Almeida Alissandra Pessoa, Sousa Vitor, Silva Cristina Matos
CERIS, Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001, Lisbon, Portugal.
Federal University of Roraima, Av. Cap. Ene Garcez, 69304-000, Boa Vista, Roraima, Brazil.
Heliyon. 2021 Dec 21;7(12):e08642. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e08642. eCollection 2021 Dec.
Knowing water and energy consumption patterns sets the baseline for understanding their drivers and assessing the performance of potential measures to increase efficiency and/or reliability. These patterns can vary substantially depending on the building characteristics, on the building users and use, on the cultural, social, economic, environmental context in which the building is located, among many other factors. This article presents a general methodological framework for characterizing water and energy consumption patterns in buildings based on the evaluation of the characteristics of the equipments and appliances, as well as the type of users and the activities developed in each type of room. This allows estimating water and energy use, by end use per square meter and by roomtype. The methodological framework proposed was applied to the buildings of the Paricarana Campus of Federal University of Roraima (UFRR), Brazil, providing one of the few examples in the literature reporting water and energy consumption in university buildings in tropical climates. Universities, in most cases, represent large water and energy consumers with distinctive consumption drivers and patterns which have received limited attention when compared to other types of buildings (e.g., residential). The findings have shown that teaching rooms and administration rooms are the main consumers, representing 48% and 49% of the institution's energy and water consumption, respectively. Air conditioning is the biggest energy consumption (63%), while personal use represents 72% of the total water consumption in a building. The toilets represent a large water consumption in a university building (46.40%). Comparing different building uses, the central library is the highest consumer, due to the longest operating time and the highest occupational density. The methodological proposal intends to be a useful tool to support managers and decision-makers to understand the dynamics of consumption and then propose effective practices to reduce water and energy uses, as well as providing reference data for comparison with other educational institutions.
了解水和能源消耗模式为理解其驱动因素以及评估提高效率和/或可靠性的潜在措施的性能奠定了基础。这些模式会因建筑特征、建筑使用者和用途、建筑所在的文化、社会、经济、环境背景以及许多其他因素而有很大差异。本文基于对设备和器具的特征以及使用者类型和各类房间所开展活动的评估，提出了一个用于描述建筑中水和能源消耗模式的通用方法框架。这使得能够按每平方米的最终用途和房间类型来估算水和能源的使用量。所提出的方法框架应用于巴西罗赖马联邦大学（UFRR）帕里卡拉纳校区的建筑，这是文献中为数不多的报告热带气候下大学建筑水和能源消耗情况的例子之一。在大多数情况下，大学是水和能源的大消费者，其具有独特的消耗驱动因素和模式，与其他类型的建筑（如住宅）相比，受到的关注有限。研究结果表明，教室和行政办公室是主要的消耗者，分别占该机构能源和水消耗的48%和49%。空调是最大的能源消耗项（63%），而个人用水占建筑总用水量的72%。卫生间在大学建筑中用水量很大（46.40%）。比较不同的建筑用途，中央图书馆是最高消耗者，这是由于其运营时间最长且人员密度最高。该方法建议旨在成为一个有用的工具，以支持管理人员和决策者了解消耗动态，进而提出减少水和能源使用的有效措施，同时为与其他教育机构进行比较提供参考数据。
