Research and expertise
Summary of expertise
I am a Reader in the School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering with substantial research experience in end-use energy demand in buildings, trial design and evaluation of large-scale household energy studies, ICT for energy efficiency, building physics and simulation, and Smart Home technologies. I have been Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator on a total of 8 EU and RCUK projects with a total value of £13M.
I am also an advocate for Open Science in Building Energy research.
Current research activity
- Digital Engineering and Open Science for Building Energy Research
- Building Simulation and Performance Modelling
- Occupant Behaviour and Occupant-centric Building Design
Recently completed research projects
- TEDDINET: network of (Build) TEDDI projects, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/L013681/1)
- Design4Energy: Building life-cycle evolutionary Design methodology able to create Energy-efficient Buildings flexibly connected with the neighbourhood energy system, European Commission
- REFIT: Personalised Retrofit Decision Support Tools for UK Homes using Smart Home Technology, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/K002457/1)
Recent publications
- Firth SK, Kane T, Dimitriou V, Hassan TM, Fouchal F, Coleman M, Webb L (2017) REFIT Smart Home dataset, Open access dataset on the Loughborough University Data Repository.
- Kane T, Firth SK, Hassan TM, Dimitriou V (2017) Heating behaviour in English homes: An assessment of indirect calculation methods, Energy and Buildings, 148, pp.89-105 [OPEN ACCESS]
- Yilmaz S, Firth SK, Allinson D (2017) Occupant behaviour modelling in domestic buildings: the case of household electrical appliances, Journal of Building Performance Simulation, 10:5-6, pp.582-600 [OPEN ACCESS]
Teaching
I contribute to learning and teaching activities across the Schools programmes including:
Undergraduate
- CVB043: Sustainable Building Design
Postgraduate
- CVP300: Electrical Systems: Buildings and Renewable Energy
- CVP310: Thermal Modelling and 3D BIM
- ERBE07: Energy Data Analytics
Profile
Professional affiliations
- Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
- Member of the Energy Institute
Awards
- Loughborough University Winter 2019 CALIBRE Award for Open Research