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Aurecon Buildings carbon sketcher

The document discusses the development of the Aurecon Buildings Carbon Sketcher, a web-based tool designed to facilitate early-stage lifecycle assessments (LCA) in building design, focusing on both embodied and operational carbon emissions. This tool aims to empower a broader range of users, including non-experts, to make informed design decisions that contribute to carbon neutrality by providing indicative estimates and real-time feedback. The tool integrates various design disciplines and utilizes a user-friendly interface to enhance accessibility and understanding of sustainable building practices.
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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
30 views12 pages

Aurecon Buildings carbon sketcher

The document discusses the development of the Aurecon Buildings Carbon Sketcher, a web-based tool designed to facilitate early-stage lifecycle assessments (LCA) in building design, focusing on both embodied and operational carbon emissions. This tool aims to empower a broader range of users, including non-experts, to make informed design decisions that contribute to carbon neutrality by providing indicative estimates and real-time feedback. The tool integrates various design disciplines and utilizes a user-friendly interface to enhance accessibility and understanding of sustainable building practices.
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Proceedings of the IASS Annual Symposium 2023

Integration of Design and Fabrication


10–14 July 2023, Melbourne, Australia
Y.M. Xie, J. Burry, T.U. Lee and J. Ma (eds.)

Aurecon buildings carbon sketcher: A cross-disciplinary webtool


for carbon neutral building design
Max G. MARSCHALLa,*, Jack WALKERa, Daniel FITZMAURICEa, Hamed SEIFIa, Cindy LAMa,
Nathan PALAIRETa, Darcy CREIGHTONa, Qisi ZHENGa, James ALLISONa, Tristan MORGANa,
Pablo SEPULVEDAa, Matthew AUSTINa

*Aurecon
8/850 Collins Street, Docklands VIC 3006, Australia
[email protected]

Abstract
A lot of the most consequential building design decisions are locked in during the early-design phase.
However, lifecycle assessments are commonly conducted later in the planning phases where the analysis
has limited potential to meaningfully affect the design. It would be ideal to front-load this analysis into
the early-design phase, however, this is challenging since project information at this stage is limited and
the design process is fast-paced. This paper addresses this challenge by creating a user-friendly webtool
for indicative lifecycle assessments to be used during the concept design phase. Existing research has
resulted either in sophisticated software with maximised functionality but limited practicality for early
design or point solutions that often lack the interdisciplinary approach necessary to achieve truly
sustainable outcomes. This tool is novel in that it addresses both embodied and operational emissions,
and both the main structural and façade elements, while considering the margin of error associated with
early-stage assessments and reaching carbon neutrality. It does so as a web-based tool that provides
integrated access to expertise through a highly accessible interface with near real-time feedback. A
unique contribution of the tool is a design automation algorithm that auto-sizes structural members based
on a first-principles approach.
Keywords: parametric design, user-friendly, lifecycle assessment, carbon neutrality, embodied carbon,
operational carbon, agile development, energy modelling, environmental flows, concept design

1. Introduction
Over the past decades, sustainable building design has focused mainly on operational emissions, that is,
those associated with the day-to-day running of the building. With increasing progress on the energy-
efficiency of HVAC systems and high-performance facades, as well as the increasing decarbonisation
of energy grids, the significance of embodied emissions associated with the manufacture and transport
of building materials has risen. Sustainable building design should therefore consider lifecycle
assessments (LCA). In other words, estimating both operational and embodied carbon emissions.
Some of the most impactful building design decisions are made in the early project stages [1]-[3]. At
this point, engineering analysis is commonly limited, while architects are left to make many design
decisions based on tacit knowledge rather than data-driven insights. It is difficult to significantly change
the design after a town planning permit has been lodged, since this process solidifies design expectations
with legal and financial ramifications should the initial design have to be reworked. The issue here is
that the town planning permit tends to lock in the structural system and overall envelope design, both of
which are the greatest contributors to lifecycle emissions [4].

