Search

The building sector is currently responsible of 40% of global final energy consumption, influencing the broader energy system in terms of new electricity and heat capacity additions, as well as distribution infrastructure reinforcement. Current building energy efficiency potential is largely untapped, especially at the local level where retrofit interventions are typically enforced, neglecting their potential synergies with the entire energy system. To improve the understanding of these potential interactions, this paper proposes a methodology that links dynamic building simulation and energy planning tools at the urban scale. At first, a detailed bottom-up analysis was conducted to estimate the current and post-retrofit energy demand of the building stock. The stock analysis is further linked to a broader energy system simulation model to understand the impact of building renovation on the whole urban energy system in terms of cost, greenhouse gas emission, and primary energy consumption up to 2050. The methodology is suited to analyze the relationship between building energy demand reduction potential and clean energy sources&rsquo, deployment to shift buildings away from fossil fuels, the key priority for decarbonizing buildings. The methodology was applied to the case study city of Torino, Italy, highlighting the critical role of coupling proper building retrofit intervention with district-level heat generation strategies, such as modern district heating able to exploit low-grade heat. Being able to simulate both demand and supply future alternatives, the methodology provides a robust reference for municipalities and energy suppliers aiming at promoting efficient energy policies and targeted investments.

Nowadays, due to the constant increase of outdoor air pollution, the impact on people’s health is alarming. Moreover, in the current vulnerable and crucial historical period during which society is experiencing and dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic consequences, this issue is becoming even more important. In line with this, there is an urgent need to provide scientific input to decision-makers to include the assessment of the health-related benefits and costs into urban planning processes. Special attention is devoted to the building sector since the heating service is considered among the main sources of air pollution in the urban environment. In the light of this, the paper aims to estimate the social costs associated with the thermal uses of the residential buildings in Turin (Northern Italy), integrating the energy assessment of the residential building stock, taking advantage of the Reference Building approach for the stock characterization, and the economic quantification and monetization of the air pollution health impacts, using the Cost of Illness (COI) method. Starting from the current situation, different retrofit scenarios for the residential buildings of Turin are hypothesized, to evaluate their capability in reducing the environmental impact of the sector, as well as to increase the social benefits they can guarantee.

Cities represent the places with the greatest environmental and energy impacts in the world. Their transformation through a sustainable key would make possible reducing the pressures registered in these areas. According to the Sustainable Development Goals, attention has shifted more and more to the creation of sustainable and safe communities, characterized by low energy-consuming buildings due to smart heating and cooling systems, and sustainable transport solutions based on the use of private electric and hybrid vehicles. Besides the energy and environmental impacts, actions to tackle climate change provide the opportunity to create collateral benefits that can potentially generate economic and social improvement for the whole community. The co-benefits inclusion in the decision analysis is crucial to remove barriers and reveal the real potential of renovation projects at the urban/district scale. Following the guidelines of the European Commission, the tool used when evaluating public projects and policies is the Cost–Benefit Analysis (CBA). One of the main limitations of the CBA method is the estimation of all positive and negative externalities in monetary value that can lead to imprecise assessment. To overcome this obstacle, a growing scientific literature on the application of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) to assess the sustainability of investment at district scale is emerging. In this study, we propose a new assessment framework based on the COmpoSIte Modeling Assessment (COSIMA) to address the multidimensionality that characterizes the redevelopment process of eco-districts considering energy, environmental, economic and social evaluation criteria. The COSIMA method enables considering both the tangible and intangible aspects of the problem and the opinion of the various stakeholders involved in the decision-making process, which are crucial aspects in urban transformations.

The building sector plays a crucial role in the advocated transition towards a carbon-free economy, and thus the zero-carbon building concept is taking hold. The paper focuses on the issue of existing hotels, with the aim of investigating the possibility of meeting the ambitious zero-carbon targets for this category of buildings, in which guests’ comfort and satisfaction is the core business. A reference hotel and different retrofit scenarios are assessed in two Italian climatic zones. Models are evaluated with a multi-objective approach, by introducing a set of hotel-related Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), to evaluate the simulated models on three main dimensions: thermal comfort, energy and environmental impacts. The obtained results have emphasized the difficulty to achieve the zero-carbon targets, due to the high energy consumptions caused by the comfort-based nature of hotels and of the space constraints for on-site renewable sources. These outcomes help highlighting the need to shift the focus from single building to district or city scale, proving that the zero-carbon building definition must go hand-in-hand with the Post-Carbon City concept.

Why do we run toward people we love, but only walk toward others? One reason is to let them know we love them. In this commentary, we elaborate on how subjective utility information encoded in vigor is read out by others. We consider the potential implications for understanding and modeling the link between movements and decisions in social environments.

The global attention towards climate change has led national governments and the international community to the definition of plans aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in all economic sectors. Recently, attention has focused also on the tourism sector, and especially on the lodging industry, which consumes high amounts of resources and energy to satisfy guests expectations in terms of offered services and comfort conditions. In this sector, eco-certifications or green labels are spreading, perceived as useful marketing tools to communicate the hoteliers’ environmental efforts to consumers, who are becoming more and more sensitive to ecological matters. However, the wide offer of green labels and the lack of appropriate information are contributing to increase costumers’ confusion and perception of real “green”. The present paper focuses its attention on a set of currently available tools to evaluate the environmental performances of hotels, in order to enquire if and to which extent they are able to inform about the sustainability of accommodation structures. Starting from the wide number of certification schemes available on the market, 19 multi-attribute, third-party green labels were compared, aiming to explore the role that energy efficiency measures play in the certification procedure.

