Abstract
•Quantitative evaluation of seven architectural design features impact on cooling loads consumption in hot climates regions.•Smart energy scoring system consists of 40 design options was developed to be used at the early design stage.•Three design alternatives Revit BIM models were created and analyzed in terms of cooling loads using Ecotect simulation.•Simulation analyses were performed to the design alternatives: heat breakdown, degree days, consumption loads, and cost-effective.•BIM integration to the proposed scoring system proved its ability to assist designers in optimizing and reducing cooling loads consumption of buildings.
Architectural building design practic in hot climate regions has high-priority in the design process. Thus, selecting appropriate Architectural Design Features (ADFs) at the early design stage provides significant opportunities to control heat flows, maximize building energy performance, reduce excessive energy consumption cost, and preserve a comfortable temperature for occupants. In this research, an Architectural-Based Energy Impact Scoring System (AEISS) was developed based on inputs from 10 expert architects, and it consists of seven ADFs and 40 multiple design options. The proposed system provides a simple decision scoring system for designers to evaluate design alternatives and optimize the energy consumption of buildings in the early design phase. A simple user-friendly program for the AEISS was developed to assist the designers in generating the design alternatives scores. Energy simulation analyses were performed to validate the applicability of the proposed AEISS by integrating 3-D BIM models of three different design alternatives of a residential building in Saudi Arabia with Ecotect analysis software. A detailed analysis was performed to evaluate the energy impact of the selected ADFs and to compare the alternatives in terms of energy consumptions and cost-efficiency. The simulation results proved that the proposed AEISS gave responsive results and is capable of providing stakeholders with the optimum decision to select the design alternative with high energy performance and low consumption cost.