Building Technology and Urban Systems Division

About Us +
Researchers in the Building Technology & Urban Systems Division (BTUS) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory develop data and technologies that increase energy efficiency and improve the health, safety and comfort of building occupants, in the United States and worldwide.

We work closely with industry partners, academics and government officials to achieve these goals, and share our research widely
Research +
We are at the forefront of cutting-edge research that redefines building technology and explores all areas of urban systems.

We have been leaders for decades in developing energy-efficient windows, improving indoor air quality, coming up with new ideas to fix the nation's electricity grid, and so much more.

Visit our research areas at the right to find out more.
Colum 1 +
Colum 2 +
Publications +
Enjoy presentations from Building Technology & Urban systems research experts on a wide variety of topics in the areas of building energy efficiency, the electricity grid and how it relates to buildings and much more.
- Presentations
News
Tools & Guides +
Explore our tools, guidebooks and software and download for free.

We offer a variety of technologies designed to simulate and model real-world circumstances to assist in energy-saving programs and help building owners build better buildings. These tools can help calculate performance of building systems like windows and shades, help consumers and builders pick the best windows for a variety of applications and much more.

2022

Walker, Iain S., Brennan Less, Nuria Casquero-Modrego, and Leo I. Rainer."The Costs of Home Decarbonization in the US."Proceedings of the 2022 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings. (2022).

Walker, Iain S., Brennan Less, and Nuria Casquero-Modrego."Pathways to Home Decarbonization."Proceedings of the 2022 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings. (2022).

Delp, William W., Brennan Less, Haoran Zhao, Spencer M. Dutton, Wanyu R. Chan, and Brett C. Singer."Simulation-Based Analysis of Impacts of Reduced Envelope and Duct Air Leakage on Indoor Air Pollutant Concentrations in Occupied Manufactured Homes." (2022).

Walker, Iain S., Brennan Less, David M. Lorenzetti, and Michael D. Sohn."Analysis of Zoned Residential Ventilation Systems."AIVC/ASHRAE IAQ 2020 Conference (2022).

Kolsch, Benedikt, Iain S. Walker, Woody Delp, Bjorn Schiricke, and Bernhard Hoffschmidt."Comparison of Airflow and Acoustic Measurements for Evaluation of Building Air Leakage Paths in a Laboratory Test Apparatus."AIVC/ASHRAE IAQ 2020 Conference (2022).

Walker, Iain S., and Benedikt Kolsch."Reducing Wind Sensitivity for Blower Door Testing."AIVC/ASHRAE IAQ 2020 Conference (2022).

Regnier, Cynthia, Paul A. Mathew, Leo Rainer, and Christopher CaraDonna."Systems Packages for Washington State Building Performance Standard Incentive Program: Phase 1 Analysis." (2022).

Walker, Iain S., Brennan Less, and Nuria Casquero-Modrego."Carbon and Energy Cost Impacts of Electrification of Space Heating with Heat Pumps in the US." (2022). DOI

2021

Touzani, Samir, Anand Prakash, Zhe Wang, Shreya Agarwal, Marco Pritoni, Mariam Kiran, Richard E. Brown, and Jessica Granderson."Controlling distributed energy resources via deep reinforcement learning for load flexibility and energy efficiency."Applied Energy (2021). DOI

Chen, Yimin, Guanjing Lin, Eliot Crowe, and Jessica Granderson."Development of a Unified Taxonomy for HVAC System Faults."Energies 14.17 (2021) 5581. DOI

Chen, Yimin, Guanjing Lin, Eliot Crowe, and Jessica Granderson."Development of a Unified Taxonomy for HVAC System Faults."Energies 14 (2021).

Touzani, Samir, Marc Wudunn, Samuel Fernandes, Avideh Zakhor, Rohullah Najibi, and Jessica Granderson."A MACHINE LEARNING APPROACH TO ESTIMATE WINDOWS-TO-WALL RATIO USING DRONE IMAGER." (2021).

Granderson, Jessica, Mrinalini Sharma, Eliot Crowe, David A. Jump, Samuel Fernandes, Samir Touzani, and Devan Johnson."Assessment of Model-Based Peak Electric Consumption Prediction for Commercial Buildings."Energy and Building 245 (2021). DOI

Walker, Iain S., Brennan Less, David M. Lorenzetti, and Michael D. Sohn."Development of Advanced Smart Ventilation Controls for Residential Applications."Energies (2021). DOI

Mathew, Paul A., Lino Sanchez, Sang Hoon Lee, and Travis Walter."Assessing the Energy Resilience of Office Buildings: Development and Testing of a Simplified Metric for Real Estate Stakeholders."Building Vol.11(3) No.96 (2021). DOI

Touzani, Samir, and Jessica Granderson."Open Data and Deep Semantic Segmentation for Automated Extraction of Building Footprints."Remote Sensing Vol.13 No..2578 (2021). DOI

Walker, Iain S., Paul Francisco, and Eric Werling."Reducing COVID-19 Transmission in Homes."Building Performance (2021).

Lin, Guanjing, Marco Pritoni, Yimin Chen, Christopher Weyandt, Raphael Vitti, and Jessica Granderson."Fault “Auto-correction” for HVAC Systems: A Preliminary Study."The 6th International High Performance Buildings Conference at Purdue (2021).

Satchwell, Andrew, Mary Ann Piette, Aditya Khandekar, Jessica Granderson, Natalie Mims Frick, Ryan Hledik, Ahmad Faruqui, Long Lam, Stephanie Ross, Jesse Cohen, Kitty Wang, Daniela Urigwe, Dan Delurey, Monica Neukomm, and David Nemtzow."A National Roadmap for Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings." (2021).

Less, Brennan, Iain S. Walker, and Nuria Casquero-Modrego."Emerging Pathways to Upgrade the US Housing Stock: A Review of the Home Energy Upgrade Literature." (2021).

Kim, Janghyun, Kim Trenbath, Jessica Granderson, Yimin Chen, Eliot Crowe, Hayden Reeve, Sarah Newman, and Paul Ehrlich."Research challenges and directions in HVAC fault prevalence."Science and Technology for the Built Environment 27 (2021). DOI

Walter, Travis, and Paul A. Mathew."GHG policy impacts for Seattle’s buildings: targets, timing, and scope."Buildings and Cities 2 (2021). DOI

Chan, Wanyu R., Brennan Less, and Iain S. Walker."DOE Deep Energy Retrofit Cost Survey." (2021).

Singer, Brett C., Wanyu R. Chan, William W. Delp, Iain S. Walker, and Haoran Zhao."Effective Kitchen Ventilation for Healthy Zero Net Energy Homes with Natural Gas." (2021).

Less, Brennan, Iain S. Walker, Nuria Casquero-Modrego, and Leo I. Rainer."The Cost of Decarbonization and Energy Upgrade Retrofits for US Homes." (2021).