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Open research questions in Building Energy and Comfort Optimization

248 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 994 Building Energy and Comfort Optimization papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • Investigating the applicability of the proposed framework to other building types and climates - Evaluating the long-term economic performance of the retrofit measures - Assessing the impact of variations in operational, environmental, and economic parameters on the NZEB pathway

    CFD-Driven Passive Cooling and Renewable Retrofits for Nearly Net-Zero University Buildings in a Hot–Humid Climate · 2026 · DOI

  • Limited passive cooling potential in hot–humid climates. Economic burden associated with large-scale renewable energy deployment. Need for a comprehensive retrofit framework that addresses both energy demand and supply.

    CFD-Driven Passive Cooling and Renewable Retrofits for Nearly Net-Zero University Buildings in a Hot–Humid Climate · 2026 · DOI

  • The challenge of combining heterogeneous measurements into performance scores without demonstrating sufficient evidence coverage. The difficulty of evaluating visual comfort in industrial settings. The need to integrate visual, energy, and operational evidence in a comprehensive framework.

    Evidence-Aware Multicriteria Assessment for Industrial Lighting Audits: Separating Performance from Evidence Coverage · 2026 · DOI

  • Further research is needed to develop a task-specific uncertainty budget - The proposed framework could be applied to other industrial lighting audits - The use of ISO/CIE 19476:2014 to frame photometer-performance limitations could be explored further

    Evidence-Aware Multicriteria Assessment for Industrial Lighting Audits: Separating Performance from Evidence Coverage · 2026 · DOI

  • The academic understanding of the shape−energy relationship remains superficial, complicating standardization - The relationship between building shape and energy consumption differs significantly across China's various climatic zones

    A Review of Building Physical Shapes on Heating and Cooling Energy Consumption · 2024 · DOI

  • Future research should prioritize extensive, multi-parameter simulations to enhance understanding of building performance, thereby facilitating energy-efficient design

    A Review of Building Physical Shapes on Heating and Cooling Energy Consumption · 2024 · DOI

  • the study was based on simulation, - the simulation was carried out for a specific building in Poland, - the study did not consider other factors that may affect indoor air quality, - the study was limited to a specific type of building (multi-family building)

    Ventilation Methods for Improving the Indoor Air Quality and Energy Efficiency of Multi-Family Buildings in Central Europe · 2024 · DOI

  • high sensor-installation and maintenance costs, - limited coverage areas, - the necessity for physical access to measurement sites

    Integrating Occupant Behaviour into Urban-Building Energy Modelling: A Review of Current Practices and Challenges · 2024 · DOI

  • However, the effectiveness of MPC is highly dependent on the quality and temporal consistency of load and temperature forecasts, while access to sufficient real building data is often limited by privacy and availability constraints.

    Long-horizon building energy control with Mamba forecasting, rectified flow scenarios, and synthetic data bridging · 2026 · DOI

  • However, most previous studies have investigated PVSD performance at the single-building scale, while room-specific design and the effects of surrounding-building shading remain underexplored.

    Optimization of photovoltaic shading angles for net energy and indoor daylighting: a case study in Beijing · 2026 · DOI

  • Therefore, the applicability of the findings should be further examined under different façade orientations, floor levels, surrounding-building conditions, and envelope thermal-performance levels before broader generalization.

    Optimization of photovoltaic shading angles for net energy and indoor daylighting: a case study in Beijing · 2026 · DOI

  • The methodological scope was limited to a selected office space and point-in-time simulations from 10:00 to 15:00 on representative equinox and solstice days; therefore, the results should be interpreted as simulation-based design guidance rather than full annual or experimentally validated performance.

    Multi-Objective Optimization of Daylighting for an Office Space in a Very Hot Climate: A Comparison of Corrugated, Perforated, and Separated Shadings · 2026 · DOI

  • Demographic transitions are reshaping global patterns of residential energy consumption and associated carbon emissions, yet the implications of population aging remain underexplored.

    The impacts of population aging on residential energy consumption and carbon emissions in the United States · 2025 · DOI

  • However, integrating these technologies into a unified Digital Twin (DT) framework remains underexplored, particularly in relation to thermal comfort.

    Digital Twin-Enabled Building Information Modeling–Internet of Things (BIM-IoT) Framework for Optimizing Indoor Thermal Comfort Using Machine Learning · 2025 · DOI

  • Despite growing interest in this area, limited research has been conducted to systematically identify the primary factors that influence residential energy efficiency at scale, leaving a significant research gap.

    A Machine Learning-Based Intelligent Framework for Predicting Energy Efficiency in Next-Generation Residential Buildings · 2025 · DOI

  • While shading and ventilation are critical to sustainable design, they are often studied independently, leaving gaps in understanding their combined potential.

    Dynamic Integration of Shading and Ventilation: Novel Quantitative Insights into Building Performance Optimization · 2025 · DOI

  • Future research should focus on developing multimodal data fusion frameworks, applying AI-based optimization, and incorporating emerging technologies like BIM and IoT for dynamic management.

    Strategies for Driving the Future of Educational Building Design in Terms of Indoor Thermal Environments: A Comprehensive Review of Methods and Optimization · 2025 · DOI

  • However, their accuracy is often limited by the inability to capture the dynamic impact of occupants’ presence and actions (i.

    Integrating Occupant Behaviour into Urban-Building Energy Modelling: A Review of Current Practices and Challenges · 2024 · DOI

  • Research on the retrofitting of residential buildings has focused mainly on energy efficiency, with only a few studies on indoor air quality.

    Ventilation Methods for Improving the Indoor Air Quality and Energy Efficiency of Multi-Family Buildings in Central Europe · 2024 · DOI

  • Although many studies have been conducted on building energy predictions, the impact of occupancy on energy prediction models for office-type commercial buildings remains insufficiently explored, despite its potential to improve energy efficiency by 20%.

    Occupant-Aware Energy Consumption Prediction in Smart Buildings Using a LSTM Model and Time Series Data · 2024 · DOI

  • Hybrid models combining the interpretability of linear methods with the precision of ensemble or neural models should be explored.

    Performance Evaluation of Machine Learning Models for Predicting Energy Consumption and Occupant Dissatisfaction in Buildings · 2024 · DOI

  • Three research findings in U-values for building envelopes are summarised: (1) the relationship between environmental factors and U-values needs to be studied in detail; (2) the gaps between theoretical and measured U-values are significant, especially for concrete and brick envelopes; (3) the accuracy of both theoretical and the measured U-values needs to be verified.

    U-Values for Building Envelopes of Different Materials: A Review · 2024 · DOI

  • In the context of the escalating challenge of climate change, optimizing buildings’ energy performance has become a critical research area, yet studies specifically targeting library buildings are scarce.

    Sustainable Architecture for Future Climates: Optimizing a Library Building through Multi-Objective Design · 2024 · DOI

  • Thus, we aimed to further elucidate the process of creating a UBEM with disparate and scarce data based on a bottom-up, physics-based approach.

    Advancing Urban Building Energy Modeling: Building Energy Simulations for Three Commercial Building Stocks through Archetype Development · 2024 · DOI

  • The studies that adopted machine learning models, such as Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), concentrated on improving the predictive capability of PET, thereby making the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) domain underexplored.

    Review on Gaps and Challenges in Prediction Outdoor Thermal Comfort Indices: Leveraging Industry 4.0 and ‘Knowledge Translation’ · 2024 · DOI

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248 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 994 Building Energy and Comfort Optimization papers in our library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

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