PLATFORM SELECTION FOR COMPLEX SYSTEMS:BUILDING AUTOMATION SYSTEMS

Automation systems for buildings interconnect components and technologies from the information technology industry and the telecommunications industry.In these industries,existing platforms and new platforms（that are designed to make building automation systems work） compete for market acceptance and consequently several platform battles among suppliers for building automation networking are being waged.It is unclear what the outcome of these battles will be and also which factors are important in achieving platform dominance.Taking the fuzziness of decision makers＇ judgments into account,a fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making methodology called the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process is applied to investigate the importance of such factors in platform battles for building automation networking.We present the relative importance of the factors for three types of platforms（subsystem platforms,system platforms,and evolved subsystem platforms）.The results provide a first indication that the set of important factors differs per type of platform.For example,when focusing on other stakeholders,for subsystem platforms,the previous installed base is of importance;for system platforms,the diversity of the network of stakeholders is essential;and for evolved subsystem platforms,the judiciary is an important factor.

Automated Smart Utilization of Background Lights and Daylight for Green Building Efficient and Economic Indoor Lighting Intensity Control

The ways which are used today in order to light houses, offices, and most of the indoor areas are inefficient as a lot of energy is consumed unnecessarily during the day time. Mainly this problem because the interior lighting design consider the worst case when the light service is at night, which is not always valid. Also in most cases the lighting system design relies on people to control the lights switching on and off. This problem is also one of the design concerns in Green Building. In this paper, a solution to this problem and a method for people’s comfort who use the indoor facilities in industrial buildings is presented. In the proposed smart lighting system, lights switch on automatically when there is somebody in the room or in the occupied space and switch off when there is no occupancy. In addition to this known technique, adjustment of the brightness level of the lights will be possible via the personal computer or any other smart device. In this method, for the illumination level in the area, where is needed to be controlled for better energy saving, the light automatically is measured by the sensor and considering the amount of background lights coming from outside, automatically the brightness of lights is controlled to reach the preset level that determined for that room. By the means of this method, it is possible to provide better user comfort, avoid human forcedness to switch the light on and off, and hence effective energy saving. Arduino controller is used to build the controller and to demonstrate the results. Economic analysis was done to calculate the percentage of the energy saving that can be obtained by implementing the proposed smart lighting controller. As an outcome of the economic analysis, energy saving norm for an office with a standard size was calculated.

Assessment of Minimizing the Environmental Functions Conflict in Buildings

Some building components are responsible for achieving more than one environmental function, these functions are usually of different requirements that can never be done by the same actions, and they are usually connected to changeable internal and external environment characteristics that vary among them. Minimizing the conflict of achieving the different environmental functions is an important challenge for all designers. Achieving a continuous thermal and optical comfort in an internal building space using the same window is an example of this challenge, as they have different requirements that may be sometimes contrary. It should be notable that there are a lot of recent technologies that may be used to find solutions for such a conflict. The Environmental Assessment Methods of Buildings appeared to set the principles of the optimum relation between buildings and their environment, they also could be used to encourage designers to reach the best environmental relations, and award them by main or additional assessment points. The research paper proposes to use the Environmental Assessment Methods of Buildings to assess the building ability of minimizing its environmental functions achievement conflict. This proposal depends on determining the inconsistency assessment items that depend on common building components to be achieved, and then determining the time periods that these items are achieved together within, to indicate the time periods without conflicting. Thus, the paper aims to raise the building environmental value in the assessment when the designer succeeds to minimize the expected conflict of the building environmental functions.

Auditing and design evaluation of building automation and control systems based on eu.bac system audit-Danish case study

Improving the energy performance of buildings will prove vital for countries worldwide to reduce their energy consumption and emissions.A key player in reaching this goal is building automation and control,as having well-designed and operated building automation and control systems(BACS)provide large capabilities in optimizing the energy performance of different systems.In this regard,building owners and planners must be able to assess and evaluate the current status of their BACS and identify potential improvements.While there has been a large block of work done in Denmark along with regulations aiming to audit the overall building performance and individual systems characteristics,very little has been done in the field of auditing the building automation and control system and evaluating its structure and operation patterns.This lack of systematic BACS auditing and evaluation in Danish buildings is addressed in this work with the first implementation and evaluation of the eu.bac System methodology in a university office building.The building was found to comply with the lowest automation and control class E.Two BACS retrofit packages were proposed and evaluated,and energy savings up to 28.5%are reported.The preliminary assessment results reported demonstrate the potential of building automation and control retrofit measures in a combined holistic improvement package alongside building envelope upgrade.In addition,the impact of the eu.bac System improvements and labeling on the building’s classification based on the recent Danish building regulation BR18 is evaluated.The study discusses the feasibility of eu.bac System tool implementation in Danish buildings and suggests improvements.It also correlates and compares the eu.bac System audit to the upcoming European SRI instrument.In light of the huge efforts to digitalize the Danish energy sector,ensuring proper design and operation of BACS is of great importance.Thus,a systematic and methodical BACS auditing and evaluation methodology will be a crucial part of buildings’initial and retro-commissioning platforms.

A Practical Approach to Representation of Real-time Building Control Applications in Simulation

Computer based automation and control systems are becoming increasingly important in smart sustainable buildings,often referred to as automated buildings(ABs),in order to automatically control,optimize and supervise a wide range of building performance applications over a network while minimizing energy consumption and associated green house gas emission.This technology generally refers to building automation and control systems(BACS)architecture.Instead of costly and time-consuming experiments,this paper focuses on development and design of a distributed dynamic simulation environment with the capability to represent BACS architecture in simulation by run-time coupling two or more different software tools over a network.This involves using distributed dynamic simulations as means to analyze the performance and enhance networked real-time control systems in ABs and improve the functions of real BACS technology.The application and capability of this new dynamic simulation environment are demonstrated by an experimental design,in this paper.