Overview

This year, the New York Academy of Sciences presents a four-part series looking at the state of the art in green building technology and design. Focusing on case studies that represent key innovations, the series will explore new technologies and examine the lessons that have been learned through their implementation.

The first event in the series looked at the convergence of sensing devices and high-powered data analysis tools, which offer ways not only to identify faults within lighting, energy, and cooling systems, but also to optimize the structure's overall performance over the life of the building. Speakers discussed opportunities made possible by high-performance stream computing, machine learning, and model-based tools, as well as characteristics of the building industry that need to be considered to bring automation into building operations more widely.

The second event addressed how innovative design can significantly reduce energy consumption in buildings. The upgrade of an existing warehouse as a refrigerated storage facility in New York and the design-and-build of a university classroom, office, and conference center in California posed vastly different challenges. But both projects showed that commercially available technology can have a big impact on energy usage.

The third event of the series looked at the performance of green buildings after construction is completed and the building is occupied. Post-occupancy evaluation (POE) has been evolving as a science in Europe, and is gaining traction in the U.S. Different levels of POE seek to understand post-occupancy building performance, including energy performance and other aspects of occupant satisfaction. This event highlighted the progress made in establishing POE criteria in Germany, and showed performance data from several buildings in New York City.

This eBriefing will be updated over the course of the year with reports and multimedia on issues including renewable energy generation, water efficiency and reuse, waste reduction and the use of environmentally responsible materials. Sign up for our eBriefing alerts to be notified about updates, and watch our Environmental Sciences & Sustainability topic page for announcements of upcoming events.

Use the tabs above to find meeting reports and multimedia from this series.

Multimedia is now available from:

Kurt Roth (Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy Systems)
Jane Snowdon (IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center)
Gregory Provan (University College Cork)
Stephen Samouhos (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Lorey Flick (ADS Engineers)
Strachan Forgan (Sasaki Associates)
Stephan Plesser (Technical University of Braunschweig)
Brian Schwagerl (Hearst Corporation)

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