A simulation study of energy use rates using Building Information Modeling (BIM) tools on social housing building in Alexandria Governorate.

With the increasing concept of sustainability around the world, and the problems arising from climate change and global warming, there is an important role to play in improving energy performance as a basic requirement in environmental design processes of buildings, especially residential buildings, as they are the highest consumers of energy. This requires giving effective environmental treatments to rationalize energy and preserve residents' comfort. The aim of the research was to improve energy efficiency in social housing buildings in New Borg El Arab City in Alexandria Governorate as a treatment of the building envelope. This was done through an applied study using the simulation program Design Builder 0.7. An applied study used the Design Builder 0.7 simulation program to explore the energy performance of social housing buildings. The strategy was simply to optimize the building envelope with the following changes: adding 6 cm of thermal insulation to 25 cm thick walls, replacing old windows with double glazed windows modified by nanotechnology, and 8 cm of thermal insulation to the roof. The results showed that using the environmental treatments proposed in the study to improve the outer envelope resulted in a significant improvement in energy performance of approximately 20% compared to the base case.