Cooperation Program between Brazil and Germany (PROBRAL) [2023-2027]

Seeking to expand cooperation between postgraduate programs of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Brazil and Germany to develop and publish research with greater academic impact, CAPES and DAAD launched the PROBRAL Notice. The notice selected proposals for joint research projects between Brazil and Germany in all areas of knowledge, within the scope of the PROBRAL Program.

The objective of the program is to encourage scientific exchange between Brazilian and German research groups for the development of research on strategic themes in different areas of knowledge, in addition to promoting the mobility of professors and researchers linked to Postgraduate Programs in Brazil, at the level postdoctoral students, as well as postgraduate students at the doctoral level.

LabEEE and Living Lab smart office space from RPTU (Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische Universität Kaiserslautern Landau) are participating in PROBRAL with the project “Energy Efficiency and Resiliency of Buildings”. The project coordinators are Prof. Ana Paula Melo, coordinator of the Brazilian section, and prof. Sabine Hoffmann, coordinator of the German part.

The project lasts 2 years and can be extended for another 2 years, and aims at the mobility of researchers (two postdoctoral researchers and four doctoral researchers) to Germany, and several missions of German researchers to Brazil.

The objective of the project is: Assess the link between resilience and energy efficiency in buildings considering human comfort under the effect of climate change.

Specifically, the project aims to:

  • Review the literature regarding studies of human comfort in transient conditions.
  • Establish a data collection experiment in uncontrolled environments (living laboratories) to understand human comfort in the transient condition.
  • Investigate indicators that measure the impact of the exterior condition (outdoor) on the performance of the built environment (indoor).
  • Characterization and analysis of climatic variables to analyze the performance of buildings considering future climatic conditions.
  • Develop a reliable and robust model to represent human comfort in the transient condition within the built environment.
  • Investigate key performance indicators (KPI) to represent building resilience and building energy efficiency appropriately.

Currently, the project is in the Literature Review and planning of the next steps phase. Initially, the following steps are estimated:

Researchers