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A semantic service-oriented platform for energy efficient buildings

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Abstract

The construction industry is under pressure to increase the sustainability of its practices to meet UK commitments for reducing energy consumption and alleviating climate change. The research uses a mixed-method approach drawn from recent studies to explore the readiness, maturity and level of engagement of construction stakeholders in adopting the UK government sustainability agenda. Limited positive energy practices and sustainability regulatory awareness, combined with information provision deficiencies, form some of the key barriers to sustainable construction faced by industry. A service-oriented platform that provides integrated access to sustainability resources in the form of interactive, dynamic and user-oriented services that fully exploit latest advances in computing technologies is proposed to address these barriers. In this paper, we specifically elaborate on how a service-oriented system can be efficiently used for performing (near) real-time energy optimisation in buildings, greatly contributing to engaging construction stakeholders with sustainability practices. The solution disseminates energy efficient practices and provides support for building managers in implementing energy efficient optimisation plans. The solution is tested and validated through a number of energy efficiency scenarios developed as part of the EU FP7 SportE2 project.

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Notes

  1. SportE2 is a research project co-financed by the European Commission in FP7 under the domain of Information Communication Technologies and Energy Efficient Buildings. In this project, we develop energy efficient products and services dedicated to needs and unique characteristics of sport facilities, www.sporte2.eu.

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Acknowledgments

The European-wide study was funded by the European Commission under the FP7 SportE2 Grant. The initial Wales study and the follow-up ‘SCRIPT’ Project were funded by the Welsh Government under the Academic Expertise for Business (A4B) programme. The authors would also like to acknowledge the many industrial/stakeholder organisations and individuals who have kindly taken part in the various studies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science and Informatics, Cardiff University, Cardiff, CF24 3AA, Wales, UK

    Ioan Petri

  2. School of Engineering, Cardiff University, Cardiff, CF24 3AA, Wales, UK

    Yacine Rezgui, Tom Beach & Haijiang Li

  3. Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale e Scienze Matematiche, Università Politecnica Delle Marche, Via Brecce Bianche, 60131, Ancona, Italy

    Marco Arnesano & Gian Marco Revel

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  1. Ioan Petri
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  2. Yacine Rezgui
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  3. Tom Beach
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  4. Haijiang Li
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  5. Marco Arnesano
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  6. Gian Marco Revel
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Correspondence to Ioan Petri.

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Petri, I., Rezgui, Y., Beach, T. et al. A semantic service-oriented platform for energy efficient buildings. Clean Techn Environ Policy 17, 721–734 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-014-0828-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-014-0828-2

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