Energy Efficient Buildings Hub Simulation Platform
web software to support decision making in building retrofit projects
Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2013
53 people from 13 organizations
in 12 different U.S. cities
set out to integrate 10+ building energy software packages
into 1 user-friendly interface
with building expert knowledge embedded throughout
on 1 web platform
publicly available to billions of people
built with a cloud infrastructure of
4 Dell Servers, VMware vSphere+vCenter,
& 20 virtual machines
. . . 11 months later . . .
4 web tools ● 4 levels of complexity
Lite
Partial
Substantial
Comprehensive
1 interface simplifies the best parts of 8 enginesE, 3 mockupsM, 5 external resourcesR, and 1 retrofit gameG, online at:
My Buildings
Dashboard
Run Simulations
in Cloud
Save Inputs & Outputs
in Cloud
User/Company
Login
Upload Utility Data
Portfolio Manager / Excel
Data Flow
across Tools
Weather Support
for 18 Cities
Dual Units
English + Metric
all designed to ENGAGE owners & SUPPORT decision making in building retrofit projects
The EEB Hub Simulation Platform features were developed with a focus on (1) user experience, (2) stakeholder engagement, and (3) data accessibility. Features not shown above include an ASHRAE Accuracy Assessment, Feedback Pop-up, and Visitors Dashboard.
VISITORS
tracked with Google Analytics & Geckoboard from Sept 2013 - Feb 2014
pageviews
visits/month
unique visitors
Top Entrances
Direct to tools.eebhub.org
Weekly Hub-date Emails
Top Operating Systems
Macintosh
Windows
iOS (iPhone, iPod)
Top Web Browsers
Chrome
Firefox
Safari
COLLABORATIONS
case studies
x 6 Institutions = 18 Energy Models of Building Retrofits
reports to U.S. DOE
team presentations
screenshots of inspiration
a Graphical User Interface (GUI) Library of Building Energy Software for us and the world
shared database
SimDB (Simulation Database) supports features such as user login, data flow across tools, my buildings dashboard, & saving inputs in the cloud. We used a NoSQL, Document Based, Database built with MongoDB. The documents are made up of JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) files with attributes based off of the DOE's Building Energy Data Exchange Specification (BEDES). For disk space reference, each complex simulation produces 20MB (for EnergyPlus outputs). As of January 2014, there were:
22
Users / Companies
24
Saved Buildings
lines of code
= 23,229 lines of team created code + 67,202 lines of open source code
includes comments, 4,539 files, 143 images; estimated lines of code per project weekday = 105
all available at github.com/eebhub/platform
built with
software comprised of over 20 million lines of open source code
KEY | Number = Lines of Open Source Code in 2013 | M = Million | K = Thousand
The EEB Hub Simulation Platform could not have been built in 11 months without the use of open source software tools.
While all software listed above supported the creation of tools.eebhub.org, only frameworks with an asteriks* were included in the code base.
Honorable mentions of open source software also used include Embedded JavaScript (html templates), Cyberduck (server file transfer), Brackets.io (offline coding environment), &
ASHRAE Inverse Modeling Toolkit, and Google's V8 JavaScript Engine (which powers Node.js).
Open source icons are credited to Iconmonstr, Glyphicons, FontAwesome, and TheNounProject.
LESSONS LEARNED
1. To enable effective national collaboration use:
Video Conferencing
to make virtual meetings more natural with Telepresence or Hangouts
Google Apps
to co-create documents in realtime, use a list-serv email address, & generate easy links
2. To build a web application with a small team of developers as fast as possible use:
Node.js
to speak 1 Language [JavaScript] for coding in the browser, server, & database
Document Database
to allow for a flexible JSON data structure that can be read/critiqued by entire team
3. To support software integration, standardize an operating system early in project.
We used Ubuntu Linux because it's free, open source, extremely well documented, & proven for live production web apps. Read full lessons learned deliverable reports here.
to learn even more
check out the 8 news articles published throughout 2013, especially the culminating research digest summary:
