Competition Timeline:

Competition Announced: January 22nd, 2018

Deadline for Submissions: May 31st, 2018 (EXTENDED TO JUNE 18TH)

Evaluation from Judges: June 1st – August 15th, 2018

Public Voting Process: August 1st- September 20th 2018

—————————————- SUBMIT AN ENTRY —————————————-

Competition Guidelines

The objective is to catalyze crowd-sourced submissions to Project StaSIO through execution of an online competition for Project StaSIO’s two forms of submissions: 1) Graphic Outputs and 2) Case Studies. The competition would be open to organizations or individuals who want to submit through either of the paths.

This competition is open to both individuals and project teams. Participants can submit one or more case studies or graphics through the online submission forms on Project StaSIO’s ‘Contribute’ page. Each participant can make multiple submissions and all submissions would be considered separately for the competition.

As a part of the submission process, the participant is required to identify the building performance question that is being answered through the graphic or case study, or link to one or more of the sample questions defined on the ‘Questions Menu’ on the website.

Track 1 – Graphics

Submissions made through this track should highlight data visualization best practices and what insights they can provide towards making decisions during the design process. Participants are required to submit graphic outputs of building simulation results that are successful in informing the design process, or conveying complex simulation data to clients. The graphics track has the following categories; each submission would be required to identify one or more applicable categories:

Climate
Lighting and Daylighting
Solar Loads, Shading, Glazing
Passive Design (thermal massing, natural ventilation, resilience)
Whole Building Analysis

Evaluation Criteria:

An image that successfully communicates the impact of certain design alternatives on a building’s performance. It can portray one or multiple metrics. Submissions made through the graphics track would be judged on the following criteria-

Clarity (the ability to convey complex information concisely)
Innovation (uniqueness of the graphic)
Insightfulness (The effectiveness with which it is answering the question it was designed for)
Aesthetic design (composition of the graphic)

Track 2 – Case Studies

This track would allow submissions of case studies that aggregate various aspects of building performance simulation and articulate the value of modeling in the early stages of the design process. These case studies should emphasize how the use of multiple simulation methods / metrics that are adequately communicated can provide a more holistic perspective of a design decision. The case study should serve as a resource for those advocating to integrate building performance simulation into their firms, or to simply provide a roadmap of what types of questions can be answered through modeling.

Evaluation Criteria:

A set of images and narratives that successfully tells the story of how performance simulation was integrated into the design process.. It should highlight how modeling workflows and different metrics were jointly evaluated to gain insight from the analysis and affect design..

Submissions made through the ‘Case Studies’ track will be evaluated based on-

Integration (how integrated was the modeling process? Was it done in a silo, or in tandem with the design team? Etc.)
Clarity – (does the modeling approach follow a legible structure? Is it driven by targeted analysis questions? Can it be understood by its intended targeted audience?)
Innovation (uniqueness of the approach)
Insightfulness (Did the study impact the design? Was it able to answer the original analysis questions? Did the team learn something non-obvious that could only have been learned through simulation? )

Judging Process

The review of submissions will be carried out by four judges. This panel would consist of experts in field of energy efficient building design, building energy modeling and analysis, with wide ranging experience and expertise in a large number of energy modeling projects. The judges for this competition are still in the process of being contacted and the competition guidelines would be updated once the panel is finalized.

Competition Review

Each submission will go through two rounds of evaluation.

First Round of Evaluations:

In the first round, each judge will evaluate and score the graphic or case study based on the criteria defined above. The top 25% submissions for the graphics track and top 25% evaluations for the case study track will make it to the second round of evaluations.

Second Round of Evaluations:

The submissions shortlisted through the first round of evaluations will undergo a second round of evaluations, which will be carried out by two entities:

Public voting process: The top 25% graphics and 25% case studies (as identified by the judges) would be uploaded on the Project StaSIO website. A survey would be sent out to the energy modeling community who would be able to view the anonymized submissions and score them based on the identified criteria.
Judges Review: The judges will meet online for the second round of evaluations before the conference and give the final ranking for each submission based on the scores received through the survey as well as the evaluation criteria. Judges will identify the winning entries through a unanimous vote.

Awards:

Two Sets of awards would be given to the winning entries:

People’s Choice Awards: The public voting process would identify the top 4 submissions, which would be awarded the People’s Choice Awards at the SimBuild2018 conference.
Judges Awards: Upto 4 awards would be awarded to the best Graphics and Case Studies, as identified by the panel of judges.

Recognition of Awardees:

The top 10% of submissions, as identified through the public voting process and judges review, will be invited to present their work at the award session at the Simbuild2018 conference. Winners of the People’s Choice Awards and Judges Awards will be announced at the Awards Reception during the SimBuild conference.

Awardees and their organizations will also be featured on the Project Stasio website and showcased in the IBPSA-USA Newsletter.