A multi-objective window optimisation problem

Citation

Brownlee A, Wright JA & Mourshed MM (2011) A multi-objective window optimisation problem. In: Krasnogor N & Lanzi P (eds.) Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, GECCO'11 - Companion Publication. 13th Annual Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation, Dublin, Ireland, 12.07.2011-16.07.2011. New York, NY: ACM, pp. 89-90. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2001910

Abstract
We present an optimisation problem which seeks to locate the Pareto-optimal front of building window and shading designs minimising two objectives: projected energy use of the operational building and its construction cost. This problem is of particular interest because it has many variable interactions and each function evaluation is relatively time-consuming. It also makes use of a freely-available building simulation program EnergyPlus which may be used in many other building design optimisation problems. We describe the problem and report the results of experiments comparing the performance of a number of existing multi-objective evolutionary algorithms applied to it. We conclude that this represents a promising real-world application area.