Changing the Culture of Building Simulation with Emergent Modelling

Dynamic simulation models of buildings have been predominantly based on a top-down approach, which defines the system as a whole with equations, simplifies the representation to make the solutions computable at the expense of accuracy, and then seeks solutions to the system using numerical methods. This traditional approach, evolved as result of the development of traditional mathematics over the past 300 years, differs considerably from the way building physics operates. Building materials do not solve systems of complex equations. Instead, heat transfer occurs as result of neighbour to neighbour interaction of molecules. That leads to a much faster process than the one calculated by equations. This paper investigates an approach that replaces the system of equations with neighbour to neighbour interaction between autonomous components representing groups of molecules, giving rise to spontaneous emergence of the system behaviour.