Concept

Building automation

Related publications (22)

Quantifying the Unknown: Data-Driven Approaches and Applications in Energy Systems

In light of the challenges posed by climate change and the goals of the Paris Agreement, electricity generation is shifting to a more renewable and decentralized pattern, while the operation of systems like buildings is increasingly electrified. This calls ...

EPFL2024

What is NExT? A new conceptual model for comfort, satisfaction, health, and well-being in buildings

Dusan Licina

Buildings are designed to respond to functional and regulatory needs, providing comfortable conditions to occupants, offering satisfactory environmental settings, minimising health risks, and enhancing individual and collective quality of life. Although th ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2024

Lessons Learned from Data-Driven Building Control Experiments: Contrasting Gaussian Process-based MPC, Bilevel DeePC, and Deep Reinforcement Learning

Colin Neil Jones, Yingzhao Lian, Emilio Maddalena, Loris Di Natale, Jicheng Shi

This manuscript offers the perspective of experimentalists on a number of modern data-driven techniques: model predictive control relying on Gaussian processes, adaptive data-driven control based on behavioral theory, and deep reinforcement learning. These ...

2023

Distributed Alarm System Based on OTDR Interrogation of Side Air-Hole Fibers

Luc Thévenaz, Marcelo Alfonso Soto Hernandez, Yuting Yang

A distributed sensor for multi-event alarm triggering is demonstrated by measuring the loss change induced by the liquefaction of pressured CO2 trapped along a side air-hole fiber. ...

2023

Assessment of Monitoring Strategies for Inhalation Exposure and Occupancy in Office Environments

Seoyeon Yun

Given people's significant time spent indoors, ensuring good indoor air quality (IAQ) is essential because it significantly influences occupants' health and productivity. Office buildings consume about 50% of commercial building energy and 18% of total bui ...

EPFL2023

DIET Controller: Dynamic Indoor Environment using Deep Reinforcement Learning

Arnab Chatterjee

Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) Systems utilize much energy, accounting for 40% of total building energy use. The temperatures in buildings are commonly held within narrow limits, leading to higher energy use. Measurements from office bui ...

EPFL2023

Taking a step back from glass towers facades to make them compatible with the 2050 targets

Sergi Aguacil Moreno, Bernard Paule

Skyscrapers or glass towers are an extremely common model throughout the world. In the current context of climate change and resource depletion, we need to develop new postures towards these objects, especially for existing buildings that are becoming obso ...

2023

Efficient and Accurate Peer-to-Peer Training of Machine Learning Based Home Thermal Models

Rachid Guerraoui, Alexandre David Olivier Maurer

The integration of smart thermostats in home automation systems has created an opportunity to optimize space heating and cooling through the use of machine learning, for example for thermal model identification. Nonetheless, its full potential remains unta ...

Assoc Computing Machinery2023

Preserving suspended structures with light façades (1960-1980). Architectural study and retrofitting proposals

Giuseppe Galbiati

Nowadays, the energy efficiency of the existing building stock is internationally accepted as a topical issue. Energy retrofitting is encouraged, improving the thermal performances of buildings, but often altering the historical image of our cities. Attent ...

EPFL2023

Reinforcement Learning for the occupant-centric operation of building energy systems: Theoretical and experimental investigations

Amirreza Heidari

Occupant behavior, defined as the presence and energy-related actions of occupants, is today known as a key driver of building energy use. Closing the gap between what is provided by building energy systems and what is actually needed by occupants requires ...

EPFL2022

Validation of spectral simulation tools in the context of ipRGC-influenced light responses of building occupants

Marilyne Andersen, Clotilde Marie A Pierson

With the growing awareness about ipRGC-influenced light (IIL) responses, design applications related to these responses are flourishing. To compare design options and optimize lighting conditions for building occupants, lighting simulations are typically u ...

2023

Robust Learning Model Predictive Control for Periodically Correlated Building Control

Colin Neil Jones, Jicheng Shi, Yingzhao Lian

Accounting for more than 40% of global energy consumption, residential and commercial buildings will be key players in any future green energy systems. To fully exploit their potential while ensuring occupant comfort, a robust control scheme is required to ...

2021

Deep Reinforcement Learning for room temperature control: a black-box pipeline from data to policies

Colin Neil Jones, Loris Di Natale

Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) recently emerged as a possibility to control complex systems without the need to model them. However, since weeks long experiments are needed to assess the performance of a building controller, people still have to rely on ...

2021

Field evaluation of thermal and acoustical comfort in eight North-American buildings using embedded radiant systems

Caroline Karmann

We performed a post-occupancy assessment based on 500 occupant surveys in eight buildings using embedded radiant heating and cooling systems. This study follows-up on a quantitative assessment of 60 office buildings that found radiant and all-air buildings ...

2021

Design-to-Fabrication Workflow for Raw-Sawn-Timber using Joinery Solver

Petras Vestartas

Currently, the Swiss timber industry in mountain areas largely exports unprocessed lumber and imports finished timber products due to the lack of digital tools. By using new digital design-to-production workflows, it is possible to investigate new building ...

EPFL2021

Automated flow control of a multi-lane swimming chamber for small fishes indicates species-specific sensitivity to experimental protocols

Paulin Olivier Raison

In fishes, swimming performance is considered an important metric to measure fitness, dispersal and migratory abilities. The swimming performance of individual larval fishes is often integrated into models to make inferences on how environmental parameters ...

2021

Data-driven methods for building control - A review and promising future directions

Colin Neil Jones, Yingzhao Lian, Emilio Maddalena

A review of the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning control problem for buildings is presented with particular emphasis on its distinguishing features. Next, we not only examine how data-driven algorithms have been exploited to tackle the main challe ...

2020

Modern Schools in Angola, 1961-1975: Design with Climate and Heritage

Maria Margarida Gonçalves Quintã

The architectural production of Angola between 1961 and 1975 forms the basis of the current study. Taking into consideration that buildings' environmental performance is, at one time, one of the most central aspects of the Modern Movement legacy and a pres ...

EPFL2019

Cooperative energy management of a community of smart-buildings: A Blockchain approach

Maher Kayal, Olivier Valentin Henri Van Cutsem

Demand Response (DR) is progressively moving from a centralized, unidirectional structure to a set of advanced decentralized mechanisms that better balance distributed supply and demand. This paper presents a decentralized cooperative DR framework to manag ...

ELSEVIER SCI LTD2020

On Smart-Buildings and their Integration into the Smart-Grid

Olivier Valentin Henri Van Cutsem

Today's electrical grid is undergoing deep changes, resulting from the large integration of distributed Renewable Energy Sources (RES) in an effort to decarbonize the generation of electrical energy. In addition to the emergence of this volatile electricit ...

EPFL2020