Universities play a headship role among entities that invest in technological progress and intend to increase education in sustainable culture towards a post-carbon society. With this in mind, Politecnico di Torino is a leader on the national and international scene. It has prepared sustainability lines for the next few years to translate the Sustainable Development Goals into concrete actions. The goal of this work is the evaluation of eight alternative energy efficiency scenarios resulting from the combination of different strategies for the retrofit of the University Campus of Politecnico di Torino. In the first part of the study, the alternatives are assessed in terms of energy performance. Subsequently, an economic evaluation supported by the multi-criteria TOPSIS method makes it possible to order the alternatives according to the opinion of several experts. The integrated evaluation allows considering a set of co-benefits generated by the project going behind the energy aspects. The best strategy involves covering electricity needs with renewable energy sources, adopting students’ engagement policies and optimizing the set-point temperature. The results highlight how low-cost solutions such as awareness campaigns and variation of the set-point temperature can bring significant co-benefits from energy, economic, environmental and social perspectives.

The concept of smartness in building dates to the 1970s, but, in face of the breakthrough technological developments, a new notion of smart building is currently recognized. We talk about ambient intelligence, referring to a building which is responsive to the needs of the occupants and of the energy system. An ambient-intelligent building is human-centric; new services and interfaces are provided to the buildings occupants to learn and set their preferences, with a positive impact on their comfort level and satisfaction with the indoor environmental quality. ICT and IoT are part of the enabling technologies to exploit the potentials of smart buildings, by unlocking the capability of buildings to interact with the system they belong to. To bolster the diffusion of new technologies, methodologies to get quantitative results proving their effectiveness should be provided. In this paper the application of a well-established economic evaluation tool, the so-called Cost-Benefit Analysis, to the case of the deployment of new ICT-tools for occupants’ engagement is presented. The methodology is adopted within the H2020 Mobistyle project, where two levels of the evaluation are identified: the whole project level and the single demo case one. The purpose of the methodology is to assess the effectiveness of the adoption of the ICT-tools in producing economic value in terms of benefits for the occupants and the society. Some preliminary results of its application to the Italian case study are also presented, showing a positive socio-economic balance since the beginning of the deployment.

Finding the most appropriate matching between envelope features and HVAC system configurations in function of different climates results fundamental for minimizing buildings’ energy consumptions. The research aims at presenting the most energy-performing HVAC system configurations for high-performing buildings. Different configurations were modeled for new non-residential Reference Buildings in seven European cities, using dynamic simulation software EnergyPlus and some evaluation tools specifically set to emulate the energy performance of some specific HVAC technologies. Finally, the results obtained were compared in order to outline some conclusions, useful as guidelines for optimizing the choice of HVAC systems in function of climate conditions.

To meet the European targets for achieving high-performing buildings, the refurbishment of the existing building stock and, in particular, of historical buildings represents a great challenge. The research aims at identifying the most energy-effective HVAC configuration for retrofitting historical hotels in Mediterranean area, where the objective is to minimize the consumptions for both space heating and cooling. A Reference Building for an historical hotel was simulated in five Mediterranean cities and different HVAC solutions were assessed, using EnergyPlus software coupled with tools specifically set to emulate the energy behaviour of certain HVAC technologies, aiming to highlight the most efficient alternative.

Among co-benefits that energy efficiency interventions in buildings entail, occupants’ improved comfort is one of the most acknowledged. In this study, a monetary valuation of improvements in comfort conditions in accommodation facilities was carried out. With an interdisciplinary approach to the problem, the evaluation was two-folded, aimed at monetizing co-benefits and extra costs of improved indoor environmental quality. Comfort co-benefits were estimated by employing the economic-based Contingent Valuation Method. In this framework, survey results allowed calculating respondents’ Willingness to Pay for excellent comfort conditions in hotel rooms, quantified in a 14% increase of the room rate. The energy approach, based on dynamic simulations, allowed to quantify extra costs of improved thermal condition in a reference existing hotel. These findings suggest that guests’ appreciation of comfort is higher than the investment costs required to provide them with comfortable conditions and highlight that energy efficiency measures are often necessary to reach the desired indoor comfort level.

Urban districts should evolve towards a more sustainable infrastructure and greener energy carriers. The utmost challenge is the smart integration and control, within the existing infrastructure, of new information and energy technologies (such as sensors, appliances, electric and thermal power and storage devices) that are able to provide multi-services based on multi-actors and multi and interchangeable energy carriers. In recent years, the Municipality of Torino represents an experimental scenario, in which practical experiences in the below-areas have taken place through a number of projects: 1. energy efficiency in building; 2. smart energy grids management and smart metering; 3. biowaste-to-energy: mixed urban/industrial waste management with enhanced energy recovery from biogas. This work provides an overview and update on the most interesting initiatives of smart energy management in the urban context of Torino, with an analysis and quantification of the advantages gained in terms of energy and environmental efficiency.

