Contact details
Room 6E 2.23
Tel: +44 (0) 1225 386358
Email: s.natarajan@bath.ac.uk
Twitter: @suknat
PhD supervision
Interested in supervising students studying:
- Smart metering and occupant feedback
- Occupant behaviour in buildings and how this affects energy use
- Large scale (urban to national) bottom-up modelling of energy flows
- Energy efficiency and use in buildings
- Thermal comfort, overcooling and underheating
Dr Sukumar Natarajan
BArch, MPhil, PhD
Profile
Sukumar Natarajan is the Director of Studies for the MSc in Architectural Engineering: Environmental Design . He is also Deputy Director of the Research Unit on Energy and the Design of Environments (EDEn) with research interests that include: building energy modeling, energy behavior, smart meter interface design, impacts of climate change on buildings, occupant thermal comfort.
Sukumar graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Architecture from Sushant School of Art and Architecture in India following which he read for his M.Phil. in Environmental Design at the Martin Centre in Cambridge. After a short period working for the Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi, Sukumar returned to academia to work on the Tyndall Centre funded "40% House" project at the University of Manchester where he obtained his Ph.D. on "Modelling energy use and carbon emissions from the UK domestic sector". Since then he has been involved in a number of projects on energy use in buildings and thermal comfort including the COPSE project (EPSRC, EP/F038135/1) as principal investigator looking at the thermal comfort implications of a warming climate.
Current projects include ENLITEN (EPSRC, EP/K002724/1) which will develop a low-cost intelligent home energy advisor to provide actionable prompts to households that they can use to save money and energy. This is a multi-disciplinary project with Computer Science, Psychology, Electrical Engineering, and the ECI at Oxford.
Research
Sukumar’s research focuses on how to design buildings that use as little energy as possible during their lifetime. A key question of interest is how big a role the occupant of a building plays in the creation and maintenance of a building’s low energy profile and how this could be optimised. This touches on issues of thermal comfort, occupant energy feedback, and innovative building physics. He also has a strong interest in modelling large scale building energy flows at community, regional and national scales. Much of his work is of an inter-disciplinary nature and he has been instrumental in bringing together techniques from computer science and psychology to these mainly engineering problems.
Teaching units
- Building environment 1
- Environmental design
- AR503XX (MSc)
Publications
Book Sections
Lovett, T., Gabe-Thomas, E., Natarajan, S., O'Neill, E. and Padget, J., 2013. 'Just enough' sensing to ENLITEN : A preliminary demonstration of sensing strategy for the 'ENergy LIteracy Through an intelligent home ENergy advisor' (ENLITEN) project. In: e-Energy '13: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Future Energy Systems. New York: ACM, pp. 279-280.
Chiang, T., Walker, I. and Natarajan, S., 2012. Presenting Energy Information: Display Design and Preferences. In: The Second Asian Conference on Sustainability, Energy & the Environment. .
Mcgilligan, C., Natarajan, S. and Nikolopoulou, M.-H., 2011. Use of Adaptive Comfort Degree-Days to compare energy savings from adaptive comfort standards for future UK climates. In: CIBSE Technical Symposium. London: CIBSE.
Chiang, T., Walker, I. and Natarajan, S., 2011. The user-interface design of energy displays. In: Proceedings - Buildings Don’t Use Energy, People Do? , pp. 77-88.
Mcgilligan, C., Natarajan, S. and Nikolopoulou, M.-H., 2011. Comparison of energy savings achievable by adaptive comfort standards using the Adaptive Comfort Degree Day. In: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Solar Radiation and Daylighting. Brno, Czech Republic: .
Natarajan, S., 2007. Future climate and domestic carbon emissions. In: Climate Change and the Built Environment. GRIC - Group of Construction Research and Information.
