Data Analytics in Smart Buildings
Data Analytics in Smart Buildings
7.1 Introduction
Cities are becoming more and more of a focal point for our economies
and societies at large, particularly because of on-going urbanisation, and the
trend towards increasingly knowledge-intensive economies as well as their
growing share of resource consumption and emissions. To meet public policy
objectives under these circumstances, cities need to change and develop, but
in times of tight budgets this change needs to be achieved in a smart way:
our cities need to become “smart cities”. In order to follow the policy of the
decarbonisation of Europe’s economy in line with the EU 20/20/20 energy and
climate goals, today’s ICT, energy (use), transport systems and infrastructures
have to drastically change. The EU needs to shift to sustainable production and
use of energy, to sustainable mobility, and sustainable ICT infrastructures and
services. Cities and urban communities play a crucial role in this process. Three
quarters of our citizens live in urban areas, consuming 70%1 of the EU’s overall
energy consumption and emitting roughly the same share of Green House
Gas (GHG). Of that, buildings and transport represent the lion’s share. Within
the worldwide perspective of energy efficiency, it is important to highlight
that buildings are responsible for 40% of total EU energy consumption and
generate 36% of GHG [1]. This indicates the need to achieve energy-efficient
buildings to reduce their CO2 emissions and their energy consumption.
Moreover, the building environment affects the quality of life and work of
all citizens. Thus, buildings must be capable of not only providing mechanisms
1
Source: European Commission 2013.
167
168 Data Analytics in Smart Buildings
2
http://www.ectp.org/
170 Data Analytics in Smart Buildings
its requirements, this impact will differ and be greatest in the case of indoor
comfort services (like thermal and visual comfort). Therefore, forecasts of
the environmental condition should be also considered as input for the final
energy consumption estimation of the building.
(e) Information about the energy generated in the building. Sometimes,
alternative energy sources can be used to balance the energy consumption
of the building. Information about the amount of daily energy generated and
its associated contextual features can be used to estimate the total energy
generated in the future. This information allows us to design optimal energy
distribution or/and strategies of consumption to ensure the energy-efficient
performance of the building.
(f) Information about total energy consumption. Knowing the real value
of the energy consumed hourly or even daily permits the performance and
accuracy of the building energy management program to be evaluated, and
make it possible to identify and adjust the system in case of any deviation
between the consumption predicted and the real value. In addition, providing
occupants with this information is crucial to make them aware of the energy
that they are using at any time, and encourage them to make their behaviour
more responsible.
In this work we focus on residential buildings, where both comfort and
energy efficiency is required. As regards the comfort provided in buildings,
we focus on thermal and visual comfort.
systems. Rather than solving the above drawbacks. This approach involves
models based on a combination of real data and predictive patterns that
represent the evolution of the parameters affecting the energy consumption
of buildings. An example of such an approach is [23], in which the authors
propose an intelligent system able to manage the main comfort services
provided in the context of a smart building, i.e. HVAC and lighting, while
user preferences concerning comfort conditions are established according to
the occupants’ locations. Nevertheless, the authors only propose the inputs of
temperature and lighting in order to make decisions, while many more factors
are really involved in energy consumption and should be included to provide
an optimal and more complete solution to the problem of energy efficiency
in buildings. Furthermore, no automation platform is proposed as part of the
solution.
Regarding building automation systems, many works extend the domotics
field which was originally used only for residential buildings. A relevant
example is the proposal given in [24], where the authors describe an automa-
tion system for smart homes based on a sensor network. However, the system
proposed lacks automation flexibility, since each node of the network offers
limited I/O capabilities through digital lines, i.e. there is no friendly local
interface for users, and most importantly, integration with energy efficiency
capabilities is weak. The work presented in [25] is based on a sensor network
to cope with the building automation problem for control and monitoring
purposes. It provides the means for open standard manufacturer-independent
communication between different sensors and actuators, and appliances can
interact with each other with defined messages and functions. Nevertheless,
the authors do not propose a control application to improve energy efficiency,
security or living conditions in buildings.
The number of works concerning energy efficiency management in build-
ings using automation platforms is more limited. In [26], for instance, a
reference implementation of an energy consumption framework is provided,
but it only analyses the efficiency of ventilation system. In [27] the deployment
of a common client/server architecture focused on monitoring energy con-
sumption is described, but without performing any control action. A similar
proposal is given in [28], with the main difference that it is less focused
on efficiency indexes, and more on cheap practical devices to cope with a
broad pilot deployment to collect the feedback from users and address future
improvements for the system.
Regarding commercial solutions for the efficient management of building
infrastructures, there are proposals such as those given by the manufacturer
7.3 Related Work 177
3
http://www.johnsoncontrols.co.uk/content/gb/en/products/building efficiency.html
4
http://www.buildingtechnologies.siemens.com/bt/global/en/energy-
efficiency/Pages/Energy-efficiency.aspx
178 Data Analytics in Smart Buildings
Figure 7.1 Layers of the base architecture for smart buildings ecosystem.
fuse and represent information for the transformation of massive input data
into useful knowledge, which can be distributed later towards the services
layer. Different algorithms can be applied for the intelligent data processing
and decision making processes, depending on the final desired operation of the
system (i.e. the services addressed). Considering the target application of smart
buildings, data processing techniques for covering, among others, security,
tele-assistance, energy efficiency, comfort and remote control services should
be implemented in this layer. And following a user-centric perspective for
services provided, intelligent decisions are made through behaviour-based
techniques to determine appropriate control actions, such as appliances and
lights, power energy management, air conditioning adjustment, etc.
Figure 7.3 Schema of the modules composing the management system in charge of the building comfort and energy efficiency.
