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Abstract: The drive to design more energy efficient buildings is increasingly leading to complex buildings with finely balanced ventilation and heating/cooling strategies. Commissioning of the often complex control systems is difficult and time consuming, as it relies on the sensing technology of the Building Management System, which is designed to control the building during normal operation, but lacks the resolution for thorough analysis of internal conditions to resolve initial building operation problems. This can result in a drawn out commissioning process, which is costly for the construction team. Moreover, insufficient commissioning and maintenance of building controls can lead to poorly functioning buildings, with great cost-implications for landlords, occupants and employers. This paper introduces a sensor overlay method that can support building control commissioning and maintenance by providing high-resolution data and speeding up the commissioning process. The development of the method and its practical application during a long-term study period, which coincided with the commissioning of an advanced naturally ventilated building, are described. The benefits for the design and commissioning teams and the implications for other stakeholders are explored. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) systems used for heating or cooling buildings, consume a considerable amount of energy. To optimize the energy consumption, the behavior of occupants must be changed. This can be achieved by providing information and suggestions to occupants. A first step is developing of a less expensive and non-invasive measurement system and metering of the electricity and heat consumed. Based on collected experimental data, it can identify the parameters of a thermal model of the house. The model obtained will be used to simulate different aspects that can help to reduce the energy consumption. This paper presents a simple solution for thermal modeling of a house which includes experimental identification of the model''s parameters. Such data are used to simulate the thermal behavior of the house and to obtain solutions to reduce energy consumption. In simulation, the control of the thermal system is performed using a model based predictive control algorithm. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this paper, we propose a vision-based system for human detection and activity analysis in indoor environment. The developed presence sensor is based on video analysis, using a static camera. Composed of three main steps, the first one consists in change detection using a background model updated at different levels to manage the most common variations of the environment. Second, a moving objects tracking, based on interest points, is performed. Third, in order to know the nature of the various objects that could be present in the scene, multiple cascades of boosted classifiers are used. The validation protocol, defined by the industrial partners involved in the CAPTHOM project focusing among other things on “Energy Management in Building”, is then detailed. Three applications integrated into the CAPTHOM project illustrate how the developed system can help in collecting useful information for the building management system. Occupancy detection and people counting as well as activity characterization and 3D location extend to a wide variety of buildings technology research areas such as human-centered environmental control including heating adjustment and demand-controlled ventilation, but also security and energy efficient buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper presents a robust strategy for online fault detection and optimal control of condenser cooling water systems. The optimal control strategy is formulated using a model-based approach, in which simplified models and a hybrid quick search (HQS) method are used to optimize the performance of the overall system by changing the settings of the local process controllers. A system level online fault detection scheme is embedded into the control system and used to monitor whether the system operates in a healthy condition. The faults considered are mainly the component performance degradations. When a fault is detected, the control system will be reconstructed to regain the control through using robust schemes. The performance of the proposed strategy is tested and evaluated against on a simulated virtual system representing the actual condenser cooling water system in a super high-rise building. The results show that the fault detection scheme is effective in identifying system performance degradations and the fault-tolerant control strategy with online fault detection and optimal control can enhance the overall system performance significantly when the operation of condenser cooling water systems suffers from performance degradations, as compared to that using optimal control only. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]