Wedge prisms shifting the visual field laterally create a mismatch between the straight ahead position signalled by vision and that encoded by extraretinal and head-on-trunk proprioceptive information. Short-term adaptation to left-deviating prisms in normal subjects results in a visuomotor attentional bias towards the right-hand side (aftereffect). Prismatic adaptation (PA) is usually induced through a training consisting in repeated ballistic movements of the dominant arm towards visual targets, while participants are wearing prismatic goggles. The present study demonstrates that an original oculomotor PA procedure with leftward deviating prisms-without pointing movements and only consisting in repeated gaze shifts towards visual targets-can induce a rightward bias in normal subjects as assessed by visual straight ahead and line bisection tasks (Experiments 1 and 2). We show that oculomotor PA induces a bias in line bisection similar to that reported after visuomotor PA (Experiment 2). We suggest that a conflict between retinal, extraretinal and proprioceptive information about the straight ahead location causes the observed effects. In follow-up experiments 3, 4, and 5, we demonstrate that neither eye deviation without prisms nor shift of the visual field without eye deviation induces PA biases. We propose that an optimal integration model of visual and proprioceptive inputs can best account for the observed results.

Nigeria has been accorded the largest economy in Africa and one of Africa's burgeoning economies. However, a high percentage of the population lives in extreme poverty and is largely rural, accounting for about 51% of the total, approximately 96 million people in 2016. This glaring reality is most evident in the undisputed urban and rural divide with a huge mass of the population living in these rural areas characterised by underdevelopment and limited access to electricity and modern energy services. Energy access is an indispensable instrument such that can be used to achieve great strides in human development, better the economy and enable sustainable development. The present work reviews the state of the art on Nigerian energy access studies and provides an overview of the peer-reviewed literature spanning energy planning, electrification planning, rural electrification, renewable resource potential, energy & electricity access impact, and policies & reforms. It delineates the narrative in existing literature and propounds a new trajectory for future work. This study was facilitated by an extensive systematic literature review which has resulted in an analysis of 90 relevant articles out of a total of 104 articles from a period of 1978–2019. The review reveals no consensus on a standardized framework to synergize the already available strategies and methodologies for improving Nigeria's energy access. An integrated framework that embodies a multi-disciplinary study is introduced and forms the foundation upon which the authors of this paper are conducting further research to conceptualize a unified road map for energy planning, system design, and operation with renewable energy integration geared towards improving localized energy access in Nigeria.

Following the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP 21), the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climae Change strengthens the attempts of the European Union to decarbonize the building sector and to facilitate the transition from fossil fuels towards cleaner energy. The last version of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive 2018/844/EU is human centric and requires the integration of indoor environmental quality assessment, simultaneously with energy performance and cost-optimal requirements. In other words, efforts to improve the energy efficiency of buildings must actively contribute on reducing the building stock's climate impact while ensuring healthy indoor climate conditions, wellbeing and productivity. This paper introduces the cost-optimal analysis and indoor environmental quality assessment for nearly zero-energy buildings in temperate climate. The study presents several nearly zero-energy buildings (NZEB) scenarios for residential buildings, which include measures that are either upgrades that can be implemented in the as-built case study building or different other configurations of thermal envelope, technical systems and on-site renewable energy production. The cost-optimal analysis results show that among the investigated scenarios, the lowest global cost is achieved by the as-built house, which is an all electric building that has passive house envelope, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, heat pump and solar collector. Furthermore, the study reveals that with the implementation of PV panels, the primary energy demand can be reduced with 55% at a global cost increase of only 3%. The results and data can be used to compare energy efficincy measures and the related costs between EU Member States.

This study investigates the use of an evaluation model able to estimate the possibilities of reducing energy consumption and emissions of the building sector exploiting renewable energy sources. Specific attention is given to the use of ground source heat pumps in the urban context, proposing an ex-ante evaluation of different scenarios to identify the most balanced one in terms of energy, economic and environmental effects. The model is applied to a case study in Northern Italy to show how it can be used to support local administrations in energy urban planning, fitting economically and environmentally sustainable technologies. Moreover, it defines new boundaries in which the energy and environmental analyses should be carried out (spatial relocation), and the time span over which impacts have to be evaluated (temporal relocation).

Nowadays about 50% of global population lives in cities, responsible for about 70% of GHG emissions and by 2030 the urbanization rate will increase to over 75%. The paper analyses the new emerging concept of “Post-Carbon City” (PCC) and its main influencing factors regarding the building sector. It provides inspiration to re-think urban re-development patterns leading the way for new comprehensive approaches. In this new vision, energy and cost-effective retrofit of existing buildings cover a key role both in terms of saving potential and emission reduction towards nearly-zero energy building (nZEB) target. Moreover, in the building operational phase occupant behaviour has a strong impact on the real energy performance and its effect should be minimized. Therefore, these two issues should be mainly taken into account when energy city planning. Several mid/long-term scenarios analyses performed through quantitative energy demand forecasting tools − concerning not only the building sector, but the whole energy system − are the only opportunity to produce indications for an energy-oriented city planning. Finally, it highlights the necessity of new Advanced Input Modelling procedures to improve the effectiveness of measure recommendations derived through scenarios analysis.