7.5 IoT-based Information Management System for Energy Efficiency 185
most suitable in light of our problem. Accuracy is usually the most important
requirement for positioning systems. In the location problem involved in
energy efficiency of buildings, we conclude that the accuracy required for
our localization system depends on the service areas of the appliances and
devices involved in the comfort and energy balance of the building.
In Figure 7.4 a rough outline of some positioning systems is presented,
with their accuracy ranges achieved until now according to the literature.
Since each localization technology has its particular advantages and disad-
vantages, we suggest that by combining several complementary technologies
and applying data fusion techniques, it is possible to improve the overall
system performance and provide a more reliable indoor localization system,
since more specific inferences can be achieved than when using a single kind of
data sensor. Therefore, after analysing Figure 7.4, we choose a hybrid solution
based on RF and non-RF technologies. Our technological solution to cover the
localization needs (i.e. those required by smart buildings to provide occupants
with customized comfort services) is based on a single active RFID system
and several Infra-Red (IR) transmitters. In Figure 7.5 we can observe the data
exchange carried out among the different technological devices that compose
our localization system.
y t |−
p(−
→ →
x t ) · p(−
→
x t |−
→
x t−1 )
w(−
→
x t ) = w(−
→
x t−1 ) · →
− →
− →
− (7.1)
q( x t | x t−1 , y t )
188 Data Analytics in Smart Buildings
i i Ns
Ensure: {xt , wt }i=1
1: Given a particle number Ns
2: Given a threshold NT value for resampling
3: for i = 1 to Ns do
4: Draw xit ∼ q(xt |xit−1 , yt )
5: Assign the particle a weight wti
6: end for
7: Calculate total weight: t = SUM[{wti }N
i=1 ]
s
8: for i = 1 to Ns do
9: Normalize: wti = t−1 · wti
10: end for
11: calculate N cf f = Ns
1
i 2
i=1 (wt )
12: if Ncf f ≤ NT then
13: Correction stage.
14: end if
190 Data Analytics in Smart Buildings
This metric shows the error by means of the quantity of KWh that we deviate
when predicting, but in order to get a better understanding of the uncertainty
of the model, we also show its coefficient of variation (CVRMSE). This
coefficient is the RMSE divided by the mean of the output variable (energy
consumption) for the test set (Equation (7.4)), giving us a percentage of error
adjusted to the data, not just a number in general terms.
RM SE
CV RM SE = (7.4)
y
5
www.um.es/otri/?opc=cttfuentealamo
7.6 Evaluation and Results
Figure 7.7 Schema of the definitive module of our building energy management system.
193
194 Data Analytics in Smart Buildings
can be safely said that our localization system is able to track users with
a sufficient level of accuracy and precision for the location requirements
associated with the comfort and energy management problem in buildings.
More details about this indoor localization system can be found in [50].
43.76 KWh – which represents the 10.29% of the sample in the reference
TTC building – that is acceptable enough considering that the final aim is to
save energy.
To evaluate our GA-based optimization strategy, controlled experiments
were carried out in the TTC building with different occupant’s behaviours.
The results showed that we can accomplish energy savings between 15% and
31%. Trying to validate the application of our proposal we have applied it
in a different scenario with limited monitoring and automation technologies,
achieving energy saving of about 23%.
Figure 7.10 Percentage of energy consumption savings in comfort services considering a user-centric building management efficient.
7.7 Conclusions and Future Work 199
shows the energy savings achieved during the second month of operation of
our energy management system in contrast to the first experimental month. It
can be seen how we achieved a saving of up to 12% of the energy involved, and
the medium value of 9% for the experimental month. Furthermore, the results
reflect how the increased savings become more stable with time, specifically
from the 17th day of the system operation. The reason of this saving increasing
is because our system is able to learn and adjust itself to any feedback indicated
by users regarding their comfort associated profile, and to recognize patterns
of user behavior.
with the system, through their interactions and their participation to get energy
savings in the building.
The applicability of our system has been demonstrated through its installa-
tion in a reference building. Thus, using user location data, considering target
regions of occupancy for comfort and energy management in the building,
and finally including users in the loop of the system operation, we show that
energy consumption in buildings can be reduced by a mean of about 23%.
If we translate this mean value of energy saving to city level, assuming that
buildings represent 40% of the total energy consumption at European level,
a reduction of 9% at city level could be achieved by installing this energy
management system in buildings.
The ongoing work is focused on the inclusion of people behaviour during
the operational loop of this kind of systems for smart cities. Thus, for the case
of smart building applications, users will be encouraged to participate in an
active way through their engagement to save energy. On the other hand, in the
case of the public tram service, data coming from crowd-sensing initiatives
will be integrated to improve the estimation of the urban mobility patterns.
Acknowledgments
This work has been partially funded by MINECO TIN2014-52099-R Project
(grant BES-2015-071956) and ERDF funds, by the European Commis-
sion through the H2020-ENTROPY-649849 and the FP7-SMARTIE-609062
Projects, and the Spanish Seneca Foundation by means of the PD program
(grant 19782/PD/15).
References
[1] D. Petersen, J. Steele, and J. Wilkerson, “Wattbot: a residential electricity
monitoring and feedback system,” in Proceedings of the 27th interna-
tional conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing
systems, pp. 2847–2852, ACM, 2009.
[2] Y. Agarwal, B. Balaji, R. Gupta, J. Lyles, M. Wei, and T. Weng,
“Occupancy-driven energy management for smart building automation,”
in Proceedings of the 2nd ACM Workshop on Embedded Sensing
Systems for Energy-Efficiency in Building, pp. 1–6, ACM, 2010.
[3] T. D. Pettersen, “Variation of energy consumption in dwellings due to
climate, building and inhabitants,” Energy and buildings, vol. 21, no. 3,
pp. 209–218, 1994.
References 201