Copyright © 2023 by Max G. MARSCHALL, Jack WALKER, Daniel FITZMAURICE, Hamed SEIFI, Cindy LAM,
Nathan PALEIRET, Darcy CREIGHTON, Qisi ZHENG, James ALLISON, Tristan MORGAN, Pablo SEPULVEDA
and Matthew AUSTIN. Published in the Proceedings of the IASS Annual Symposium 2023 with permission.
Proceedings of the IASS Annual Symposium 2023
Integration of Design and Fabrication

Figure 1. A “MacLeamey” curve as it applies to LCAs. (Adapted from [5])

LCAs are commonly only conducted in the late planning phases. This is a problem as design changes
become increasingly costly as the project proceeds, hence the analyses have limited potential to
meaningfully affect the design (Figure 1). Sustainable building design could be facilitated by ‘front-
loading’ LCAs into the early design phase, but this is challenging since project information at this stage
is limited and the design process iterative and fast-paced. This is a common dilemma that plagues all
aspects of early design and is one that computational designers typically seek to alleviate by developing
algorithms to automate processes and decrease the effort needed to conduct analyses, or by using new
types of tools and visualisation techniques to enhance design processes, or sometimes even by
developing custom software. Compared to other contexts, conducting LCAs for buildings is more
challenging due to the long lifespans of buildings, their complexity, and the multiplicity of stakeholders
involved throughout their design and operation [6]. Any effort to conduct these kinds of analyses in the
early-design stage must be accompanied by an understanding that the results will necessarily be
indicative rather than accurate calculations. These intrinsic error margins should not become a roadblock
to considering sustainable design from the project outset; the uncertainties just need to be expressed
clearly and quantified where possible [7].
While several academics have proposed various theoretical frameworks (e.g., [8], [9]) to tackle the
challenges in conducting early design LCAs, there are now also numerous consultancies that have
developed digital tools for use in practice. This is an emerging field with direct potential impacts on the
sector with the largest contribution to worldwide emissions [4] and therefore warrants deeper research
attention. An analysis of the currently available tools shows a diversity in terms of the approaches and
methodologies followed, the types of user input they require, the scope of carbon-related design tasks
and disciplines considered, and the solution maturity. A lot of the existing tools appear to be in the beta
phase of their development (e.g., [10]-[13]) which demonstrates that this is an emerging field in the
industry. Some tools are specifically intended for browsing existing material emissions databases and
therefore require an existing geometry model (e.g., [10], [12], [14], [15]), while others allow the user to
input top-level geometric data (e.g., building width and length, etc.) and the tool then auto-sizes all
building elements to estimate material volumes (e.g., [11], [13], [16]-[20]). Tools tend to focus on a
specific discipline, typically producing an informed estimate either of the embodied carbon of the
structure or the façade; a search conducted by the authors did not reveal an early design tool within this
space that considered operational carbon.
There appears to be a gap in research to create a tool that:
• Holistically estimates emissions across all major contributors

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Proceedings of the IASS Annual Symposium 2023
Integration of Design and Fabrication

• Assesses embodied carbon of the structure and façade as well as operational carbon
• Auto-sizes structural elements in the early design stage where a sophisticated geometric model
(e.g., a reliable Revit model) may not be available for determining material quantities
• Allows exploring the interdependencies between upfront façade emissions versus lifecycle
emissions through operational energy consumption

2. A cross-disciplinary tool

2.1. Aim
The aim of this research was to create a user-friendly design tool for conducting indicative, early-design
stage LCAs and allowing a broad user group to compare design options holistically, for the goal of
reducing lifecycle emissions in building design. A focus of this tool was to enable user groups beyond
sustainability experts to make informed decisions and communicate these to clients, while establishing
a technological framework that retained flexibility for individual domain specialists to maintain and
update algorithms and calculations.

