A framework for comfort assessment in buildings and districts retrofit process

The retrofit design of buildings and districts cannot exclude the occupants’ perspective if comfortable and healthy conditions have to be obtained. For this reason, the NewTREND1 project developed a collaborative platform for the energy efficient buildings and districts retrofit that includes the users’ perspective. Three modules have been developed for thermal comfort, acoustic comfort and behavioural assessment. These modules are integrated into a Simulation and Design Hub that, after gathering data from on-site measurements, builds a simulation model of the district, calculates yearly results and exposes them to the design team through a dedicated District Information Model server and user interfaces. These modules perform deep investigations on the occupants’ sensation and behaviour, based on both measured and simulated datasets and provide comparisons of comfort performances, considering different retrofit scenarios and related uncertainties. In details, the thermal comfort module performs analysis according to both predictive and adaptive models, evaluates the variability around the design conditions together with sensitivity analysis that highlights which parameters are the most critical for the retrofit design. The acoustic module provides a complete tool to predict and assess the indoor acoustic comfort, taking into account the performance of building envelope and the impact of district noise. Finally, the behavioural module empowers the building energy simulation with co-simulation capabilities that reproduces the real occupants’ behaviours in relation to comfort conditions. The final goal of the framework is to support the decision-making process in selecting the optimal retrofit option that achieves the targeted energy efficiency without infringing the occupant’s expectation in terms of comfort and well-being

Measuring Occupants' Behaviour for Buildings' Dynamic Cosimulation

Measuring and identifying human behaviours are key aspects to support the simulation processes that have a significant role in buildings' (and cities') design and management. In fact, layout assessments and control strategies are deeply influenced by the prediction of building performance. However, the missing inclusion of the human component within the building-related processes leads to large discrepancies between actual and simulated outcomes. This paper presents a methodology for measuring specific human behaviours in buildings and developing human-in-the-loop design applied to retrofit and renovation interventions. The framework concerns the detailed building monitoring and the development of stochastic and data-driven behavioural models and their coupling within energy simulation software using a cosimulation approach. The methodology has been applied to a real case study to illustrate its applicability. A one-year monitoring has been carried out through a dedicated sensor network for the data recording and to identify the triggers of users' actions. Then, two stochastic behavioural models (i.e., one for predicting light switching and one for window opening) have been developed (using the measured data) and coupled within the IESVE simulation software. A simplified energy model of the case study has been created to test the behavioural approach. The outcomes highlight that the behavioural approach provides more accurate results than a standard one when compared to real profiles. The adoption of behavioural profiles leads to a reduction of the discrepancy with respect to real profiles up to 58% and 26% when simulating light switching and ventilation, respectively, in comparison to standard profiles. Using data-driven techniques to include the human component in the simulation processes would lead to better predictions both in terms of energy use and occupants' comfort sensations. These aspects can be also included in building control processes (e.g., building management systems) to enhance the environmental and system management

Il Grigoriu del manoscritto Vat. Gr. 2252. Saggio di edizione di un importante testo salentino del Trecento

EnIn this paper, a chapter of an Old Salentino medieval text is edited and analyzed, for the first time, as a source of linguistic information. The so-colled Grigoriu is an anonymous vernacular translation of the Tetrastichae Sententiae, a 4th century Greek poetic work by Gregory of Nazianzus. The Old Salentino translation, written in the Greek alphabet, survives in a unique manuscript, the codex Vaticano Greco 2252, copied in Terra d'Otranto around the 1330s. The Sententiae are here translated along with the commentary on the text by Nicola / Nilo Dossapatre, written in the 12th century. A linguistic analysis shows the importance of the data provided by the Vatican manuscript for the reconstruction of the historical grammar of the Salentino dialects.ItSi fornisce per la prima volta un significativo saggio di edizione del cosiddetto Grigoriu, anonimo volgarizzamento salentino delle Tetrastichae Sententiae di Gregorio Nazianzeno e del relativo commento di Nicola/Nilo Dossapatre. Il testo, scritto in caratteri greci, è trasmesso unicamente dal manoscritto Vaticano Greco 2252, copiato in Terra d'Otranto intorno agli anni '30 del Trecento. L'analisi linguistica del saggio di edizione punta a mettere in luce la centralità dei dati forniti da questo testo per la ricostruzione della grammatica storica dei dialetti salentini

