Publications by Émilie Nault | EPFL Graph Search

Analysis and Visualisation of Decision Paths towards Reaching Environmental Impact Targets at Early-Design Stage

Émilie Nault, Sergi Aguacil Moreno, Thomas Bernard Paul Jusselme

Environmental impact objectives are commonly found in building performance labels and rating schemes. Anticipating a building’s impact from the conceptual design stage and identifying decisions that do not compromise its chances of reaching these targets i ...

Universidade da Coruña2020

Exploring the Robustness of Building-Integrated Photovoltaics Renovation Scenarios to Climate Change Perspectives: Results for a multi-family building in the Swiss context

Emmanuel Rey, Émilie Nault, Sergi Aguacil Moreno

Building renovation is one of the main strategies put forth in western countries, where energy regulations are becoming increasingly demanding. Switzerland for example has set the ambitious target aiming at carbon neutrality for 2050. Building-integrated p ...

Universidade da Coruña2020

Strategic environmental urban planning - A contextual approach for defining performance goals and informing decision-making

Marilyne Andersen, Émilie Nault, Sergi Aguacil Moreno, Thomas Bernard Paul Jusselme

Environmental performance objectives in terms of energy consumption and carbon emission targets can be found in various building norms and certifications schemes. These targets are often dependent upon the building program (e.g. office), but independent fr ...

2019

Life-Cycle Assessment as a decision-support tool for early phases of urban planning: evaluating applicability through a comparative approach

Marilyne Andersen, Émilie Nault, Thomas Bernard Paul Jusselme, Katarina Slavkovic

While ambitious environmental objectives are being set for new constructions in Switzerland, the assessment of urban-scale projects and comparison of their performance to national targets are made possible by a growing number of life-cycle assessment (LCA) ...

IOP Publishing2019

Development and test application of the UrbanSOLve decision-support prototype for early-stage neighborhood design

Marilyne Andersen, Émilie Nault

The need for adequate instruments to support practitioners toward achieving sustainable and energy-efficient architectural and urban design has long been acknowledged. Motivated by identified shortcomings of building performance assessment tools for concep ...

2018

Setting contextual life-cycle objectives in urban design: requirements for a decision-support method

Marilyne Andersen, Émilie Nault, Thomas Bernard Paul Jusselme

A variety of building labels and norms exist that set evermore-ambitious environmental and energy performance targets. In parallel, a growing number of building performance evaluation tools are adopting the life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodology to allow ...

2018

Predictive models for assessing the passive solar and daylight potential of neighborhood designs: A comparative proof-of-concept study

Emmanuel Rey, Marilyne Andersen, Émilie Nault

Despite recent developments, neighborhood-scale performance assessment at the early-design phase is seldom carried out in practice, notably due to high computational complexity, time requirement, and perceived need for expert knowledge, ultimately limiting ...

2017

Energy performance analysis in interdisciplinary education – Lessons learned from a simulation-based teaching approach

Emmanuel Rey, Marilyne Andersen, Émilie Nault, Sergi Aguacil Moreno

The education of building practitioners is challenged by the increasing need for interdisciplinary profiles in the professional practice. To progress toward the goal of a sustainable built environment, a common language must be shared among fields such as ...

2017

Illustrative Prospective of Solar Energy in Urban Planning: Collection of International Case Studies

Christian Roecker, Maria Cristina Munari Probst, Émilie Nault, Giuseppe Peronato, Pietro Florio

This reports presents a collection of 34 case studies on solar energy in urban planning, addressing how the planning process has been developed, how the stakeholders have been involved, which instruments have been applied, which energy technology and envir ...

IEA SHC Task 512017

State-of-the-Art of Education on Solar Energy in Urban Planning

Maria Cristina Munari Probst, Émilie Nault, Giuseppe Peronato, Pietro Florio

This report focuses on education in order to strengthen the knowledge and competence of relevant stakeholders in solar energy in urban planning. The core of this study is to create substantial links between research and education as well as between researc ...

IEA SHC Task 512017

A Multi-Criteria Decision-Support Workflow for Early-Stage Neighborhood Design based on Predicted Solar Performance

Emmanuel Rey, Marilyne Andersen, Émilie Nault

Despite recent developments, the need for adequate guidance and support in the early decision-making process of urban planners, designers, and architects has recurrently been recognized. Traditional performance assessment methods, which are often based on ...

2016

Urban planning and solar potential: Assessing users' interaction with a novel decision-support workflow for early-stage design

Emmanuel Rey, Marilyne Andersen, Émilie Nault, Luisa Pastore

The need for sustainable architecture and urban design and planning has long been acknowledged, along with the necessity for adequate, early-phase guiding instruments. This paper aims at exploring the effectiveness and usability of a novel decision-support ...

2016

Solar potential in early neighborhood design : a decision-support workflow based on predictive models

Émilie Nault

In light of the acknowledged need for a transition toward sustainable cities, neighborhoods and buildings, urban planners, architects and engineers have to comply with evermore demanding energy regulations. These decision-makers must be supported early-on ...

EPFL2016

The sensitivity of predicted energy use to urban geometrical factors in various climates

Emmanuel Rey, Marilyne Andersen, Émilie Nault, Parag Rastogi

Urban morphology, including building typology and layout, has a significant influence on the built environment’s access to the sun, which impacts its energy exchange with the environment. This energy exchange is a strong factor in determining the comfort l ...

2015

Review and critical analysis of early-design phase evaluation metrics for the solar potential of neighborhood designs

Emmanuel Rey, Marilyne Andersen, Émilie Nault, Giuseppe Peronato

The energy performance of a building is strongly influenced by its level of solar exposure, in turn affected by the climate, built context, and building morphological characteristics. Since these are typically fixed at the early- design phase, performance ...

2015

Early design phase evaluation of urban solar potential: Insights from the analysis of six projects

Emmanuel Rey, Marilyne Andersen, Émilie Nault

This paper presents the outcome of a study based on the early-stage analysis of six virtual urban-scale designs located in Bern, Switzerland. A preliminary solar potential evaluation methodology is devised, inspired by previous studies, to allow the compar ...

2013

Towards climate-based irradiation recommendations for optimal solar design: insights from a parametric study

Emmanuel Rey, Marilyne Andersen, Émilie Nault

In the early phases of the building design process, decisions are made on certain geometrical parameters, which strongly dictate the future performance of the building. To support decision- making, an understanding of the relation between design parameters ...

2013