Sérgio Leal | AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH (original) (raw)

Papers by Sérgio Leal

Buildings, Jul 4, 2014

Building automation integrates the active components in a building and, thus, has to connect comp... more Building automation integrates the active components in a building and, thus, has to connect components of different industries. The goal is to provide reliable and efficient operation. This paper describes how simulation can support building automation and how the deployment process of simulation assisted building control systems can be structured. We look at the process as a whole and map it to a set of formally described workflows that can partly be automated. A workbench environment supports the process execution by means of improved planning, collaboration and deployment. This framework allows integration of existing tools, as well as manual tasks, and is, therefore, many more intricate than regular software deployment tools. The complex environment of building commissioning requires expertise in different domains, especially lighting, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, measurement and control technology, as well as energy efficiency; therefore, we present a framework for building commissioning and describe a deployment process that is capable of supporting the various phases of this approach.

Building Simulation Conference Proceedings

ABSTRACT Building modeling is a repetitive, costly and fallible task, which has potential to be e... more ABSTRACT Building modeling is a repetitive, costly and fallible task, which has potential to be enhanced through automation. This paper presents a case study of thermal and electrical performance simulation using a simplified building model. The model is based on commonly available building information, such as the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) and monitoring data. This case study assesses the feasibility and adoptability of simplified models for realistic performance simulation purposes. An existing office building located in Vienna has been selected as a testbed. Preliminary results demonstrate that there is high level of agreement between the model and the existing office building.

Procedia Computer Science, 2014

Buildings are one of the leading energy consumers in Europe. To improve energy efficiency in the ... more Buildings are one of the leading energy consumers in Europe. To improve energy efficiency in the built environment means to optimise the operation of building systems. Acoustics potentially provide an important information source to support the assessment of the operation of buildings. Recently, different approaches to the application of acoustic sensing technology have been studied. This paper presents an overview of three ongoing projects which look at how sounds can be utilized to reduce energy consumption in buildings. In the "Sounds for Energy Control of Buildings" (S4ECoB) project the primary goal is the establishment of more energy-efficient buildings through the optimization of existing BMS. The "Experimenting Acoustics in Real environment using Innovative Test-beds" (EAR-IT) project aims to develop acoustic mass flows maps which provide awareness of the flows of masses. The "Energy efficient & Cost competitive retrofitting solutions for Shopping buildings" (EcoShopping) project purpose is to increase the energy efficiency of a building and to optimize the investments necessary in building retrofitting. Diverse methodologies and technologies (wired, wireless and mobile) are tested in realistic conditions provided by each demonstrator.

Buildings, 2014

Building automation integrates the active components in a building and, thus, has to connect comp... more Building automation integrates the active components in a building and, thus, has to connect components of different industries. The goal is to provide reliable and efficient operation. This paper describes how simulation can support building automation and how the deployment process of simulation assisted building control systems can be structured. We look at the process as a whole and map it to a set of formally described workflows that can partly be automated. A workbench environment supports the process execution by means of improved planning, collaboration and deployment. This framework allows integration of existing tools, as well as manual tasks, and is, therefore, many more intricate than regular software deployment tools. The complex environment of building commissioning requires expertise in different domains, especially lighting, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, measurement and control technology, as well as energy efficiency; therefore, we present a framework for building commissioning and describe a deployment process that is capable of supporting the various phases of this approach.

This presents a research effort toward an integrated model-based approach to energy-efficient ope... more This presents a research effort toward an integrated model-based approach to energy-efficient operation of building systems. The ingredients of the corresponding concept are as follows: i) A comprehensive building state model underlines all operative entities and activities in the life-cycle of the building. This model includes information on building context (e.g. weather conditions), building topology, components, and systems, as well as building occupancy (user presence and actions); ii) The model is updated real-time via a sensory infrastructure including sensors for outdoor and indoor environmental conditions, occupancy presence and actions, state changes in control devices; iii) The building state model is provided to multiple applications pertaining to facility management and control systems. Such applications use various tools (including building performance simulation, trend analysis and learning algorithms) in order to anticipate the state of building and indoor climate as a result of alternative control options.

