ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a method for zero carbon design using multi-objective optimisation, in which technical, financial, and thermal comfort analyses are conducted in parallel. The result presents the user with a range of trade-off solutions for zero carbon design. In addition to investigating a much larger number of candidate solutions, the multi-objective optimisation addresses the complex non-linear interdependence of design variables in a much more systematic way in comparison with the method based on a series of single simulations. The genetic algorithm (GA) that operates in the background of the optimisation process requires the population size and the number of generations to be set. The independent variables in a multi-objective optimisation process are in fact design variables for the building. These design variables need to be taken through a wide enough range in order to ensure that zero carbon design can be found in that range.
