MUSES: Self-Sufficient Urban Buildings

This project combines field- and simulation-based studies to investigate the potential for achieving sustainable design in the provision and use of energy and water systems in urban buildings. In practical terms, better systems can reduce the burden on aging civil infrastructures, reduce operating costs, and enhance sustainability. In intellectual terms, improving understanding of buildings as combined human and technological systems?operating within environmental, geographic, fiscal and regulatory contexts?will extend systems science through the development of measurement instruments and analytic methods. The specific focus of this work is an examination of the scientific, engineering, and human factors affecting potential self-sufficiency of urban buildings. Data associated with engineering performance and human behavior will be collected from three urban buildings in New York City, all of which vary with respect to their design and the social structures that exist within them. In addition, this work will draw upon data from one simulated building. These studies of real and simulated environments provide an immediate link with two methods of assessing the claims about the nature of sustainability. These methods will involve statistical and analytic approaches, as well as simulation. Employing these methods is expected to lead to advances in understanding of the forces that determine whether building designs are sustainable, but also to recommendations for practice on how to account for external factors in trying to achieve sustainable designs. Workshops and outreach conducted in cooperation with an established science center will provide the work with a broad exposure to varied audiences.