Enhancing the accountability and comparability of different campuses’ energy profiles through an energy cluster approach

Publisher Copyright: © 2022, The Author(s). Open access funding provided by Politecnico di Torino within the CRUI-CARE Agreement.International sustainability ranking systems generally set criteria in order to monitor global achievement of universities in terms of sustainability. However, current sustainability ranking systems do not provide specific consumption thresholds according to the different buildings’ function or characteristic and the comparison among universities lacks of precise criteria. Thus, this paper proposes different energy clusters enabling a meaningful comparison among campuses within the international rankings. Energy profiles of two university campuses—Politecnico di Torino (Italy) and Hokkaido University (Japan)—similar for climate, surface, and population have been collected for 4 years as a relevant case study. Five different clusters of homogeneous consumption have been identified: cluster 1 (around 1 GJ/m2/year) includes the Art departments, cluster 2 (2 GJ/m2/year) includes the Science faculties, cluster 3 (3 GJ/m2/year) includes the hospital and the medicine departments, cluster 4 includes the Data Centre (9 GJ/m2/year), and cluster 5 includes special research facilities with consumption over 10 GJ/m2/year. Findings show how comparisons between different buildings should also take into account the electrification rate (dependence on electricity) and the leveling rate (variation of consumption during a year), which variations are directly related to the main building function (e.g., hospitals/data centers have high values, while arts or humanities departments have low values for both rates). The proposed energy cluster approach and the introduction of proper weights for energy performances based on the proposed clusters can significantly enhance the accountability and comparability of different campuses’ energy profiles, contributing to a better evaluation of universities’ energy performances.publishersversionpublishe

Explorative multidimensional analysis for Energy Efficiency: Dataviz versus clustering algorithms

We propose a simple tool to help the energy management of a large building stock defining clusters of buildings with the same function, setting alert thresholds for each cluster, and easily recognizing outliers. The objective is to enable a building management system to be used for detection of abnormal energy use. We start reviewing energy performance indicators, and how they feed into data visualization (DataViz) tools for a large building stock, especially for university campuses. After a brief presentation of the University of Turin’s building stock which represents our case study, we perform an explorative analysis based on the Multidimensional Detective approach by Inselberg, using the Scatter Plot Matrix and the Parallel Coordinates methods. The k-means clustering algorithm is then applied on the same dataset to test the hypotheses made during the explorative analysis. Our results show that DataViz techniques provide quick and user-friendly solutions for the energy management of a large stock of buildings. In particular, they help identifying clusters of buildings and outliers and setting alert thresholds for various Energy Efficiency Indices

Le fornaci di Albinia (GR) e la produzione di anfore nella bassa valle dell'Albegna.

L'articolo si collega ad anticipazioni pubblicate nelle Chroniques dell'Ecole Fran\ue7aise de Rome rispettivamente in 2002, 2004 e 2005. Gli autori del testo sono parte dell'\ue9quipe coinvolta nelle ricerche ad Albinia; le colleghe francesi sono specialiste riconosciute del settore anfore e soprattutto conoscono dettagliatamente la situazione documentaria in Gallia e pi\uf9 in generale nel Mediterraneo occidentale e in europa celtica continentale. La ricerca su vino ed anfore \ue8 stata in seguito selezionata per un cofinanziamento del MIUR ed ha aggregato specialisti di altre discipline dai petrografi, ai mineralogisti, ai geofisici, ai paleobotanici, ai topografi storici. L'articolo fa un primo bilancio delle ricerche e delle scoperte archeologiche effettuate alle bocche dell'Albegna in corrispondenza di importanti impianti industriali per laproduzione di anfore soprattutto vinarie. Una variet\ue0 di forme e tipi modifica il sistema di classificazione ancora in uso legato alla tripartizione delle csd Dressel 1 (A, B, C). Un corpus epigrafico che ammonta ormai a mezzo migliaio di bolli apre prospettive nuove per lo studio prosopografico degli addetti agli impianti negli ultimi due secoli prima della nostra era