The Post-Carbon City concept has a decisive effect on the building design, in terms of envelope and system technologies, and, especially, of interaction between the occupant and the building itself. Occupant behaviour lifestyle is one of the most significant driving factors of uncertainty in the prediction of building energy use and thus represents a fundamental aspect that is necessary to modelling. This study examines the difference between the energy consumptions assessed during design phase and the monitored ones for a social housing. Dynamic simulation was employed to demonstrate the impact of occupant behavior lifestyles and household composition on energy uses.

During reach-to-grasp movements, the hand is gradually molded to conform to the size and shape of the object to be grasped. Yet the ability to glean information about object properties by observing grasping movements is poorly understood. In this study, we capitalized on the effect of object size to investigate the ability to discriminate the size of an invisible object from movement kinematics. The study consisted of 2 phases. In the first action execution phase, to assess grip scaling, we recorded and analyzed reach-to-grasp movements performed toward differently sized objects. In the second action observation phase, video clips of the corresponding movements were presented to participants in a two-alternative forced-choice task. To probe discrimination performance over time, videos were edited to provide selective vision of different periods from 2 viewpoints. Separate analyses were conducted to determine how the participants' ability to discriminate between stimulus alternatives (Type I sensitivity) and their metacognitive ability to discriminate between correct and incorrect responses (Type II sensitivity) varied over time and viewpoint. We found that as early as 80 ms after movement onset, participants were able to discriminate object size from the observation of grasping movements delivered from the lateral viewpoint. For both viewpoints, information pickup closely matched the evolution of the hand's kinematics, reaching an almost perfect performance well before the fingers made contact with the object (60% of movement duration). These findings suggest that observers are able to decode object size from kinematic sources specified early on in the movement. (PsycINFO Database Record

Autism is a behavioral neurological disorder affecting a significant percentage of worldwide population. It especially starts manifesting at very low ages, but it is difficult to early diagnose it since there is not a specific exam or trial that is able to spot it safely. Its detection is in fact mainly dependent from the medical expertise used to assess the patient behavior during direct interviews. This work aims at providing an automatic objective support to the doctor for the assessment of (early) diagnosis of possible autistic subjects by only using video sequences. The underlying idea and rationale come from the psychological and neuroscience studies claiming that the executions of simple motor acts are different between pathological and healthy subjects, and this can be sufficient to discriminate between them. To this end, we devised an experiment in which we recorded, using a standard video camera, patient and healthy children performing the same simple gesture of grasping a bottle. By only processing the video clips depicting the grasping action using a recurrent deep neural network, we are able to discriminate with a good accuracy between the 2 classes of subjects. The designed deep model is also able to provide a sort of attention map in which the zones in the video of major interest are identified in space and time: this “explains” in a certain way which areas the model deems more relevant to the classification purpose, which could also be used by the doctor to make the diagnosis. In the end, this work constitutes a first step towards the development of an automatic computational system devoted to the early diagnosis of autistic subjects, providing the medical expert of a supportive objective method, potentially simple to use in clinical and also more open settings.

Nowadays about 50% of global population lives in cities, responsible for about 70% of GHG emissions and by 2030 the urbanization rate will increase to over 75%. The paper discusses new emerging concept of “Post-Carbon” City, in which the “vision” consists in the opportunity of breaking the carbon-dependent system of urban areas. It provides inspiration to re-think urban re-development patterns. In this new vision buildings and occupant behaviour role and need for new comprehensive planning tools are investigated. The paper deals with a project that is undergoing study and represents a picture of the current situation related to “Post-Carbon” City topic.

Currently nZEB design represents a negotiation between energy targets and economic concerns. Whereby, it is indispensable that, staring from very preliminary phase of the project, a synergy between the building and system designers, the energy consultant and the economic valuer is set up. Cost-optimal methodology together with statistical analyses developed with Minitab software was applied to analyze a new high performing single-family house, in Northern Italy, in order to define how energy and economic aspects could influence the preliminary design phase of the project.

The European Union (EU) has committed to lower GHG emissions for a 20% with respect to 1990 by 2020, reaching an 80% reduction by 2050. Renewable energy and buildings retrofitting will be key measures in cutting environmental impacts according to the new climate targets. The development of these energy-efficiency measures requires significant financial resources. The promotion of renewable-energy sources needs public acceptance to facilitate financial support for government. There is a growing body of literature that recognizes how the benefits of applying energy-efficiency measures outweigh the realization costs. Within this context, an evaluation of the whole range of co-impacts is crucial to compare different alternatives with the same objective. To implement a tool to assess the feasibility of a retrofitting project, firstly it is indispensable to identify the various possible benefits in a standardized manner and monetary terms. Secondly, it is fundamental to specify a logical path for assessing the attainment of these benefits, based on the features of the project. Recently, researchers have shown an increased interest in the evaluation of benefits. Despite this interest, very few studies have investigated the impact of the energy improvements of buildings on indoor comfort and human- health conditions. This work contributes to close the data gap in this context, investigating the health benefits connected to retrofitting interventions in residential buildings. A hybrid approach based on Contingent Valuation Method and economic analysis was applied to assess the impacts delivered by the energy retrofitting to an urban district in the city of Turin (Italy). A questionnaire was employed to elicit an estimate of consumers’ Willingness-To-Pay for better indoor comfort conditions and fewer hazards to health, reducing poor building features in terms of energy efficiency and air quality. A bidding game model was created to converge to the expected annual economic value of acceptable comfort conditions in the residential houses.

