Blog

27 Sep 2019 - The impact of urban trees on energy use and passive survivability
27 Sep 2019 - Ulrike Passe, associate professor of architecture, presented “Development of a Modelling Framework for Refined Residential Occupancy Schedules,” co-authored with Diba Malekpour Koupaei, Farzad Hashemi and Vinciane Tabard-Fortecoëf, at the 16th IBPSA International Conference & Exhibition Building Simulation 2019 Sept. 1-4 in Rome.
02 Aug 2019 - Researchers develop novel process to study how trees affect building temperatures, air flow in extreme heat
21 Jun 2019 - Three Iowa State University researchers have received a $50,000 National Science Foundation grant for an August workshop on “Redesigning the Urban-Rural Interface (RURI) along the Mississippi Watershed.” Ulrike Passe and Kimberly Zarecor, associate professors of architecture in the College of Design, and Janette Thompson, Morrill Professor of natural resource ecology and management in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, are organizing the workshop, which will be Aug. 12–13 in Ames. The event is intended to guide development of a sustainable urban systems research and action agenda for mid-sized metropolitan areas within the Mississippi River watershed, with a focus on relationships and connectivity among urban and rural landscapes and communities, Passe said.
20 Apr 2019 - Diba Malekpour Koupaei, PhD student in the Department of Civil, Construction & Environmental Engineering, presented the team’s research findings on the impact of occupancy schedules on energy consumption of residential neighborhoods at the 2019 Symposium on Simulation for Architecture and Urban Design (SimAUD) at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta on April 8th. In her presentation, titled “A Technique for Developing High-Resolution Residential Occupancy Schedules for Urban Energy Models”, Malekpour showcased the team’s newest findings in term of using the energy-use survey results to enhance the accuracy of current energy modelling approaches. For more information about the conference, refer to: http://www.simaud.org/2019/program.php You can now access the full article from SimAUD proceedings, available at: http://www.simaud.org/proceedings/download.php?f=SimAUD2019_Proceedings_HiRes.pdf
20 Apr 2019 - Ulrike Passe, associate professor of architecture and director of the Iowa State University Center for Building Energy Research, was invited to lead a natural ventilation workshop at CATE 2019, Comfort at the Extremes: Energy, Economy, Climate conference April 10-11 at Heriot Watt University in Dubai, UAE. She also presented current research by her Sustainable Cities Research Group in the paper “Impact of trees on passive survivability in extreme heat events in warm and humid regions,” co-authored with Janette Thompson, Morrill Professor of natural resource ecology and management; Baskar Ganapathysubramanian, professor of mechanical engineering; and two doctoral students: Breanna Marmur, NREM, and Boshun Gao, mechanical engineering. Passe received a travel scholarship from the Charitable Jeffrey Cook Trust to attend the meeting, which was organized by the international NCEUB (Network for Comfort and Energy Use in Buildings) and brought together experts from across the world from fields as diverse as architecture, engineering and health sciences for the first time “to discuss crucial questions and ways forward on how to best provide Comfort at the Extremes in the complex political and economic environments we occupy.”
01 Apr 2019 - The Sustainable Cities Team was well represented at the 2019 ISU Research Day with informative presentations by team members Diba Malekpour-Koupaei (presenting 'A technique for developing High-resolution occupancy schedules'), Breanna Marmur (presenting, 'The Impact of Trees on Urban Climate, Neighborhoods and Building Energy in Warm and Humid Regions), and Ulrike Passe, who gave a a Lightning Talk about the team's progress in reaching it's research objectives, and future goal setting. Thank you for your hard work and for sharing our teams work!  
11 Mar 2019 - Ulrike Passe, Associate Professor of Architecture has been awarded $29,999 by the seed grant program of the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research (CGRER) at The University of Iowa for the research project "Extreme Heat Adaptation Strategies for Buildings and Neighborhoods in the Upper Midwest Using Novel Urban Energy Modeling Techniques," for the period July 1, 2019 – June 30, 2020.
17 Feb 2019 - Professors Ulrike Passe, Linda Shenk, and Caroline Krejci have been published in Taylor and Francis Online for their co-authored article on agent-based modeling (ABM), titled Agents of Change - Together: Using agent-based models to inspire social capital building for resilient communities. Topics in the paper include generating social capital, systems thinking, Agent Based Modeling, and bottom-up approaches to community resiliency. 
10 Dec 2018 - Jacklin Stonewall, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, presented the teams research agenda at the Smart and Connected Communities Workshop at the University of Washington, Seattle on December 10th and 11th; this was a sponsored event as part of the NSF-funded SCC-RCN project entitled, MOHERE: Mobility, Health, and Resilience: Building Capacities and Expanding Impact.  

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