An integrated dataset could take many existing databases and put all the information in one place.
The massive Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS)—akin to the U.S. Census but for building energy performance—has underpinned a number of key policies and building certification programs for years. While a major blow, the recent loss of new CBECS data due to funding reasons (see “Key Energy Data Hit Hard by Federal Budget Cuts,”
EBN May 2011) has led to a conversation about how we can better collect data to support better building performance—and to some new initiatives as well.
It’s not just about energy anymore, says Ryan Colker, director of the consultative council at the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS), which has just released the report “Data Needs for Achieving High-Performance Buildings.” Building performance also includes everything from financial viability to indoor air quality, occupant satisfaction, and resiliency. “We really need to have a robust data set to understand where we are,” said Colker. While energy is key, “we’d like to be able to relate various building performance attributes to get a complete picture.” In the long run, this picture might include the ability to “set up a robust data set on indoor air quality and make the connection of what choices on the energy side have an impact on indoor air quality,” he said.
Where this data will come from remains an open question, but a great deal is already being collected by many different organizations, points out Aurora Sharrard, Ph.D., director of innovation at the Green Building Alliance. Her organization, along with the American Society of Heating, Cooling & Air-Conditioning Engineers (AHSRAE), is developing a comprehensive database of multiple building performance attributes, known as DASH. “We’re not re-creating anything else that’s out there, but partnering with other organizations and integrating it in one place,” Sharrard told
EBN.
DASH will be released in beta in April 2012, she said. However, while potentially powerful, it will not replace CBECS. “Being a voluntary tool, it will probably never be that representative sample because it will include buildings that want to get better,” she said, and won’t necessarily include, like CBECS, buildings of all sizes, ages, and performance characteristics. Even so, “Somebody needs to start asking the questions and start reporting to standard reporting protocols,” she said, “and we’re going to do it.”
Colker agrees, adding that DASH will be most successful if it can “make the process easier on building owners and building managers” by soliciting data in a streamlined and simple fashion. Right now, many building managers are responding to multiple surveys on multiple
issues using many different metrics, and the data is being put in many different places for multiple audiences. “We’d get further if we only asked them once for everything that we need,” Colker said.
In the meantime, CBECS may return, thanks to a recent Senate appropriations committee allocation of $10 million to the Energy Information Administration with the recommendation that the agency complete a new CBECS survey during fiscal year 2012.
For more information:
National Institute of Building Sciences
www.nibs.org
January 1, 2012
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DASH expects to include building varietyPosted by
Aurora Sharrard
on Jan 4, 2012, 01:46 PM
DASH does expect to include performance information for buildings of all sizes, ages, and performance characteristics. There is, however, no expectation that the DASH dataset will be the statistically representative sample that CBECS is.
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DASH does expect to include performance information for buildings of all sizes, ages, and performance characteristics. There is, however, no expectation that the DASH dataset will be the statistically representative sample that CBECS is.