In all world regions urbanisation growth is expected to continue to 2050 and consequently urban areas have a key role in the transition to a more sustainable future. To reduce cities footprint, long-term strategies involving actions across all the main urban sectors (buildings, transport, industry and supply) are required. Therefore, methodologies that support public administrations in their decision-making planning process are of key importance. The research is focused on the necessity of re-thinking cities intervening on existing buildings and, consequently, on the urgent requirement to develop local energy policies able to encourage the spreading of energy efficiency measures, lowering some barriers to the interventions. Consistently, the main goal of the research here reported is to develop a methodology as support to the decision making process in defining local energy policies. This methodology aims to suggest, by means of specifically identified tools (Key Performance Indexes, quadrant-charts, Reference Buildings, etc.) and evaluation approaches (cost-optimal analysis, cost-benefits analysis, etc.), local policies of energy planning related firstly to public buildings. The present paper provides a full accounting, with some preliminary results, of the methodology implementation and its application to the case study of the Municipality of Torino, since a collaboration between it and the Politecnico of Torino is ongoing in the framework of the Energy Center Initiative. This first ongoing application enables to test the methodology and to highlights the necessity of strengthen the cooperation among municipal offices and to develop mechanism for sharing data such as digital achieves.

Although facilitation of the cortico-spinal system during action observation is widely accepted, it remains controversial whether this facilitation reflects a replica of the observed movements or the goal of the observed motor acts. In the present transcranial magnetic stimulation study, we recorded motor evoked potentials from two hand muscles (first dorsal interosseous and abductor digiti minimi) while 22 healthy participants observed a hand reaching towards and grasping a bottle. To test for alternative coding levels (goal vs. movement), three relevant aspects were systematically manipulated: the type of observed movement (precision grip or whole hand grasping), situational context (bottle positioned in front of or behind a wall-like barrier), and processing stage (transcranial magnetic stimulation pulse delivered at the onset of the movement or at the moment of contact between the fingers and the object). At movement onset, motor evoked potential responses reflected the program necessary to achieve the action goal within the situational context. During movement observation, however, the type of observed movement was taken into account and a transition towards a movement-related modulation was observed. These results suggest that, rather than being exclusive alternatives, goal coding and movement coding may relate to different processing stages.

In this paper, we address the new problem of the prediction of human intentions. There is neuro-psychological evidence that actions performed by humans are anticipated by peculiar motor acts which are discriminant of the type of action going to be performed afterwards. In other words, an actual intention can be forecast by looking at the kinematics of the immediately preceding movement. To prove it in a computational and quantitative manner, we devise a new experimental setup where, without using contextual information, we predict human intentions all originating from the same motor act. We posit the problem as a classification task and we introduce a new multi-modal dataset consisting of a set of motion capture marker 3D data and 2D video sequences, where, by only analysing very similar movements in both training and test phases, we are able to predict the underlying intention, i.e., the future, never observed action. We also present an extensive experimental evaluation as a baseline, customizing state-of-the-art techniques for either 3D and 2D data analysis. Realizing that video processing methods lead to inferior performance but show complementary information with respect to 3D data sequences, we developed a 2D+3D fusion analysis where we achieve better classification accuracies, attesting the superiority of the multimodal approach for the context-free prediction of human intentions.

This research presents a comprehensive cost-optimal approach for existing building retrofits. The approach incorporates energy efficiency measures related to building envelope, building energy systems and renewable energy, all at once. Moreover, the cost-optimal calculation scope is extended through integration of occupant behaviour. The comprehensive approach is implemented for a reference building which represents high-rise apartment blocks in Turkey; these building types accommodate 4500 families corresponding to 23.1% of the national households. Three different climatic regions, that show significant distinction from each other, were selected for the sample application of the approach in order to refer different climates. Cost-optimal calculations were performed for more than 1300 scenarios. Integration of occupant behaviour into this calculation procedure was demonstrated with sensitivity analyses; the present application of the approach was focused on the use of window openings by occupants. Results reveal that cost-effective energy saving potential is higher than 70% in high-rise apartments. Moreover, occupant behaviour related to window openings is able to raise this rate above 80%. The findings indicate the necessity of comprehensive approach and demonstrate that integration of occupant behaviour into cost-optimal calculations is fundamental in order to reach significant and stable results.