2.2. Requirements
To achieve their aim, the authors developed a webtool called Aurecon Buildings Carbon sketcher
(ABCs). The name was chosen deliberately to indicate the specific intent for using it to design buildings
rather than other asset types. ‘Sketcher’ intends to signal to the user that it is aimed at producing
indicative estimates in schematic design, thereby distinguishing itself from other tools that conduct
specific calculations to determine accurate results for compliance purposes in the later stages.
To fulfil the purposes of an early stage LCA tool, the authors gathered the following requirements from
key stakeholders and domain experts within their home organisation to be addressed by the tool:
• Consider the ‘big-ticket items’ in terms of lifecycle emissions and reaching carbon neutrality that
can be assessed with information levels available in early design. In other words, consider
operational emissions from energy use as well as embodied emissions for the main structural and
façade elements, but exclude items that are unknown in the early design stage and have a lesser
impact on carbon emissions, like interior finishes and furniture.
• Make the tool accessible for a wide stakeholder group by minimising dependencies and user
knowledge of third-party software, and without requiring users to install specialist software
environments on their local computer hardware.
• Build it in a modular way from several domain-specific modules that can be maintained over time
by subject matter experts from different disciplines.
• Design the tool in a way that caters to about 95% of Aurecon building projects in terms of
allowable geometric complexity and building usages.
• Design the tool for a user group consisting of environmentally sustainable design (ESD)
consultants, mechanical, structural, and façade engineers.
• Assume the user does not have a detailed geometric model when using the tool. That is, the tool
should auto-size structural elements based on the overall building massing.
• Develop ways to communicate to the user that the estimates generated by the tool are indicative
and convey a margin of error.
In essence, the overarching requirement for the development of the tool was to enable interdisciplinary
design exploration to generate holistic low emission strategies in the early building design stage.

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Proceedings of the IASS Annual Symposium 2023
Integration of Design and Fabrication

Figure 2. Overall software architecture and Grasshopper definitions contained within ABCs.

Figure 3. Developing, maintaining, and interacting with the tool. *See Figure 2

Figure 4. Software used for energy simulations.


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Proceedings of the IASS Annual Symposium 2023
Integration of Design and Fabrication

2.3. Software architecture


ABCs consists of several Grasshopper definitions that run within Rhino.Compute. The definitions are
provided inputs from a browser-based application built on the Blazor framework that uploads the results
through a REST API hosted in the cloud. The Blazor application utilizes Speckle to provide the to the
user an interactive 3D viewer with metadata. The Telerik for Blazor package is used to provide
interactive web elements for the user to input design parameters, and to generate charts that the user can
interact with to interrogate the results (Figure 2).
The development of ABCs was a joint effort between software engineers developing the “backend” of
the tool, and domain experts creating calculation models (Figure 3). This includes a Grasshopper
definition to create the building massing geometries (see Section 2.5), and one for applying the
appropriate emissions factors to the corresponding building material and energy quantities (see Section
2.10). There are several domain-specific Grasshopper definitions that cover calculations relation to
different disciplines impacting lifecycle emissions: structural element sizing (see Section 2.6), facade
element sizing (see Section 2.7), energy modelling (see Section 2.8 and Figure 4), and on-site energy
generation modelling (see Section 2.9). These Grasshopper definitions were created and are being
maintained and extended by domain experts within the organisation who have appropriate
computational design skillsets.

2.4. UI/UX
ABCs was designed to have a highly accessible and easy-to-use user interface and user experience
(UI/UX), enabling a broad user group extending beyond computational designers, sustainability experts,
and engineers. Rather than automating an existing process [21], the webtool proposes novel affordances
that democratise and demystify the relationship between early-stage design decisions and emissions. In
doing so, the webtool not only provides key insights to impact design, but also clearly illustrates
relationships and sensitivities, supporting users to further develop their understanding of LCA and ESD.
During development, the authors conducted frequent demonstrations of ABCs’ UI/UX design to collect
feedback from subject matter experts. This helped design a highly accessible and easy-to-use tool. For
example, the team discovered that one of the main roadblocks preventing from people using an earlier
version of ABCs was that it had been built purely as a Grasshopper tool. As a result, ABCs was built as
a webtool that does not require any installations or specialised domain knowledge to use. It has a job
management system in which the user can create ‘projects’; each project can have several ‘studies’, and
each study can have several design ‘options’ to be compared in a dashboard view side-by-side (Figure
5). Clicking on a design option from a study page brings up the main UI (Figure 7).
The main UI consists of two columns: user inputs on the left and result visualisations on the right. The
columns are sub-divided into logical sections that clearly differentiate between different disciplines;
input sections including ‘Building’, ‘Structure’, ‘Façade’, ‘Shading’, ‘Materials’, and ‘Operation’, and
output sections including ‘Geometry’, ‘Embodied Carbon’, ‘Operational Carbon’, and ‘Carbon
Neutrality’. The interface does not freeze while waiting for simulation results to be produced; instead,
the visualisation sections that are awaiting data are blurred out until the results become available while
the user can keep navigating the UI. It includes an interactive Speckle 3D viewer displaying the
structural, façade, and PV panel geometries.
The UI/UX was designed to convey the inherent uncertainties in early-stage LCA analysis. This was
done by including a welcome page, guided tour, and documentation that describe the intent, assumptions,
and limitations of the tool. Result data is expressed in round numbers so as not to convey a false sense
of accuracy [7]. As described in Section 2.10, embodied carbon is calculated using ‘high’, ‘medium’,
and ‘low’ scenarios that are displayed side-by-side in the UI for the user to consider the variance of
environmental impact across different materials.