Plug-and-Play Solutions for Energy-Efficiency Deep Renovation of European Building Stock

none7siNinety percent of the existing building stock in Europe was built before 1990. These buildings are in urgent need for a significant improvement of energy-efficiency through renovation. State-of-the-art renovation solutions are available, but costly and lengthy renovation processes and incomprehensible technical complexities hinder the achievement of a wide impact at a European scale. This paper presents a research on Plug-and-Play (PnP) echnologies supported by Building Information Modelling (BIM) to provide affordable, interchangeable and quick-installation solutions to overcome the main barriers of building deep renovation.openSebastian, Rizal; Gralka, Anna; Olivadese, Rosamaria; Arnesano, Marco; Revel, Gian Marco; Hartmann, Timo; Gutsche, ChristophSebastian, Rizal; Gralka, Anna; Olivadese, Rosamaria; Arnesano, Marco; Revel, Gian Marco; Hartmann, Timo; Gutsche, Christop

IEQ measurement and assessment tools for Plug-and-Play deep renovation in buildings

This paper presents the approach developed for the monitoring and assessment of Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) in the whole deep renovation process aimed at reducing energy consumptions and improving comfort. The research was performed by the P2Endure project, that aims to provide scalable, adaptable and ready-to-implement prefabricated Plug-and-Play systems for deep renovation of building envelopes and technical systems. The idea is to use IEQ as one of the design criteria supporting the decision-making process, included into the holistic renovation process developed by P2Endure and called “4M: Mapping-Modelling- Making-Monitoring”. For this reason, a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) was selected, with the consequent measurement and calculation methodologies. The KPIs are collected and showed together with the analysis of the different IEQ dimensions (thermal and indoor air quality). The data collection has been investigated extensively, taking into account all possible data sources, measurements and surveys (e.g. special questionnaires for children in schools). In addition to traditional devices, the innovative Comfort Eye sensor is used in the proposed framework. This is a low-cost sensing system capable of measuring thermal comfort together with IAQ, applicable for permanent or periodic monitoring and with low disturbance for inhabitants. The overall procedure is presented, also in relation with the deep renovation process. Then, the application of the measurement and assessment tools in real demonstration cases is illustrated with initial results from the monitoring campaign

Development of a curtain wall prototype with dynamic behaviour (SmartSkin)

The paper presents a research project, derived from a collaboration between Universities, manufacturers and designers with international experience in curtain walls and HVAC systems. The research consisted in experimenting a technological solution for a building envelope with dynamic behaviour and high aesthetic value, which is able to respond to the influence of fixed and variable factors – internal and external – with respect to regulatory requirements and flexibility needs during the design and the operational phase. The goal is to reduce the embodied energy of the components, optimise the energy consumption during the use phase and limit the construction costs with the segmentation of the devices, the shrinkage of the floor height and the acceleration of the assembly process

Development and Application of EEG Signal Pattern Analysis and Artificial Neural Network for Indoor Comfort Measurement

Wearable sensors applied to Personal Comfort Systems (PCS) can enable advanced and energy-efficient indoor environmental management solutions. Different physiological signals are commonly used to measure the human thermal comfort. Among them, the EEG is one of the most promising given its strong relationship with mental state, that is correlated to thermal perception. EEG brainwaves are used as features to detect human thermal comfort. However previous research did not turn out to identify a set of features with the same level of correlation with the thermal comfort. The reason of that relies on the fact that different experiments used different references, such as thermal comfort, thermal sensation, or environmental temperature. Moreover, brainwaves are influenced also by other human factors that lead to low accuracies. This paper presents a novel approach for EEG signal processing, coupled with a new labelling method of human thermal perception. A commercial 4-channels EEG wearable device has been used to collect the brain activity of 52 subjects exposed to different thermal conditions (cold, neutral and warm). The subjective thermal perception has been also collected using a common questionnaire based on 3 scores: thermal comfort, thermal sensation and thermal preference. After signal pre-processing, a short-time windowing technique has been applied to the cleaned EEG signal and a set of statistical, time-frequency, log-covariance and other features have been calculated to analyse the signal pattern. The dataset has been labelled using a parameter that is the result of a permutation and combination analysis applied to the 3 scores collected with the questionnaires. Finally, an artificial neural network (multilayer perceptron - MLP) has been trained to predict thermal label using the EEG signal as unique input. The model achieved an accuracy of 90% in the prediction of 5 different levels of thermal perception, demonstrating the high potential of the proposed approach

Design of a comfort based smart metering system for sport and recreational buildings

