CBE Wins Catalyst Energy Innovation Award

CBE's Livable Analytics team is among the 
seven winners chosen at the Catalyst Energy 
Innovation Prize Demo Day.

The Center for the Built Environment (CBE) was a winner at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Catalyst Energy Innovation Prize Demo Dayheld in December in Philadelphia, PA. The award will provide funding of $100,000 to advance the work of Livable Analytics, an in-house venture that provides occupant survey tools to assess and understand occupant satisfaction and interaction within commercial buildings. The demo day award represents the culmination of a two-phase competition; in a previous phase, the Livable Analytics team submitted a five-minute video pitch to qualify for $25,000 in software development services and to compete in a prototyping competition. 

With the new funding from the Catalyst program, the team will further improve its software and visualization tools, expand outreach and training, develop tools for new project types, and greatly increase the number of surveys being conducted. These tools represent an expansion of CBE’s occupant survey, a unique resource that has been implemented in over 1,000 buildings around the world, with over 100,000 participants to date. This work has been done in collaboration with CBE’s Industry Partners, who support and guide the center’s research and advance the adoption of its innovations. 

For more information, read the full news release.

CBE successful with three major grants to support future research

CBE is proud to announce that we have recently been awarded three grants to support our research on radiant systems, personal comfort, and monitoring/controls of commercial buildings. There are a number of firms that contributed to the success of our grants, and we look forward to expanding our research portfolio with this new funding. The work will begin this summer. Read more in the announcement linked below, and be on the lookout for future updates on these new projects.

Read more >>

Cubicle Culture

CBE researcher John Goins is gaining more national attention with his expertise on occupant comfort and indoor environmental quality. Last week, he was interviewed on the NPR show Radio Times, where he discussed his research on productivity and cubicle culture. John has surveyed over 65,000 office workers through our IEQ Survey, providing him with tips and insight on office design and maximizing worker productivity. You can listen to the full show here, with John's portion beginning at 15:00.


How is your company office arranged? What is your experience working in a cubicle? 

Plug Loads Research Project Seeks Energy Modelers

An ongoing CBE research project, Simulated and Actual Energy Use: The Role of Plug Loads, is seeking experienced energy modelers for a survey to assess modelers' assumptions when simulating plug load energy use. Since design teams are frequently left to estimate the annual receptacle load energy use and peak demand using rules of thumb or other standardized/generalized practice, this research will help to determine the accuracy of these rules of thumb as compared to actual energy use, or a more itemized energy projection.

We invite energy modelers to contribute to the research by taking this brief (9-question) survey by June 29, 2012. Take the survey.

Any questions can be directed to gfuertes@berkeley.edu.

CBE quoted on the Sunday NY Times front page

On the front page of last Sunday’s New York Times, CBE Researcher John Goins is quoted in John Tierney’s article about noise in open office environments. The article cites findings from CBE’s occupant survey research as evidence of the types of challenges people face with the growing prevalence of shared and collaborative workplaces. The author, who is a frequent contributor to the Times and writes about social sciences and controversies in science and medicine, interviewed researchers, managers and facility professionals about acoustical problems in today’s so called “cubicle culture.” He includes case studies such as Autodesk, and the collaborative “bullpen” created by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Read the entire article, From Cubicles, Cry for Quiet Pierces Office Buzz.