An Evidence Based Online Design Platform: Challenges and Limitations.

"Historically, the problems associated with feedback in building energy consumption are threefold: a) a lack of information, b) a lack of effective use of the existing data, c) a lack of knowledge how to engage more than the interested few to understand and act on building performance. Whilst introduction of Display Energy Certificates (DECs) created a framework for information generation, their intended role is to place the subject building within the context of similar type of buildings but this data can provide little or no insight into the root causes of the energy performance. To go beyond the headline benchmarking of energy performance of buildings and to provide evidence based design advice to various stakeholders such as building designers, clients/investors, facility managers, and users on how their buildings are performing with regard to their architectural, engineering and occupancy characteristics we need an intelligent and rapid feedback tools/protocols.. It is well known that the useful feedback should contain extensive building design and performance data, benchmarked against similar type of buildings, and accompanied with ‘do and do not’ reflections from all key stakeholders involved especially the design team and facilities managers. In order to facilitate the need for more comprehensive feedback in the UK, a consortium of researchers from industry and academia has created an online evidence based design platform called CarbonBuzz. . Having this in mind this paper describes the development of an Italian Evidence Based Online Design Platform using the UK based CarbonBuzz as an example. The paper is set out in 3 sections: a.) a framework for platform development, analysing the source of data and completeness of records currently in CarbonBuzz in order to inform the development of the Italian platform and b) a data structure review, identifying potential challenges in translating the UK data structure in the context of Italian regulatory requirements, and c) developing prototype, describing the data collection protocol used to inform the development of the Italian platform which follows evidence based design principles with an aim to provide advice on how choices related to design, construction and management of a building impact its carbon emission. The paper concludes by reflecting on these limitations of this development programme and describes some additional features employed by the Italian platform in order to overcome some of these challenges..