As early as 1978, Gero and Dudnik wrote a paper presenting a methodology to solve the problem of designing subsystems (HVAC) subjected to uncertain demands.
Concerning the uncertainties due to climate change: buildings have long life spans, for example, in England and Wales, around 40% of the office blocks existing in 2004 were built before 1940 (30% if considered by floor area).
De Wilde and Coley showed how important is to design buildings that take into consideration climate change and that are able to perform well in future weathers.
The authors emphasise the importance of thermal bridges that were not considered for the calculations, and how those originated by the internal partitions that separate dwellings have the largest impact on the final energy use.
The random parameters are sampled to generate 200 tests that are sent to the simulator (VA114), the results from which will be analysed to check the uncertainties with the largest impact on the energy calculations.
Another study performed by de Wilde and Wei Tian,[12] compared the impact of most of the uncertainties affecting building energy calculations taking into account climate change.
De Wilde and Tian used a two dimensional Monte Carlo Analysis to generate a database obtained with 7280 runs of a building simulator.
The work of Schnieders and Hermelink [13] showed a substantial variability in the energy demands of low-energy buildings designed under the same specification (Passivhaus).
The work of Schnieders and Hermelink [14] showed a substantial variability in the energy demands of low-energy buildings designed under the same specification (Passivhaus).
Blight and Coley [15] showed that that variability can be occasioned due to variance in occupant behaviour (the use of windows and doors was included in this work).