In computer vision, video-based approaches have been widely explored for the early classification and the prediction of actions or activities. However, it remains unclear whether this modality (as compared to 3D kinematics) can still be reliable for the prediction of human intentions, defined as the overarching goal embedded in an action sequence. Since the same action can be performed with different intentions, this problem is more challenging but yet affordable as proved by quantitative cognitive studies which exploit the 3D kinematics acquired through motion capture systems. In this paper, we bridge cognitive and computer vision studies, by demonstrating the effectiveness of video-based approaches for the prediction of human intentions. Precisely, we propose Intention from Motion, a new paradigm where, without using any contextual information, we consider instantaneous grasping motor acts involving a bottle in order to forecast why the bottle itself has been reached (to pass it or to place in a box, or to pour or to drink the liquid inside). We process only the grasping onsets casting intention prediction as a classification framework. Leveraging on our multimodal acquisition (3D motion capture data and 2D optical videos), we compare the most commonly used 3D descriptors from cognitive studies with state-of-the-art video-based techniques. Since the two analyses achieve an equivalent performance, we demonstrate that computer vision tools are effective in capturing the kinematics and facing the cognitive problem of human intention prediction., Comment: 2017 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops

In terms of existing buildings’ retrofit, historical and non-residential buildings clearly represent two challenging categories. In historical buildings, due to architectural constraints, acting on the technical side is often the only way to reduce consumptions, while non-residential buildings usually require simultaneous production of hot and chilled water. In these cases, Polyvalent heat pumps represent an interesting solution, able to guarantee significant reductions of primary energy consumptions. In detail, a Reference Building for an historical office was simulated in three Mediterranean cities, using EnergyPlus software and some evaluation tools specifically set to emulate the energy performances of the examined HVAC technologies.

How do we understand the intentions of other people? There has been a longstanding controversy over whether it is possible to understand others’ intentions by simply observing their movements. Here, we show that indeed movement kinematics can form the basis for intention detection. By combining kinematics and psychophysical methods with classification and regression tree (CART) modeling, we found that observers utilized a subset of discriminant kinematic features over the total kinematic pattern in order to detect intention from observation of simple motor acts. Intention discriminability covaried with movement kinematics on a trial-by-trial basis, and was directly related to the expression of discriminative features in the observed movements. These findings demonstrate a definable and measurable relationship between the specific features of observed movements and the ability to discriminate intention, providing quantitative evidence of the significance of movement kinematics for anticipating others’ intentional actions.

In this paper, we propose an effective method for emergent leader detection in meeting environments which is based on nonverbal visual features. Identifying emergent leader is an important issue for organizations. It is also a well-investigated topic in social psychology while a relatively new problem in social signal processing (SSP). The effectiveness of nonverbal features have been shown by many previous SSP studies. In general, the nonverbal video-based features were not more effective compared to audio-based features although, their fusion generally improved the overall performance. However, in absence of audio sensors, the accurate detection of social interactions is still crucial. Motivating from that, we propose novel, automatically extracted, nonverbal features to identify the emergent leadership. The extracted nonverbal features were based on automatically estimated visual focus of attention which is based on head pose. The evaluation of the proposed method and the defined features were realized using a new dataset which is firstly introduced in this paper including its design, collection and annotation. The effectiveness of the features and the method were also compared with many state of the art features and methods.

In Europe the building sector is responsible for more than 40 % of the total energy consumption and for 36 % of the CO2 emissions. To avoid a further increase of these values, the European Union decided to issue several Directives in order to encourage the reduction of energy consumptions and to promote the use of renewable energy sources. In particular, the recast of the European Energy Performance of Buildings (Directive 2010/31/EU) promotes the improvement of buildings energy performance within the European Union, and introduces a new standard, the nearly-Zero Energy Building (nZEB). More recently, the European Commission is shifting the matter with steady increase from the single level of the building to the district one in order to hit the target of post-carbon cities and the concept of Net-Zero Energy District (NZED) is emerging. The evaluation of alternative strategies for the construction of NZED constitutes a multidimensional problem, where different aspects and impacts have to be considered, from the reduction of pollutant emissions to the investment cost, from the increase in indoor comfort to the creation of benefits in term of real estate assets value. The objective of the present study concerns an investigation of Multicriteria Decision Analysis for supporting decision problems in the context of NZED. In particular, starting from a real case study in the city of Turin (Italy), the multicriteria PROMETHEE method is employed for comparing four alternative strategies for the construction of a new NZED and to select the best solution from a socio-economic and environmental point of view.

Behavioural and neuropsychological studies suggest that real actions and pantomimed actions tap, at least in part, different neural systems. Inspired by studies showing weight-attunement in real grasps, here we asked whether (and to what extent) kinematics of pantomimed reach-to-grasp movement can reveal the weight of the pretended target. To address this question, we instructed participants (n =15) either to grasp or pretend to grasp towards two differently weighted objects, i.e., a light object and heavy object. Using linear discriminant analysis, we then proceeded to classify the weight of the target – either real or pretended – on the basis of the recorded movement patterns. Classification analysis revealed that pantomimed reach-to-grasp movements retained information about object weight, although to a lesser extent than real grasp movements. These results are discussed in relation to the mechanisms underlying the control of real and pantomimed grasping movements.

The outdoor air pollution and the insufficient hygiene of HVAC systems often result in low indoor air quality. The World Health Organization estimated that 50% of indoor biological contamination comes from the air-handling system; the air filters are sources of pollution due to the accumulation and proliferation of bacteria on the surface. Furthermore, the presence of indoor contaminants can have a negative impact on the health and well-being of the occupants, who spend about 80% of their time indoors. To guarantee a better indoor air quality and a lower health risks, a new concept of biocidal filtration has been introduced. The present paper shows the results of a literature review aimed at exploring how to integrate the health effects on building occupants into the economic benefits of an antibacterial filter. The research focuses on costs and benefits produced by the application of an antibacterial filter, comparing it with a traditional one. Two methods were applied for the assessment; the Cost Benefit Analysis and the Monte Carlo Simulation. The results suggested the goodness of the economic investment on biocidal filter and showed how it allows to achieve benefits in term of energy savings and health for the different analysed case studies.

