The course is part of the practice orientated teaching trajectory ‘Calibrating’ in the Path 2: Optimisation and Decision Support. The course is situated in the ‘Beginner Level’ in the CoDe student specialisation journey and therefore available for enrolment as an elective for all other UNSW undergrad students.
Sustainability issues are related to natural resource consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity, human health and liveability, etc. The complexity of sustainability problems requires integration of techniques from multiple disciplines including computer science.
Computational sustainability is a new interdisciplinary area that employs computational models, methods and tools to tackle sustainability problems. It provides built environment professionals with computationally feasible approaches for analysing complex sustainability issues, and with decision support for achieving optimal solutions.
The course is designed to provide students with skills and understanding to incorporate computational approaches in their design processes and decision-making for sustainability, which include computational modelling, simulation and analysis of architectural design and engineering plan, sustainability performance assessment, and multi-objective design optimisation.
The course will enable students to understand how computational approaches can be used to support well-informed decision-making for sustainability. In addition, students will gain hands-on practical skills and further knowledge of industry application in this emerging area.
The projects to be designed in the course consist of Assignment 1 ‘Integrated Design, Modelling and Analysis for Sustainability’ and Assignment 2 ‘Multi-Objective Design Optimisation’. Students will provide oral presentations to highlight project outcomes.