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Proceedings of the IASS Annual Symposium 2023
Integration of Design and Fabrication

Figure 5. ABCs’ “Study” viewer to compare design options at a top level.

2.5. Geometry definition


The first Grasshopper definition to execute within an ABCs run is one that generates the overall building
massing as a closed polysurface. Users have three options to describe the building shape (Figure 6): for
box-shaped buildings they can enter purely numeric parameters, for buildings that can be described as
a vertical extrusion of an irregular footprint the user can upload a polyline defining the footprint, and
for more complex building shapes they can directly upload a closed polysurface.

Figure 6. The 3 options to describe building shapes in ABCs.

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Proceedings of the IASS Annual Symposium 2023
Integration of Design and Fabrication

Figure 7. ABCs web UI. Each parameter panel reflects a Grasshopper definition executed with Rhino.Compute.
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Proceedings of the IASS Annual Symposium 2023
Integration of Design and Fabrication

2.6. Structural definition


A particular contribution of the tool is a design automation definition that auto-sizes structural members
based on a “first-principles” approach. That is, based on the building shape and user inputs it determines
the applicable loads and slab thicknesses using basic formulas and look-up tables from various standards
and supplier catalogues. Once the slab geometries are generated, it applies a similar approach to the
beams, then the columns, and lastly the foundations and shear walls. The resulting geometries are sent
to the Speckle viewer for visualisation in the web UI; the material quantities are sent to the Emissions
definition (see Section 2.10) to calculate embodied carbon.

2.7. Façade definition


ABCs includes a simplified façade embodied carbon calculation that takes several user inputs to
generate an estimate of various material volumes for a curtain wall façade (aluminium, glass, and
rockwool) and sends these results to the Emissions definition. The curtain wall framing elements are
sized using preliminary wind load calculations following building Australian standards. Mullions are
sized assuming a simply supported condition, comparing the calculated deflection to an assumed
deflection limit. To satisfy the resulting minimum required second moment of inertia (I-value), the
definition selects a mullion and transom profile from a set of typical off-the-shelf products. ABCs allows
considering vertical and horizontal aluminium shading fins by allowing users to define their spacing and
depth for each cardinal direction. All extrusions are assumed to have a wall thickness of 3 mm which is
common for curtain wall façades. The insulation, spandrel, and glass material volumes are calculated
based on the user’s window-to-wall ratio and thermal performance input.

2.8. Energy definition


This definition runs an energy simulation using Ladybug Tools and EnergyPlus, and outputs the
estimated annual operational energy consumption data to the Emissions definition (see Section 2.10). It
also generates a wireframe of the façade to be visualised in the web UI.
The building mass is segmented into floors and thermal zones, band windows are applied (assuming a
curtain wall façade), and shading elements are added as 2D surfaces based on the respective user inputs.
User-defined thermal envelope properties are passed into the construction definitions. Thermal bridges
are considered by applying a degradation of the thermal properties of these constructions as per the
methodology used in the LBT2PH plug-in for Grasshopper. ABCs allows users to choose one of several
building usages, based on which ABCs sets a default list of heat load assumptions. ABCs also allows
users to pick from several HVAC templates. Finally, the user can pick a trade-off between accuracy and
speed by means of a ‘granularity’ setting that modifies several of the simulation parameters and
geometry creation processes (see Figure 8).

