The planet Earth is warming up. There is an urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Buildings account for almost 50% of UK carbon dioxide emissions. [1] The UK Government have set out a programme to make all new buildings zero carbon by 2019. This will require a paradigm shift in how buildings are designed, with an increased reliance on computational modelling of building performance early in the design process. This paper outlines how architects have traditionally worked, the available software and how it is used. It discusses the challenges faced by building designers in achieving zero carbon buildings and then outlines how software tools might develop to meet not only the zero carbon challenge but also take the concept further to help design sustainable buildings.

A global energy transition is underway. Limiting warming to 2°C (or less), as envisaged in the Paris Agreement, will require a major diversion of scheduled investments in the fossil-fuel industry and other high-carbon capital infrastructure towards renewables, energy efficiency, and other low or negative carbon technologies. The article explores the scale of climate finance and investment needs embodied in the Paris Agreement. It reveals that there is little clarity in the numbers from the plethora of sources (official and otherwise) on climate finance and investment. The article compares the US$100 billion target in the Paris Agreement with a range of other financial metrics, such as investment, incremental investment, energy expenditure, energy subsidies, and welfare losses. While the relatively narrowly defined climate finance included in the US$100 billion figure is a fraction of the broader finance and investment needs of climate-change mitigation and adaptation, it is significant when compared to some estimates of the net incremental costs of decarbonization that take into account capital and operating cost savings. However, even if the annual US$100 billion materializes, achieving the much larger implied shifts in investment will require the enactment of long-term internationally coordinated policies, far more stringent than have yet been introduced. Policy relevance Maintaining momentum towards fulfilling Article 2 of the UNFCCC – avoiding dangerous climate-change – means keeping a sense of perspective on how key financial and investment indicators of progress relate to the underlying macroeconomic reality of the task that lies ahead. There is a wide gap between the level of rhetorical commitment to mitigating and adapting to climate change evident at the Paris COP 21 Climate Summit, and countries’ actual on the ground commitments to emission reduction and investment in climate resilience, and the policies to bring them about. In particular, major shifts in financial flows towards low-carbon energy (renewables and energy efficiency) will be required if this gap is to be reduced.

The need to reduce radically the energy used by buildings is leading to new design practices. Current design and simulation software are used in very different ways, with energy simulation generally employed to check energy code compliance after the design stages are mostly finished. This linear approach to working practices, the modelling methods used and poor interoperability inhibit iterative design practices. This paper outlines a case study to elicit early software requirements for combined simulation and design software. The barriers to this type of integrated software are discussed. Finally, a change to the hierarchy of existing interoperable languages is proposed.

There is great potential to design digital simulation games as part of professional training settings. However, there is little research on how a large group in a classroom or seminar can all play at the same time. In this paper we describe the design and first in-the-wild deployment of the 4Decades game, which involves up to 30 players simultaneously in a simulation of global climate economics. Using a network of shared devices and ambient displays, a fast-paced collaborative game enabled players to reflect on prior learning, strategy making and their critical understanding of the simulation. Keywords/Key Phrases: serious games; multi-player simulation; game design; field study;

The iPad is typically perceived as a personal device, evoking the image of its owner tapping away - silently submerged in their private digital bubble. Here we portray iPads in a different light: Face-to-face play in groups, using connected and shared surfaces. Applying the bubble metaphor to multi-user cases, we ask the following questions: (a) How many people can be in one bubble together before it bursts? (b) Can multiple bubbles be connected, nested, etc. and what configurations are beneficial? (c) What design qualities are helpful in keeping beneficial bubble configurations intact and together, rather than bursting or floating away? By contrasting user observations from two multi-iPad scenarios, we illustrate the usefulness of 'bubble dynamics' as a lens for evaluating large offline social applications. We hope to inspire discussion of future use cases, evaluation methods and design recommendations.

UniPad is a face-to-face, digital simulation for use in classroom settings that runs on shared tablets and a wall display. The goal is to encourage students to talk, collaborate and make decisions together in real-time, by switching between working on shared 'small group' devices and a 'whole classroom' public display - instead of working by themselves using their own device. It is intended to improve peer discussion and teacher involvement by focusing and constraining shared attention at different stages of an activity. The domain for this study is finance management. The system was designed using an iterative, participatory design method with expert finance educators and then trialed using an in-the-wild study at a school. The findings show how the set-up helped in facilitating verbal participation in the classroom. We discuss how lightweight, multi-device shared technology systems, such as UniPad, can be designed and used for a range of classroom activities.

