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.
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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.

Publications

Publications By Research Area

2024

Krelling, Amanda, Roberto Lamberts, Jeetika Malik, Wanni Zhang, Kaiyu Sun, and Tianzhen Hong."Defining weather scenarios for simulation-based assessment of thermal resilience of buildings under current and future climates: A case study in Brazil."Sustainable Cities and Society 107 (2024) 105460. DOI

Haddad, Shamila, Wanni Zhang, Riccardo Paolini, Kai Gao, Muzahim Altheeb, Abdulrahman Al Mogirah, Abdullatif BinMoammar, Tianzhen Hong, Ansar Khan, C Cartalis, A Polydorose, and Mattheos Santamouris."Quantifying the Energy Impact of Heat Mitigation in Cities: A Catalyst for Building Energy Saving."Nature Cities (2024).

Haddad, Shamila, Wanni Zhang, Riccardo Paolini, Kai Gao, Muzahim Altheeb, Abdulrahman Al Mogirah, Abdullatif BinMoammar, Tianzhen Hong, Ansar Khan, Constantinos Cartalis, Anastasios Polydoros, and Mattheos Santamouris."Quantifying the energy impact of heat mitigation technologies at the urban scale."Nature Cities 1.1 (2024) 62 - 72. DOI

2023

Hong, Tianzhen, Sang Hoon Lee, Wanni Zhang, Kaiyu Sun, Barry Hooper, and Janghyun Kim."Nexus of electrification and energy efficiency retrofit of commercial buildings at the district scale."Sustainable Cities and Society 95 (2023) 104608. DOI

2022

Luo, Na, Xuan Luo, Mohammad Mortezazadeh, Maher Albettar, Wanni Zhang, Dongxue Zhan, Liangzhu Wang, and Tianzhen Hong."A data schema for exchanging information between urban building energy models and urban microclimate models in coupled simulations."Journal of Building Performance Simulation (2022) 1 - 18. DOI

Teso, Lorenzo, Laura Carnieletto, Kaiyu Sun, Wanni Zhang, Andrea Gasparella, Piercarlo Romagnoni, Angelo Zarrella, and Tianzhen Hong."Large scale energy analysis and renovation strategies for social housing in the historic city of Venice."Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments 52 (2022) 102041. DOI

Teso, Lorenzo, Laura Carnieletto, Kaiyu Sun, Wanni Zhang, Andrea Gasparella, Piercarlo Romagnoni, Angelo Zarrella, and Tianzhen Hong."Large scale energy analysis and renovation strategies for social housing in the historic city of Venice."Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments 52 (2022) 102041. DOI

Sun, Kaiyu, Patricia Kusumah, Wanni Zhang, Max Wei, and Tianzhen Hong."Exploring Decarbonization and Clean Energy Pathways for Disadvantaged Communities in California."5th International Conference on Building Energy and Environment (2022).

Zeng, Zhaoyun, Wanni Zhang, Kaiyu Sun, Max Wei, and Tianzhen Hong."Investigation of pre-cooling as a recommended measure to improve residential buildings’ thermal resilience during heat waves."Building and Environment 210 (2022) 108694. DOI

2021

Sun, Kaiyu, Wanni Zhang, Zhaoyun Zeng, Ronnen M Levinson, Max Wei, and Tianzhen Hong."Passive cooling designs to improve heat resilience of homes in underserved and vulnerable communities."Energy and Buildings 252 (2021) 111383. DOI

Hong, Tianzhen, Yujie Xu, Kaiyu Sun, Wanni Zhang, Xuan Luo, and Barry Hooper."Urban microclimate and its impact on building performance: A case study of San Francisco."Urban Climate 38 (2021) 100871. DOI

Xu, Yujie, Tianzhen Hong, Wanni Zhang, Zhaoyun Zeng, and Max Wei."Heat Vulnerability Index Development and Mapping."SimAUD 2021 (2021).

Carnieletto, Laura, Martina Ferrando, Lorenzo Teso, Kaiyu Sun, Wanni Zhang, Francesco Causone, Piercarlo Romagnoni, Angelo Zarrella, and Tianzhen Hong."Italian prototype building models for urban scale building performance simulation."Building and Environment 192 (2021) 107590. DOI

2020

Zhang, Wanni, Tianzhen Hong, and Xuan Luo."Extract useful information from building permits data to profile a city’s building retrofit history."2020 Building Performance Analysis Conference and SimBuild co-organized by ASHRAE and IBPSA-USA (2020). DOI

Hong, Tianzhen, Zhe Wang, Xuan Luo, and Wanni Zhang."State-of-the-art on research and applications of machine learning in the building life cycle."Energy and Buildings 212 (2020) 109831. DOI

2019

Hong, Tianzhen, Yujie Xu, Kaiyu Sun, Wanni Zhang, and Xuan Luo."Visualizing Urban Microclimate and Quantifying its Impact on Building Energy Use in San Francisco."the 1st ACM International WorkshopProceedings of the 1st ACM International Workshop on Urban Building Energy Sensing, Controls, Big Data Analysis, and Visualization - UrbSys'19 (2019). DOI