IECON 2014 - 40th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, 2014

A Simulation-assisted Building Control (SaBC) system extends state-of-the-art building controls b... more A Simulation-assisted Building Control (SaBC) system extends state-of-the-art building controls by modeling a building's physical properties and using simulation to optimize its performance. In an SaBC, control strategies are first simulated, then the best alternative is selected and actuated by the building automation system. SaBCs enable highly efficient and grid-friendly buildings. Deploying these controls however is a complex process due to the uniqueness of each building along with an increasing complexity of building systems. Typically the deployment tasks are performed manually by highly specialized personnel, which results in a poorly documented and extremely scattered deployment process. This paper improves the workflow for the deployment of a Simulation-aided Building Control service suitable for supporting the operational phase of a building. Some tasks in the deployment process may benefit from machine support, especially data intensive, repetitive and error prone tasks. The proposed approach reduces the complexity of the setup procedure, decreases problems related to the uniqueness of the infrastructure and supports the documentation of the deployment process. As a consequence, the overall performance is improved, deployment costs are reduced with respect to both time and money, and the re-usability is increased.

Resumo-Uma introdução à Inteligência Artificial, mais especificamente sobre representação de conh... more Resumo-Uma introdução à Inteligência Artificial, mais especificamente sobre representação de conhecimento, através das abordagem declarativa e procedimental do conhecimento, com breve passagem por redes semânticas. Palavras chave-Inteligência Artificial, abordagem declarativa e procedimental, redes semânticas.

ABSTRACT The key to success in simulation-supported building management is the speed at which the... more ABSTRACT The key to success in simulation-supported building management is the speed at which the necessary models for building and systems can be created. Current approaches require in depth modeling of all components and are therefore time consuming. The approach presented in this paper shows that modeling effort can be drastically reduced by replacing the (manual) model creation process by an automated process that operates on a very limited set of information. Commonly the required information is found in an energy certificate. The applications of such model based control systems include better integration of renewable energy sources, optimization of operation costs as well as coordination of energy consumption between neighboring buildings.

Building controls can benefit from thermal modeling of building envelope and energy systems by in... more Building controls can benefit from thermal modeling of building envelope and energy systems by integrating the simulation into the controls. Depending on the complexity of the task different approaches between first-order approximations to white box physical modeling are feasible.

IECON 2013 - 39th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, 2013

ABSTRACT Peak heat loads influences negatively the performance of district heating (DH) systems. ... more ABSTRACT Peak heat loads influences negatively the performance of district heating (DH) systems. During peak loads fuel based heat boilers (e.g. gas boiler) are used resulting in expensive operational costs and large CO2 emissions. Within the project SmartHeatNet intelligent network operation and control strategies to reduce peak heat loads have been developed and implemented. Demand Side Measures (DSM), such as load shifting/shedding, were investigated and monitoring results from a test case in the DH network of Altenmarkt in Pongau (from the ESCO Salzburg AG) have been used to validate simulations and assess energy savings. To enable a cost effective monitoring process, it is important to allow a rapid deployment of the monitoring system. To fulfil that a field-ready kit consisting of hardware, software, monitoring concepts and accompanying evaluation concepts has been developed. This paper contributes with the definition of a workflow for the deployment of monitoring system. The proposed approach supports the documentation of the monitoring process and reduces the complexity of the deployment procedure. The process model has been validated in realistic test deployment. Focus was the indoor comfort for building users.

IECON 2013 - 39th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, 2013

The deployment of Simulation-aided Building Controls is a complex process due to the uniqueness o... more The deployment of Simulation-aided Building Controls is a complex process due to the uniqueness of each building along with an increasing complexity of building systems. Typically the deployment tasks are performed manually by highly specialized personnel which results in a poorly documented and extremely scattered deployment process. This paper introduces a workflow for the deployment of a Simulation-aided Building Control service suitable for supporting the operation phase of a building. Some tasks in the deployment process may benefit from machine support, especially data intensive, repetitive and error prone tasks. These may be fully or semi-automated. The proposed approach reduces the complexity of the setup procedure, decreases problems related to the uniqueness of the infrastructure and supports the documentation of the deployment process. Specially large facility management service providers may profit from this deployment process.