We present the first database of communicative interactions reproduced through point-light displays (Communicative Interaction Database). The database contains 20 communicative interactions performed by male and by female couples. For each action, we provide movie files from four different viewpoints, as well as text files with the 3-D spatial coordinates of the point lights, allowing researchers to construct customized versions. By including various types of actions performed with different social motives, the database contains a diverse sample of nonconventional communicative gestures. Normative data collected to assess the recognizability of the stimuli suggest that, for most action stimuli, information in point-light displays is sufficient for clear recognition of the action as communicative, as well as for identification of the specific communicative gesture performed by the actor. The full set of stimuli may be downloaded from http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/ content/supplemental and from http://ppw.kuleuven.be/labexppsy/lepSite/resources/CID.rar.

This research focuses on the possibility of constituting a more sustainable lightweight concrete, Mineralized Wood Concrete (MWC), substituting natural aggregates with wastes from woodworking activities. Exploiting this type of aggregates, a triple purpose has been achieved: preservation of natural raw materials, reuse of wastes and energy saving. Furthermore, the use of wood aggregates is a way to try to develop a sustainable concrete characterized by high thermal inertia, high thermal resistance and low weight. In this paper, effects of the addition of wood aggregates on mechanical and thermal properties of concrete are studied. Mechanical performances have been investigated with compressive strength tests, while a one-dimensional heat flow model has been used to predict the thermal conductivity of MWC. The use of MWC can be associated with the idea of a different typology of relatively heavy building envelope: this union could competitively answer to the demand of well-insulated building envelope and concurrently characterized by high thermal mass. From this union, a series of other values can be derived: low weight, environmentally friendly, easily industrialized and easy on-site casting. Consequently, applications of wood concrete in building constructions may be an interesting solution in order to improve sustainability and building energy efficiency.

Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to explore how the human brain models gaze-object relations. During scanning participants observed a human model gazing towards or away a target object presented either in isolation or flanked by a distractor object. In two further conditions the model's gaze was shifted and subsequently maintained away from the stimulus/i. These four conditions were implemented within a factorial design in which the main factors were "type of observed behavior" (gaze vs. gaze-away) and "context" (target alone vs. target flanked by a distractor). Results revealed that premotor, parietal and temporal areas, known to sub-serve the understanding of other people actions, were significantly more activated by the observation of the model gazing towards rather than away from the stimulus/i. In addition, a significant interaction indicated that, when the target was presented in isolation, neural activity within the inferior frontal gyrus, another key area for action understanding, was influenced by gaze-object relations. Our findings suggest that this area is important for the establishment of intentional gaze-object relations and indicate that the presence of a distractor interferes with the representation of such relations.

In this paper, an effective framework for detection of emergent leaders in small group is presented. In this scope, the combination of different types of nonverbal visual features; the visual focus of attention, head activity and body activity based features are utilized. Using them together ensued significant results. For the first time, multiple kernel learning (MKL) was applied for the identification of the most and the least emergent leaders. Taking the advantage of MKL's capability to use different kernels which corresponds to different feature subsets having different notions of similarity, significantly improved results compared to the state of the art methods were obtained. Additionally, high correlations between the majority of the features and the social psychology questionnaires which are designed to estimate the leadership or dominance were demonstrated.

Occupant behavior is one of the most significant driving factors of uncertainty in the prediction of building energy use. Large performance gaps have been individuated between residential buildings with the same properties and similar climate conditions. Comfort criteria settings by the occupants and their interaction with the envelope and the systems directly affect the operation of buildings and related energy uses. This study employs building simulations to demonstrate the potential impact of occupant behavior lifestyles and different household compositions on energy use and thermal comfort conditions in a residential nearly zero energy building under-construction. In detail, occupant behavior was classified into three lifestyles: low consumer, standard consumer, and high consumer. The analysis considered energy-related behavioral patterns (regulation of heating and cooling set-points, energy use for equipment, lighting and domestic hot water, ventilation rates, regulation of window blinds) and highlig...

The recast of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) introduced a comparative methodological framework for calculating cost-optimal levels of minimum energy performance requirements. The cost-optimal methodology, conceived for national authorities, was here exploited as a decision-making tool for supporting a private investor in choosing the most viable energy scenario. The methodology was thus used to evaluate different energy efficiency measures applied to an abandoned industrial building in Turin (Northern Italy) and to identify the best retrofit solution in terms of energy and costs. Providing guidance and tools for re-designing ex-industrial areas can be useful for several similar case studies widespread not only nearby Turin, but also in other Italian regions and EU countries. The research activity here presented aims at testing the cost-optimal methodology to support energy retrofit projects starting from an early design stage. The arisen issues may be considered for future applications, with reference to specific contexts. In this perspective, this work constitutes a first step towards the definition of an “environmental and economic sustainability equilibrium”, assuming that the application of models and approaches for evaluating both the energy-environmental performances and the economic ones, in many cases, may give very different results.

