The goal of this Task is to undertake pre-normative research to develop a comprehensive and integrated suite of building energy analysis tool tests involving analytical, comparative, and empirical methods. These methods will provide for quality assurance of software, and some of the methods will be enacted by codes and standards bodies to certify software used for showing compliance to building energy standards. This goal will be pursued by accomplishing the following objectives:

• Create and make widely available a comprehensive and integrated suite of IEA Building Energy Simulation Test (BESTEST) cases for evaluating, diagnosing, and correcting building energy simulation software. Tests will address modeling of the building thermal fabric and building mechanical equipment systems in the context of innovative low energy buildings.
• Maintain and expand as appropriate analytical solutions for building energy analysis tool evaluation.
• Create and make widely available high quality empirical validation data sets, including detailed and unambiguous documentation of the input data required for validating software, for a selected number of representative design conditions.