An Expert System for Determining Compliance with the Texas Building Energy Design Standard

摘要

Demonstration of compliance with the TexasBuilding Energy Conservation Design Standardinvolves completion of a summary checklist for eachof its sections. This manual checking is tedious.Furthermore, no comprehensive documentation of theuser's compliance is provided and the compliancechecker must manage the data collected. To assistdesigners in complying with the Standard and toreduce the time required, the Center for EnergyStudies (CES) at the University of Texas at Austinhas developed an expert system to serve as both thecompliance procedure and its documentation. Thisexpert system directs the user with queries (screenmenus), prompting the user for all relevantinformation. A graphical user interface has beendeveloped to facilitate quick navigation through theStandard, easy data entry, and identification ofcompliance failures. This paper describes the researchapproach to the expert system, the system features,current status of project, and the benefits to be derivedfrom this innovative compliance tool.