Energy and Buildings 50 (2012) 7–18 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Energy and Buildings j ourna l ho me p age: www.elsevier.com/locate/enbuild Passive House model for quantitative and qualitative analyses and its intelligent system Arturas Kaklauskas a,∗ , Jevgenija Rute a , Edmundas Kazimieras Zavadskas a , Alfonsas Daniunas a , Valdas Pruskus a , Juozas Bivainis a , Renaldas Gudauskas b , Vytautas Plakys a a Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Sauletekio av. 11, Vilnius, LT-10223, Lithuania b Martynas Mazvydas National Library of Lithuania, Vilnius, Lithuania a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 12 August 2011 Received in revised form 25 February 2012 Accepted 6 March 2012 Keywords: Passive House Model Intelligent system Multiple criteria analysis a b s t r a c t The Passive House, along with models of its composite parts, has been developed globally. Simulation tools analyze its energy use, comfort, micro-climate, quality of life and esthetics as well as its technical, economic, legal/regulatory, educational and innovative aspects. Meanwhile the social, cultural, ethical, psychological, emotional, religious and ethnic aspects operating over the course of the existence of a Passive House are given minimal attention or are ignored entirely. However, all the aspects mentioned must be analyzed in an integrated manner during the time a Passive House is in existence. The authors of this article implemented this goal while they participated in two Intelligent Energy Europe programs, the NorthPass and the IDES-EDU projects. The Passive House model for quantitative and qualitative analyses and its intelligent system was developed during the time of these projects. The model and intelligent system are briefly described in this article, which ends with a case study. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Various models of a Passive House or its composite parts are being developed globally at the micro, meso and macro levels. Such models include the ground heat exchanger [1], heating system [2], heating model of the active solar heating system [3], earth-contact building structures [4], a regression model of energy efficiency [5], a computational fluid dynamics model [6] and others. Furthermore scientists and practitioners from various countries are developing simulation tools for a Passive House and its com- posite parts. Such simulation tools include dynamic simulation software [7], computer-aided design tool for passive solar systems [8], simulation software for zero energy building design [9], design of low energy buildings [10], optimization tools BEopt and EGUSA [11] and others. The aforementioned models and simulation tools for Passive Houses and their composite parts analyze their energetic, technical, technological, economic, legal/regulatory, innovative and microcli- matic aspects. However, the social, cultural, ethical, psychological, emotional, religious and ethnic aspects of the Passive House dur- ing the process of its existence are generally paid no attention at all. It is necessary to analyze the life cycle of the Passive House comprehensively on the basis of the aforementioned system of ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +370 5 2745234; fax: +370 5 2745235. E-mail address: arturas.kaklauskas@vgtu.lt (A. Kaklauskas). criteria to achieve an integrated examination of a Passive House life cycle. The authors of this article developed the Passive House model for quantitative and qualitative analyses and its intelligent system while participating in two Intelligent Energy Europe Pro- gram projects: “Promotion of the Passive House Concept to the North European Building Market” (NorthPass) and “Master and Post Graduate education and training in multidisciplinary teams imple- menting EPBD and beyond” (IDES-EDU). The developed intelligent system additionally provides opportunities for designing hundreds of thousands of Passive House alternatives, selecting the most effective ones and establishing the market value of each alterna- tive. The structure of this paper is as follows: Section 2, which follows this introduction, describes the Passive House model for quantita- tive and qualitative analyses. Section 3 analyses the Passive House intelligent, design system. Section 4 contains a case study. Certain concluding remarks appear in Section 5. 2. Passive House model for quantitative and qualitative analyses and illustration of its several stages 2.1. Passive House model for quantitative and qualitative analyses The Passive House model for quantitative and qualitative anal- yses was developed with the goal of integrating the energetic, technical, technological, economic, legal/regulatory, innovative, 0378-7788/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.enbuild.2012.03.008