The ability to interact with other people hinges crucially on the possibility to anticipate how their actions would unfold. Recent evidence suggests that a similar skill may be grounded on the fact that we perform an action differently if different intentions lead it. Human observers can detect these differences and use them to predict the purpose leading the action. Although intention reading from movement observation is receiving a growing interest in research, the currently applied experimental paradigms have important limitations. Here, we describe a new approach to study intention understanding that takes advantage of robots, and especially of humanoid robots. We posit that this choice may overcome the drawbacks of previous methods, by guaranteeing the ideal trade-off between controllability and naturalness of the interactive scenario. Robots indeed can establish an interaction in a controlled manner, while sharing the same action space and guaranteeing contingent behaviors. To conclude, we discuss the advantages of this research strategy and the aspects to be taken in consideration when attempting to define which human (and robot) motion features allow for intention reading during social interactive tasks.

Nowadays in nZEB designing it is fundamental taking into account both the energy and the economic perspective right from the preliminary phases of the project. Success in realizing nZEB lies in finding the right balance between energy performances, architectural quality and costs, which include investment, maintenance and running costs, incurred by the project owner during a defined period. This paper analyzes CorTau House in terms of architectural aspects, energy performances and economic viability. It represents a significant Italian design experience in which the architectural quality of the refurbishment of a traditional rural building is combined with high-performing energy solutions.

According to the recast of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive and its target for the large-scale increase of nearly-zero energy buildings, nowadays a challenging task is the definition of standard high performing building types depending on location and specific climate conditions. The widespread replicability of nZEB types on the current real estate market could implement nZEB design scenarios attractive and affordable for construction companies and private investors. In particular, this research focuses on the definition of replicable HVAC system configurations with different features and efficiencies starting from a reference building located in a Mediterranean country. The configurations were applied to CorTau House, an nZEB under construction in Piedmont Region, a typical situation of European Mediterranean country where both winter and summer loads, together with humidity, have to be carefully controlled. Building envelope and HVAC system design were matched in order to optimize energy performance and indoor thermal comfort. The HVAC configurations, able to meet nZEB targets and to ensure optimal indoor comfort conditions, were combined with a performing building envelope, made of local construction materials, in order to assess which of them is more energy effective and economically viable. Cost-optimal types were identified and prospective replicability on building market was speculated. Finally, differences between private investor's and company construction's perspectives were discussed.

Europe has set a clear path to guide Member States into the accomplishment of the nearly zero energy buildings (nZEBs) target. To this regard, within EPBD recast directive, a cost optimality procedure has been defined. This study presents different cost optimal solutions of building and technical systems for nZEBs in Italy. In total 40 economically and technically feasible energy efficiency measures for a high performing single family house were analyzed. Special attention was devoted to the study of the building technical systems. Achieving a net zero balance required a high efficient system combined with high insulation and a large PV system, which plays a key role in the nearly and net zero building energy balance. Three net zero energy balance solutions, based on all electric systems, were presented. Net ZEB solutions allowed also the building carbon footprint to be reduced by 40% compared to the reference case study. Without proper financial subsides, net ZEB solutions are still far for being economic feasible, having a global cost 212–313 €/m2 higher than cost optimal solutions. In conclusion, this paper aims to present guidelines for designing reference building envelope and technical systems solution for residential nZEB.

ANSI/ASHRAE/IESNA 90.1 Energy Standard for Buildings except Low-Rise Residential Buildings is the benchmark code of U.S. local regulations. In addition to provide a set of minimum mandatory requirements for energy-using components (prescriptive approach), the standard includes in the Appendix G a more flexible path to attest performances significantly better than code minimum (performance-based approach). With regard to this approach, a procedure to establish the proposed building performance by quantifying the energy savings above an annual baseline energy consumption is defined as Performance Rating Method and used within the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Protocol.This paper applies the U.S. performance-based approach to the global energy efficiency goal within the prescriptive-oriented Italian framework. In particular, the Performance Rating Method – partially customized to the Italian context by GBC Italia® and in compliance with LEED Italia requirements – has been applied to an Italian case study in order to highlight strengths and weaknesses correlated to a steady adoption of the performance approach in Italian energy policies. The proposed building performance of the case study has been evaluated throughout a dynamic simulation analysis carried out by means of the EnergyPlus code.

Finding cost-optimal solutions towards nearly-zero energy buildings in accordance with the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) is a challenging task. In order to reach the 20-20-20 targets, EU energy policy has introduced new ambitious levels for the large-scale spread of nearly-zero energy buildings (nZEBs) and the concept of the cost-optimal level, defined as the energy performance level, which leads to the lowest cost during the estimated economic lifecycle of the building. Consequently, building design has begun a challenge involving both energy targets and economic concerns. The aim of this research is to analyze an example building of a new single family house, using the cost-optimal methodology, in order to define how energy and economic aspects influence the preliminary design phase of the project and, in particular, the choice of the performance features of some components of the project itself, such as envelope elements and systems. The impact on energy performances of different configurations for the building envelope and heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems was assessed with the dynamic simulation software EnergyPlus. Finally, the costs of the different design scenarios were estimated, according to the European Standard EN 15459:2007 to establish which of them had the lowest global cost and, consequently, represents the cost-optimal level for the design configurations analyzed. In order to test the stability of the results obtained, different sensitivity analyses were carried out.