Configuration of high performance apartment buildings renovation: A constraint based approach

This paper looks at the possibility of configuring high performance renovation of apartment buildings by the use of a constraint satisfaction problem (CSP). A new thermal envelope wraps the whole building and allows it to achieve a really low energy performance of 25 kWh/m²/year. This new thermal envelope is composed of rectangular panels, always comprising insulation and cladding, and sometimes including, in addition, doors, windows or solar modules. The panels can be fixed directly onto the walls or onto a metal structure around the whole building. The decision support system, based on CSP approaches, will simultaneously enable the interactive definition of the renovation, the associated bill of material (BOM) and the building site assembly process. The range of knowledge to exploit and to model leads us to integrate into a single decision support system different constraint types, such as classical, dynamic, geometric and global constraints, as well as their filtering methods.