Functional and technological definition of BIM-aware services to assess, predict and optimize energy performance of buildings

There are a number of important elements in designing of building energy management systems – when data collection, aggregation and management is usually well addressed by existing building management systems, actual analytical components allowing to diagnose energy-prone and/or user comfort compromising behaviors are far less mature. It is not only about developing algorithms for such tools, but also proper design of a hosting platform and its viability – it should not only enable access to sensor readings, but also provide access to other building data like Building Information Models and allow collaboration and interconnection of such analytics. BaaS project calls such tools Assess, Predict and Optimize services. Developing a smart platform supporting these services naturally leads to a concept of the building as a service ecosystem (BaaS) where any new tool can be plugged in the system and can benefit from already existing components. In the present work, the high level architecture of the BaaS platform is presented and the ability of BaaS system to act as a platform enabling the building contextual data as well as dynamic data (sensor readings) to software modules is demonstrated through a use-case example on a simple one zone office building

Black-box Optimisation for Buildings and Its Enhancement by Advanced Communication Infrastructure

The solution of repeated fixed-horizon trajectory optimization problems of processes that are either too difficult or too complex to be described by physicsbased models can pose formidable challenges. Very often, soft-computing methods - e.g. black-box modeling and evolutionary optimization - are used. These approaches are ineffective or even computationally intractable for searching high-dimensional parameter spaces. In this paper, a structured iterative process is described for addressing such problems: the starting point is a simple parameterization of the trajectory starting with a reduced number of parameters; after selection of values for these parameters so that this simpler problem is covered satisfactorily, a refinement procedure increases the number of parameters and the optimization is repeated. This continuous parameter refinement and optimization process can yield effective solutions after only a few iterations. To illustrate the applicability of the proposed approach we investigate the problem of dynamic optimization of the operation of HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) systems, and illustrative simulation results are presented. Finally, the development of advanced communication and interoperability components is described, addressing the problem of how the proposed algorithm could be deployed in realistic contexts

An ICT platform for building analytics

Significant research effort is underway towards designing intelligent BEMS, adapted to the properties of each building at hand and to the microclimatic conditions of the building location, complemented by a collection of assessment services. On the other hand, the adoption of such solutions by the market is still hampered by the necessity of engineering experts to take over system installation on buildings. Thus, optimizing the energetic performance of buildings is not only about defining intelligent services, but also providing an ICT platform able to host and manage a collection of such analytics. In the proposed approach, such a platform is developed to facilitate the provision of building analytics services. Open source technologies and service-oriented architectures establish the openness, transparency and interoperability characteristics of the platform, while development of generic analytics allows applicability to a large portion of the existing buildings stock in Europe and world-wide