UniPad is a face-to-face, digital simulation for use in classroom settings that runs on shared tablets and a wall display. The goal is to encourage students to talk, collaborate and make decisions together in real-time, by switching between working on shared 'small group' devices and a 'whole classroom' public display - instead of working by themselves using their own device. It is intended to improve peer discussion and teacher involvement by focusing and constraining shared attention at different stages of an activity. The domain for this study is finance management. The system was designed using an iterative, participatory design method with expert finance educators and then trialed using an in-the-wild study at a school. The findings show how the set-up helped in facilitating verbal participation in the classroom. We discuss how lightweight, multi-device shared technology systems, such as UniPad, can be designed and used for a range of classroom activities.

There is much potential for supporting collaborative learning with interactive computer simulations in formal education and professional training. A number have been developed for single user and remote interaction. In contrast, our research is concerned with how such learning activities can be designed to fit into co-located large group settings, such as whole classrooms. This paper reports on the iterative design process and two in-the-wild evaluations of the 4Decades game, which was developed for a whole classroom of students to engage with a climate simulation. The system allows students to play and change the rules of the simulation, thereby enabling them to be actively engaged at different levels. The notion of Contributory Simulations is proposed as an instructional model that empowers groups to make informed, critical changes to the underlying scientific model. We discuss how large-group collaboration was supported through constraining an ecology of shared devices and public displays.

Educators have called for digitals games that large groups of 20-30 students can play together in classrooms, university seminars and professional training courses. Using shareable technologies, such as tablets and interactive tabletops, it is possible for games to engage large groups in face-to-face collaboration and discussion. But how can game user experience be evaluated in real-world, co-located learning, where engagement is mainly driven by social phenomena, such as peer teaching and discussion? In this extended abstract we argue that large-group, faceto-face gaming calls for a view on game user experience that takes the group, rather than the individual, as the unit of analysis. We indicate some methodological issues based on our own experience with designing simulation games for large co-located groups. Our aim is to invite a discussion of how the concept of shared agency can inform methodological approaches to evaluation. Author

This chapter introduces the main themes of the book. It explains what is meant by ‘energy systems’ and gives an overview of our present global energy system in terms of the primary energy sources it uses. It then elaborates on the concepts of sustainable development and sustainability and continues with an overview of how these might apply specifically to energy systems. In order to explore why sustainable energy matters it then compares three different perspectives on some of the critical factors and forces that may shape energy systems into the future. The chapter ends by briefly outlining three basic options for achieving a transition from our present energy systems to the sustainable energy systems of tomorrow.

A new approach to building modelling software, to support the iterative design of energy efficient buildings, is proposed. The proposal is for the combination of two, previously separate, software types - building design modelling and building performance simulation, along with the development of a third component - a design advisor, into one software tool. This software is intended for use by architectural practices, who may not have access to energy expertise, and who may then struggle to maintain design standards for non-domestic buildings required to satisfy rigorous energy performance regulations. In this paper we describe, through an example, how the three components would work together, by the employment of zone meshes, to visualise, simulate and support with information and advice, the design of a building. The novelty of the method resides in the application of underlying zone meshes for the support of iterative building design. The approach is described, illustrated and future work outlined.

This chapter reviews the predominant penalties of energy use, primarily in terms of the major causes for concern (climate change, air pollution, accident risk, etc.). It focuses mainly on the environmental and health impacts of fossil and nuclear fuels; those of hydroelectricity, wind power and the other renewable energy sources are also briefly mentioned.

This research study looks at how organizations in developing countries perceive the challenge of building capacity in e-learning expertise. Data was collected on six such organizations, and a range of perceived rationales and constraints were identified. The paper hypothesizes a four-part framework to define the e-learning capacity gaps that these circumstances appear to represent: the “instructional design capacity gap”, the “production capacity gap”, the “tutorial capacity gap” and the “community building gap”. The framework is used to re-examine the data to explore the ways in which the organizations’ e-learning activities might constitute strategic responses to the hypothesized capacity gaps.