Levermore, G., Muneer, T., Page, J., Sanders, C., Chow, D., Natarajan, S., Parkinson, J., Colley, M., Hulme, M. and Watkins, R., 2006. External design data. In: Butcher, K., ed. Environmental Design. CIBSE, p. 47. (Guide A)
Wright, A. J. and Natarajan, S., 2003. Modelling future UK carbon dioxide emissions from domestic heating under climate change. In: Climate Change - Energy Awareness - Energy Efficiency: CIB WG 108 meeting, Györ, Hungary. , p. 6.
Articles
Chiang, T., Natarajan, S. and Walker, I., 2012. A laboratory test of the efficacy of energy display interface design. Energy and Buildings, 55, pp. 471-480.
Moran, F., Natarajan, S. and Nikolopoulou, M.-H., 2012. Developing a database of energy use for historic dwellings in Bath, UK. Energy and Buildings, 55, pp. 218-226.
McGilligan, C., Natarajan, S. and Nikolopoulou, M., 2011. Adaptive Comfort Degree-Days: a metric to compare adaptive comfort standards and estimate changes in energy consumption for future UK climates. Energy and Buildings, 43 (10), pp. 2767-2778.
Natarajan, S., Padget, J. and Elliott, L., 2011. Modelling UK domestic energy and carbon emissions: an agent-based approach. Energy and Buildings, 43 (10), pp. 2602-2612.
McGilligan, C., Sunikka-Blank, M. and Natarajan, S., 2010. Subsidy as an agent to enhance the effectiveness of the energy performance certificate. Energy Policy, 38 (3), pp. 1272-1287.
Collins, L., Natarajan, S. and Levermore, G., 2010. Climate change and future energy consumption in UK housing stock. Building Services Engineering Research and Technology, 31 (1), pp. 75-90.
Natarajan, S. and Levermore, G. J., 2007. Domestic futures — Which way to a low-carbon housing stock? Energy Policy, 35 (11), pp. 5728-5736.
Natarajan, S. and Levermore, G. J., 2007. Predicting future UK housing stock and carbon emissions. Energy Policy, 35 (11), pp. 5719-5727.
Wright, A. J., Young, A. N. and Natarajan, S., 2005. Dwelling temperatures and comfort during the August 2003 heat wave. Building Services Engineering Research and Technology, 26 (4), pp. 285-300.
Reports/Papers
Levermore, G. J., Watkins, R., Cheung, H., Parkinson, J., Laycock, P., Natarajan, S., Nikolopoulou, M.-H., Mcgilligan, C., Muneer, T., Tham, Y. W., Underwood, C., Edge, J., Du, H., Sharples, S., Kang, J., Barclay, M. and Sanderson, M., 2012. Deriving and using future weather data for building design from UK climate change projections: an overview of the COPSE Project. Other. Manchester: University of Manchester.
King, D., Mcgilligan, C. and Natarajan, S., 2011. Thermal modelling, weather years and overheating. Other. London: London Borough of Islington.
Boardman, B., Darby, S., Killip, G., Hinnells, M., Jardine, C. N., Palmer, J., Sinden, G., Lane, K., Layberry, R., Wright, A., Newborough, M., Natarajan, S. and Peacock, A., 2005. 40% House. Other. Oxford: Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford.
Conference or Workshop Items
Chiang, T., Walker, I. and Natarajan, S., 2012. Linking Energy Information and Occupants: From Visually Displayed Energy Feedback to Occupant Behavior. In: BEhavE: Energy Efficiency & Behaviour, 2012-09-19 - 2012-09-20, Helsinki.
Padget, J., Riat, H., Forchhammer, B., Warnier, M., Brazier, F. M. T. and Natarajan, S., 2011. An agent-based infrastructure for energy profile capture and management. In: 2011 International Conference on Networking, Sensing and Control, ICNSC 2011, 2011-04-11 - 2011-04-13, Delft.
Padget, J., Riat, H., Warnier, M., Brazier, F. and Natarajan, S., 2010. An agent-based infrastructure for energy profile capture and management. In: Agent Technologies for Energy Systems (ATES 2010), 2010-05-11, Toronto.
Natarajan, S., 2005. Climate change and cooling demand in future scenarios. In: 40% House Conference, 2005-01-01, The Royal Society, London.