Figure 8. Examples of energy modelling simplifications. Left: ABCs allows either considering each floor as a
single thermal zone, or as a core and several perimeter zones. Right: Only unique floors are considered.

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Proceedings of the IASS Annual Symposium 2023
Integration of Design and Fabrication

2.9. Photovoltaic definition


This definition isolates all roof surfaces, populates them with PV panels and runs a simplified calculation
of energy generation using Ladybug Tools. It assumes common panel dimensions, tilt angles, spacings
and capacities. The annual, cumulative incident solar radiation on the panels is determined using the
Ladybug Tools, the results of which are scaled by an assumed panel efficiency to estimate energy
generation. It sends the energy results to the Emissions script (see Section 2.10) and the PV panel
geometries back to the web UI for visualisation in the geometry viewer.

2.10. Emissions definition


This script collects all material and energy consumption quantities calculated in the other definitions
and applies carbon factors to estimate lifecycle emissions. Given the tool’s intent to be used in early
design, the authors limited the tool’s scope to the lifecycle assessment (LCA) phases A1 (raw materials
supply), A2 (transport), and A3 (manufacturing) for the embodied carbon calculation, and phase B6
(operational energy) for the operational carbon calculation. All units are given in weight (kg or t) of
equivalent carbon dioxide (CO2e).
To give the user an idea of the variance in embodied carbon within different material types, the ABCs
results section shows “High”, “Medium”, and “Low” scenarios. The corresponding embodied carbon
values were determined by selecting representative products from various suppliers’ environmental
product declarations (EPDs). To estimate the operational energy emissions, ABCs multiplies the annual
energy outputs from the Energy definition (see Section 2.8) by the carbon intensity of the electrical grid
of the region of the selected project location. ABCs considers the targets set by the governments of the
different regions across Australia and New Zealand to decarbonise their grids by increasing renewable
energy sources in future. While it is not guaranteed that these targets will be met, the authors deemed
this scenario more suitable than assuming that the current energy mixes will not change in future, which
would lead ABCs to convey the false impression that reducing embodied carbon has little impact over
the building lifecycle. The purpose of ABCs is to generate insights by comparing options; not to conduct
a precise LCA which would be impractical in early design.
The “Carbon Neutrality” section of the web UI simply shows the how much of the lifecycle emissions
can be offset by on-site energy generation through PV panels, and therefore what the remaining
difference is that would need to be offset by other means in order to reach carbon neutrality.

3. Reflections
Our analysis led to several general insights and lessons learnt regarding the development of early-design
lifecycle assessment tools. These are described in the following sub-sections.

3.1. Design strategy vs. design


The current use of lifecycle analysis in building design is limited to the late stages of the design process,
where the results of the assessments have limited potential to meaningfully impact the design. Early
design assessments have the potential to be much more valuable, however at this stage the design process
is fast-paced and information limited. Adopting parametric modelling for lifecycle assessments in early
design can create opportunities to explore design options more comprehensively and generate insights.
Importantly, however, the designer must understand that the purpose of these design investigations
cannot be to obtain a fully accurate and reliable prediction of actual lifecycle emissions. Instead, the
value lies in generating insights that can inform an overall design strategy rather than a finalised solution.

3.2. Carbon reduction is a group effort


Many current solutions for carbon reduction in building design are point solutions targeting a specific
discipline. However, truly sustainable and low-carbon design tends to be the result of holistic design
strategies and cross-disciplinary optimisation. Introducing a design feature that is low-carbon for one

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Proceedings of the IASS Annual Symposium 2023
Integration of Design and Fabrication

discipline may cause a detriment to another discipline. For example, while introducing shading fins
might reduce operational cooling energy emissions, these fins tend to be constructed from aluminium
that is so high in embodied carbon that it might not pay off over the building lifecycle. Therefore, any
tool developed to address this issue should consider a cross-disciplinary approach.

