over 220 square meters area are the most inefficient. Among the southern buildings, the buildings located in side of the 4-meter streets have the best Productivity and buildings located in side of the 30-meter streets with less than 300 square meters are the most inefficient.

Coupled Building Control (CBC) has been effectively used to help mitigate the extended responses of the adjacent tall buildings due to strong ground excitations. Extensive analytical studies and experimental tests have shown this control strategy works well for «dissimilar» coupled buildings, but it''s completely inefficient for the «similar» buildings. Recently, an innovative scheme for structural control, named the Hybrid Coupled Building Control (HCBC), has been presented by the authors, which improves and develops the CBC strategy. HCBC is applicable to all adjacent buildings; in order to apply the HCBC strategy, one of the adjacent buildings will be equipped with a base isolation system, and an active actuator link will connect the two buildings at a floor level. The primary buildings may be similar or dissimilar but, as a desired case, the «similar» buildings will be concerned here. In the previous works, it''s shown that HCBC strategy efficiently decreases the maximum drifts and accelerations of the buildings. This paper investigates the effects of connector location on the performance of HCBC strategy. Analytical results for different configurations are presented in details, and the best choice is introduced.

The present work aims to introduce an efficient set of high spatial resolution (HSR) images to evaluate building detection algorithms more fairly. The introduced images are chosen from two recent HSR sensors (QuickBird and GeoEye-1) and based on several challenges of urban areas encountered in building detection such as diversity in building density, building dissociation, building shape, building size, building alignment, building roof color, building height, and imaging angle. To practically examine the proposed dataset, three-building detection algorithms with different strategies are employed. The results imply the proposed dataset can be helpful to more fairly evaluate each algorithm, so that it indicates where the algorithm can be efficient and successful and where may be encountered with the problems in detecting buildings in urban areas.

This paper investigates the effect of the soil type on the torsional response of buildings experiencing torsional pounding due to earthquake excitations. Six buildings (one 4-storey building and five 6-storey buildings) with different configurations have been considered. First, pounding between different structures has been analysed for a specified soil type and the effect of the torsional pounding and the contact asymmetry on the torsional response of colliding buildings has been investigated. Then, these pounding cases have been considered for different soil types to study the effect of the soil type on the torsional response of buildings experiencing torsional pounding. Five soil types have been considered, i.e. hard rock, rock, very dense soil and soft rock, stiff soil and soft clay soil. The results of the study indicate that the earthquake-induced torsional pounding causes an increase in the peak storey rotation of the colliding buildings as compared to the symmetric pounding in all cases. Higher peak storey rotations have been experienced for colliding buildings founded on the soft clay soil, then for buildings founded on the stiff soil, then for buildings founded on very dense soil and soft rock, and finally for buildings founded on the rock and hard rock.