Il presente lavoro descrive il progetto e lo sviluppo di un sistema di Smart metering basato sul comfort per edifici di tipo sportivo. I sistemi di smart metering sono generalmente pro-gettati per il monitoraggio energetico, mentre il comfort è solitamente trascurato. Tuttavia questo è molto importante a causa del livello di attività e del desiderio di benessere tipico di tali ambienti. Le funzionalità sviluppate per implementare tale approccio riguardano il mo-nitoraggio energetico, la valutazione del comfort, l’ottimizzazione di reti di sensori, l’analisi e la visualizzazione dei dati. L’applicazione degli indici di comfort (PMV, predicted mean vote, e PPD, predicted percentage of dissatisfied) necessita di una procedura di calibrazione e una analisi globale di sensibilità per questo tipo di ambienti. La procedura di calibrazione è basata sul confronto tra il comfort soggettivo determinato con questionari e misure og-gettive con centralina microclimatica. Tale analisi, applicata a due casi reali (piscina e pale-stra), rivela una traslazione del punto di neutralità termica che viene usato come fattore cor-rettivo dell’indice PMV. Mentre l’analisi globale di sensibilità permette la riduzione del numero di variabili misurate identificando i parametri a bassa sensibilità e l’identificazione dei fattori critici in questa applicazione. Il sistema di misura deve essere sviluppato in gran-di ambienti con una rete di sensori efficace e con il giusto livello di accuratezza per il siste-ma di controllo. Per ridurre l’impatto dell’incertezza legata alla distribuzione orizzontale dell’aria è stato sviluppato un software di ottimizzazione in grado di ricavare il numero e la posizione ottimale di sensori di temperatura con un potenziale risparmio energetico che è stato valutato con l’ausilio di un modello simulativo. La soluzione presentata è parte dello sviluppo di un BMS (Building Management System) specifico per edifici sportivi nell’ambito del Progetto Europeo FP7 SportE2

La formula matrimoniale del codice Hunter 475: il testo più antico in volgare siciliano?

Il manoscritto Glasgow, University Library, Hunter 475 è un evangeliario greco medievale, appartenuto anticamente al monastero del SS. Salvatore di Messina. Il codice conserva, nella sua prima carta, una formula matrimoniale in volgare siciliano scritta in caratteri greci. La formula potrebbe risalire agli anni 1259/1266, durante il regno di Manfredi di Svevia: si tratterebbe in tal caso del più antico testo in volgare siciliano giuntoci in veste presumibilmente originale. L’articolo propone la prima edizione della formula corredata di un profilo linguistico e di un capitolo di analisi paleografica.The manuscript Glasgow, University Library, Hunter 475 is a medieval Byzantine Gospel book, previously belonging to the monastery of San Salvatore in Messina. The book holds in its very first page an Old Sicilian wedding ritual formula, written in Greek alphabet. This text may date to the years 1259/1266, during the reign of Manfred of Sicily, hence being the oldest known Sicilian text. The paper provides the first critical edition of the formula, together with a chapter of linguistic analysis and a paleographic description

Il Grigoriu del manoscritto Vat. Gr. 2252. Saggio di edizione di un importante testo salentino del Trecento

EnIn this paper, a chapter of an Old Salentino medieval text is edited and analyzed, for the first time, as a source of linguistic information. The so-colled Grigoriu is an anonymous vernacular translation of the Tetrastichae Sententiae, a 4th century Greek poetic work by Gregory of Nazianzus. The Old Salentino translation, written in the Greek alphabet, survives in a unique manuscript, the codex Vaticano Greco 2252, copied in Terra d'Otranto around the 1330s. The Sententiae are here translated along with the commentary on the text by Nicola / Nilo Dossapatre, written in the 12th century. A linguistic analysis shows the importance of the data provided by the Vatican manuscript for the reconstruction of the historical grammar of the Salentino dialects.ItSi fornisce per la prima volta un significativo saggio di edizione del cosiddetto Grigoriu, anonimo volgarizzamento salentino delle Tetrastichae Sententiae di Gregorio Nazianzeno e del relativo commento di Nicola/Nilo Dossapatre. Il testo, scritto in caratteri greci, è trasmesso unicamente dal manoscritto Vaticano Greco 2252, copiato in Terra d'Otranto intorno agli anni '30 del Trecento. L'analisi linguistica del saggio di edizione punta a mettere in luce la centralità dei dati forniti da questo testo per la ricostruzione della grammatica storica dei dialetti salentini