This paper gives an overview of the history and current state of the International Building Performance Simulation Association (IBPSA) including its growing number of regional affiliate organizations. The results of a recent survey among potentially in IBPSA interested parties in The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg is presented. Finally IBPSA's future plans are summarized. Past and Present of IBPSA

Building performance modelling and simulation by means of computers (analogue at first) started way back in the 1950-ies. One of the first applications involved the use of analogue computers to predict twodimensional dynamic heat transfer through building constructions. The 1960-ies saw the advent of digital computers in many engineering fields including ours. It was not long before the first building erformance simulation software was created.

A very interesting overview of the state-of-play and future expectations by the end of the 1960-ies (!) is contained in the proceedings of the - probably - first ever international building performance simulation conference which was organized in the USA in 1970 (1). At this conference authors from 11 different countries presented 62 papers. The topics included basics (heat transfer by conduction and convection, solar effects, weather data, etc.), load and energy calculations, analogue computing & time-sharing, and computer graphics. The Netherlands was very well represented with papers by Oegema and Euser (2) and by Boeke and Larm (3).

• research, funding
• simulation of building process

1. A view of energy and building performance simulation at the start of the third millennium
2. Building Simulation '99. Proceedings of the 6th International IBPSA Conference, (Editors)
3. Integrated building simulation: state-of-the-art, Introducing Building Energy Simulation Classes on the Web
4. Introducing building energy simulation classes on the web
5. On the use of simulation in the design of embedded energy systems
6. Research and development in The Netherlands in the area of Building Performance Simulation
7. Simulation for better building design
8. Simulation of building energy and indoor environmental quality - some weather data issues
9. Validation of external BES-CFD coupling by inter-model comparison