Modeling and Simulation of a Campus Living Building: A Case Study in Uncertainty Analysis and Stress Testing

The Living Building Challenge is the most rigorous performance-based challenge for buildings in the world. The energy petal of version 3.1 of the challenge mandates 105% net positive energy generation for an entire year of operation. Building simulation plays an important role in predicting building performance; however, there are several assumptions made regarding the expected use of the building, and there is inherent uncertainty associated with building parameters that serve as inputs to the energy models. Ignoring these uncertainties may lead to a false sense of security that the building will meet the strict targets. This paper explores the use of low-and high-resolution tools to check the performance at the whole-building as well as zonal level, and quantify the risk of not achieving energy targets.