Buildings are responsible for 40% of global energy consumption and 30% of greenhouse gas emissions. People spend almost 80-90% of their time inside buildings. In recent years, the nature of buildings has changed from static and passive structures to dynamic and active environments in which people work and live. The object of building control research is, on the one hand, the reduction of energy consumption and, on the other hand, the achievement of comfort, which includes human satisfaction in terms of thermal and visual comfort levels and air quality. Thus, the balance of the two is necessary for a sustainable and smart building. To achieve energy savings, it is crucial to know the actual level of human presence in the space, i.e. occupancy.
Occupancy Information actively participates in the comfort management system and could improve the energy efficiency of the building by reducing energy consumption. The purpose of the research program is to develop intelligent techniques for controlling the internal microclimate of the building and for predicting the user presence profile for energy efficiency and comfort management in smart buildings.
The project objectives focus on three research axes:
‣ The development of a multi-agent energy and comfort management system based on reinforcement learning algorithms with fuzzy logic
‣ The design of a model for predicting/estimating human occupancy of the space using fuzzy arithmetic and stochastic differential equations
‣ The energy efficiency of the building
Project Τitle: Intelligent Comfort Control and Occupancy Prediction Techniques in Buildings – Impacts on Energy.
Project Duration: 01/04/2020 – 31/06/2021
Project Framework & Funding: Support for researchers with a focus on young researchers – Cycle B΄- ΕΔΒΜ103, 41.541,50€.
Scientific coordinator (UNIWA): Dr. Anastasios Dounis, Professor at the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of West Attic
Research Publications / Results / Patents
Panagiotis Kofinas, Anastasios Dounis, and Panagiotis Korkidis, “Fuzzy Reinforcement Learning Multi-Agent System for Comfort and Energy Management in Buildings”, Proceedings of Sixth International Congress on Information and Communication Technology, Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems 236, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2380-6_26.
Panagiotis Korkidis, Anastasios Dounis and Panagiotis Kofinas
“Computational Intelligence Technologies for Occupancy Estimation and Comfort Control in Buildings”, Energies 2021, 14, 4971. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14164971.
