Traditional design of energy systems in the built environment involves optimizing efficiency of individual energy system components rather than considering the energy systems integrated with the built environment and their occupants. Specifically, buildings with 40% of primary energy consumption and 70% of electricity consumption provide great opportunities for energy savings through context-based design. Nevertheless, recent advances in the design of buildings focused on developing technologies and physical models to optimize energy consumption for individual buildings. Common design practices do not consider interactions among the buildings, the built environment, and building occupants. While individual buildings perform differently these buildings have inherent similarities, allowing building classification and class-based assessments of heat transfer processes. For example, urban microclimate is responsible for approximately 17% reduction in the efficiency of the cooling systems for buildings located in dense city centers with urban plan area density of 0.44 compared to the efficiency in the rural areas with urban plan area density of 0.04. This presentation aims to elaborate a context-based framework to design building energy systems, enabling design of smart cities based on the recent advances in the (1) design of individual smart buildings (2) classification of buildings with respect to their energy use patterns, and (3) development of new physical models. This effort requires an understanding of the relative significance of the heat transfer processes, designing novel building energy simulation tools, and educating next generation of engineers through dissemination of research results in the building science classes. These activities would open opportunities to develop novel cyber-physical systems for smart cities to quantify interactions among dependent city system components such as building energy end-use, power generation, and smart-grid.                                    

BIO: Mohammad Heidarinejad is a research associate in Mchanical Engineering Department at the University of Maryland (UMD), and Cluster of SustainabilITY in the Built Environment (CITY@UMD). Mohammad’s research interests include (1) multi-scale modeling of energy systems in built environment focusing on developing fundamental/applied models, (2) fundamental transport processes in and around buildings, and (3) energy use pattern classification of buildings. Mohammad received his Ph.D. (2014) in Mechanical Engineering, and M.Sc. (2011) in Architectural Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. Mohammad is the recipient of several prestigious fellowships including the Grant-in-Aid Fellowship from the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers Inc. (ASHRAE). Mohammad is a member of professional societies, including American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and International Building Performance Simulation Association (IBPSA/USA) and ASHRAE. He published more than twenty-six papers in peer reviewed international journals and conferences. Mohammad was and is one of the main contributors to National Science Foundation (NSF) the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and ASHRAE funded projects. Currently, Mohammad is actively submitting research proposals.