3.3. Flexibility vs. accuracy


While the previous insight suggests increasing the complexity of a tool to address LCA in early design,
there is an important trade-off that developers should consider: the usability and extensibility of the tool
on the one hand, and on the other hand, attempting to optimise the tool’s accuracy by increasing the
complexity of the tool’s parameters and calculations. Through the development process of ABCs, the
authors have found that the former often outweighs the latter. That is, it is recommended to focus on
developing the tool to allow for interdisciplinary considerations and co-development, to produce a
flexible tool that allows developing design strategies and creating insights, rather than hyper-focusing
on a precision that is unrealistic to achieve given the nature of early design.

3.4. Build tools that can grow


ABCs’ software architecture allows for a novel approach to maintenance, future development, and
governance. Firstly, ABCs implements each discipline specific embodied-carbon definition as a stand-
alone algorithm that obeys a designed schema. The advantage of this is that the platform becomes easily
extendable with new models to produce increasingly accurate predictions as other disciplines develop
strategies for calculating carbon. The extendibility of the platform can be achieved with minimal
developer engagement meaning that extensions are not only easy to implement but allows for anyone
with a low level of programming knowledge to contribute to the software. This becomes increasingly
important as individuals with a high level of specific disciplinary knowledge do not always have high-
level programming experience. This allows for a simplicity in engaging and working with collaborators
and maintain disciplinary definitions. Secondly, disciplinary specialists have a degree of ownership and
responsibility over their contribution to the software platform. This includes changing and updating the
model, maintenance, and testing for accuracy. The value of such a distinct set up is that the individuals
with the knowledge to produce and check the outputs of the algorithms are the individuals producing
the algorithm.
Thus, the governance and ownership of the tool allows for individual actors to contribute to carbon
reduction in whatever way they can. Although the definitions produced to give carbon results for ABCs
are not necessarily novel, the capacity to allow these disparate disciplinary definitions to conglomerate
into a more inclusive and complete calculation is. Rather than having to engage a series of disciplines
and depend upon their time and hardware, ABCs provides access to this expertise in a real-time, dynamic
environment using modern web-development frameworks and remote computing to make this analysis
as accessible as possible.

4. Conclusion
Reducing both up-front and operational emissions in the built environment has become increasingly
crucial, as it accounts for a significant portion of global emissions. However, the industry faces a
complex challenge due to a variety of factors. Firstly, operational emissions depend on local conditions,
such as climate, site characteristics, and the emission intensity per kWh of the regional power grid.
Secondly, in a global economy, the up-front emissions for the same material can vary greatly. Lastly,
the technical and interdisciplinary expertise required to define a low-emission building can be
overwhelming.
Without an interdisciplinary approach and a tool that considers the specificities of each project, it is
difficult to develop a low-carbon strategy that properly considers the project context. By focusing on
major carbon contributors and understanding the interdependencies between different fields, the tool

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Proceedings of the IASS Annual Symposium 2023
Integration of Design and Fabrication

proposed by the authors within the current research aims to establish a solid foundation in the early
design stage for low-emission buildings.
The research led to several more general conclusions on developing early-design lifecycle assessment
tools. For example, their purpose should likely be to inform a design strategy rather than a finalised
design; developers should accept that the results will be indicative and design a user interface that
illustrates margins of error. Most development decisions will be related to finding an acceptable trade-
off between flexibility and accuracy. Importantly, carbon footprint reduction is best tackled as an
interdisciplinary design practice.

5. Future research
The authors seek to deepen the research in future by considering the following factors:
• Increase functionality and options: For example, include other façade and structural system types,
and the embodied carbon of services.
• Revised carbon factors: Replace the current indicative carbon factors by ones based on an
extensive data analysis of large LCA databases; also include other emissions metrics.
• Benchmarking: The ability to get an LCA “score” for a given design option (e.g., using [22])
• Cost: Considering the cost impact of different design features.
• Machine learning: ABCs logs all design options ever simulated by its users. Once a sizable
database has been generated, the authors intend to use it to generate new insights and conduct
predictive modelling to decrease simulation times
• Horizontal extension: The authors intend to create variations of tools like ABCs but geared toward
other markets and asset types. The way that ABCs has been developed (see Section 2.3)
specifically facilitates reuse and extension of this kind

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