Hospital campus design related with EeB challenges

Energy efficiency and reduction of carbon emission of Healthcare buildings and districts are a key factor for a sustainable community since their energy use and carbon emission are among the highest of all building types. A hospital - which is a part of a healthcare district - uses 2.5 times more energy than an office in average. In order to cope with the energy, financial, political, societal and environmental crises, all healthcare districts in Europe are urgently seeking to substantially reduce their energy consumption and carbon emission by 30-50%. For this purpose, the design phase of new building projects as well as building retrofitting projects is the crucial moment for integrating multi-scale EeB solutions. At present and in the near future, clients, architects, technical designers, contractors, and end-users really need a breakthrough in designing energy-efficiency buildings integrated in the healthcare districts. STREAMER is an actual EU FP7 industry-driven collaborative research project on Energy-efficient Buildings (EeB) with cases of mixed-use healthcare districts. The research aims at 50% reduction of the energy use and carbon emission of new and retrofitted buildings in healthcare districts by optimising Semantics-driven Design methodologies with interoperable tools for Geo and Building Information Modelling (Semantic BIM and GIS) to validate the energy performance during the design stage. This paper presents the methodology defined within STREAMER to approach the organizational, distribution and functional aspects of Healthcare buildings in relation to their energy-related features. The typological, technical, distribution and functional characteristics of each building type is investigated and connected to the functional aggregative configurations based on the proximity and the interdependencies between spaces and functions in order to define a compatibility matrix between various building typologies and their energy-related features and characteristics. © 2015 Taylor & Francis Group.