UMBRELLA

Project Summary

UMBRELLA developed an innovative, web-based decision-support application (Re:Form), which supports and connects stakeholders involved in energy efficient design and retrofitting of buildings. The tools analyse building energy performance against the user’s needs, to give recommended energy efficient solutions and optimised business models for implementation across the whole life of the building.

Outputs from the UMBRELLA project have since led to the successful development and commercialisation of IES' Parametric Tool and Hone products.

IES' Role

IES coordinated the project and developed an innovative software toolset which combined economic (Life Cycle Costing and Return on Investment) and environmental aspects (Energy, CO₂ reduction and Life Cycle Analysis) with dynamic thermal simulations and business models to give the end user a simple, quick and easy to use solution that allowed them to identify and choose optimised retrofit measures most suitable to their building at both design and in-use stages.

IES also developed software to allow the user to compare and contrast different retrofit measures according to their economic and environmental performance and to weight these characteristics according to user constraints and preferences. In this way, IES was able to support the user’s decision making process, ensuring a best fit solution was proposed.

Test Sites

• UK
• Italy
• Spain 
• Poland