DIAL-EUROPE: European integrated daylighting design tool

• Research unit: EU RFP
• Project number: 99.0640-1

Key words (English)

Decision support tool; integrated building design; daylighting and electric lighting; HVAC systems; visual/thermal comfort; fuzzy logic

Alternative project number (English)

EU project number: ERK6-1999-00007

Research programs (English)

EU-programme: 5. Frame Research Programme - 1.4b.2 Economic and efficient energy for a competitive Europe

Short description (English)

See abstract

Further information (English)

Full name of research-institution/enterprise:
EPF Lausanne
Laboratoire d'Energie solaire et de Physique du Bâtiment

Partners and International Organizations (English)

Coordinator: University of Cambridge (UK)

Abstract (English)

The aim of the project is to elaborate a software based tool, concerned with the design of daylit rooms, by taking benefit from the experience gained during the development of an analogous software tool (LESO-DIAL) developed at EPFL. This tool is intended to support the decisions of the building designers (architects, service engineers, etc.) during the very early phase of the project, in order to allow them making the appropriate choices for building design in regards to sustainable development.
The tool indicates daylighting performance of the rooms and will account for other environmental factors associated with the windows, such as heat losses, impact of solar protections, overheating and glare risks. It includes at the current stage electric lighting design.
To this end, the tool incorporates descriptive inputs, presented in linguistic and graphical terms; fuzzy-logic rules are used to give indications of confidence of the different design options, imagined by the building designers. Consistent with the use of precedent in architectural design practice, the tool includes a database of real monitored and virtual simulated case studies buildings, which are extended within the framework of the project; a fuzzy-logic based module will allow the retrieving and the comparison of the designed object with the case studies of the database.
The DIAL-Europe software design support tool is currently under development and will be applied in both educational and professional environment to which it will be adapted by each participating country.

References in databases (English)

Swiss Database: Euro-DB of the
State Secretariat for Education and Research
Hallwylstrasse 4
CH-3003 Berne, Switzerland
Tel. [phone]
Swiss Project-Number: 99.0640-1