Abstract
Urban Building Energy Modeling and Multi-Objective Optimization are two very computationally intensive applications of Building Performance Simulation. In this research, a simplification algorithm developed to speed up thermal simulations at urban scale was tested to assess its performance in optimization studies. Since the algorithm showed good accuracy at the individual building level, it was applied to standalone buildings, considering a set of energy efficiency measures and all the possible combinations of four objectives, i.e., heating and cooling needs, thermal comfort and costs. The algorithm showed adequate performance in finding the optima with the same inputs for most of the considered buildings and combinations of objectives in different climatic conditions, allowing the simulation time to be reduced to one third.