Building energy modeling is a complex and time consuming process. Automation may reduce the compl... more Building energy modeling is a complex and time consuming process. Automation may reduce the complexity and cost associated to the building modeling process; especially when highly specialized personnel are necessary. This paper presents a prototypical building model generation tool which automatically generates a complex building model for thermal simulation. The generated models allow forecasting of yearly or monthly thermal energy demand of a building, and are able to consider individual conditions for every floor with respect to different load profiles as well as geometry. These two features improve the quality of the energy consumption forecast significantly, especially by increasing the range of possible applications to multiusage buildings e.g. partially used as residential or office building. A proof of concept has been performed for typical building geometries to outline the following benefits: reduction of modeling effort, improvement of the energy performance evaluation and comparability between buildings with similar geometries.

This presents a research effort toward an integrated model-based approach to energy-efficient ope... more This presents a research effort toward an integrated model-based approach to energy-efficient operation of building systems. The ingredients of the corresponding concept are as follows: i) A comprehensive building state model underlines all operative entities and activities in the life-cycle of the building. This model includes information on building context (e.g. weather conditions), building topology, components, and systems, as well as building occupancy (user presence and actions); ii) The model is updated real-time via a sensory infrastructure including sensors for outdoor and indoor environmental conditions, occupancy presence and actions, state changes in control devices; iii) The building state model is provided to multiple applications pertaining to facility management and control systems. Such applications use various tools (including building performance simulation, trend analysis and learning algorithms) in order to anticipate the state of building and indoor climate as a result of alternative control options.

Building modeling and simulation are resource intensive tasks. The modeling effort for thermal ... more Building modeling and simulation are resource intensive tasks. The modeling effort for thermal building models can be reduced significantly by automatic model generation. In previous work, a tool for semi-automated building modeling has been developed.

In this work, an extension of the existing prototypical building model generation tool chain, which automatically creates building models suitable for thermal building simulation on different scales, was developed. Using these models it is possible to forecast annual or monthly energy demand of buildings. Leveraging different building information sources can be especially interesting for integration of collaborative mapping solutions into building thermal simulations.

This paper discusses the validation of an improved tool chain for automated generation of building models for thermal simulation. For that, first a model of an existing building was manually created. This serves the purpose of defining a baseline for state of the art building modeling and simulation. Second, the previously developed semi-automated tool was used to generate a model of the same building. Third, geometrical information from a collaborative mapping service was used to generate a model of the building automatically. Then, for each model a simulation was performed calculating the energy demand of the building. Finally, the simulation results were evaluated to assess the quality of the generated models and to identify the simplification validity boundaries.

The results show both the validity of the automated process, as well as possible levels of detail for the automatically created model, aiming at different applications. Further work will focus on coupling with official GIS data and additional semantic data to fully automate the process.

A Simulation-assisted Building Control (SaBC) system extends state-of-the-art building controls b... more A Simulation-assisted Building Control (SaBC) system extends state-of-the-art building controls by modeling a building's physical properties and using simulation to optimize its performance. In an SaBC, control strategies are first simulated, then the best alternative is selected and actuated by the building automation system. SaBCs enable highly efficient and grid-friendly buildings. Deploying these controls however is a complex process due to the uniqueness of each building along with an increasing complexity of building systems. Typically the deployment tasks are performed manually by highly specialized personnel, which results in a poorly documented and extremely scattered deployment process. This paper improves the workflow for the deployment of a Simulation-aided Building Control service suitable for supporting the operational phase of a building. Some tasks in the deployment process may benefit from machine support, especially data intensive, repetitive and error prone tasks. The proposed approach reduces the complexity of the setup procedure, decreases problems related to the uniqueness of the infrastructure and supports the documentation of the deployment process. As a consequence, the overall performance is improved, deployment costs are reduced with respect to both time and money, and the re-usability is increased.

Buildings, Jul 4, 2014

Building automation integrates the active components in a building and, thus, has to connect comp... more Building automation integrates the active components in a building and, thus, has to connect components of different industries. The goal is to provide reliable and efficient operation. This paper describes how simulation can support building automation and how the deployment process of simulation assisted building control systems can be structured. We look at the process as a whole and map it to a set of formally described workflows that can partly be automated. A workbench environment supports the process execution by means of improved planning, collaboration and deployment. This framework allows integration of existing tools, as well as manual tasks, and is, therefore, many more intricate than regular software deployment tools. The complex environment of building commissioning requires expertise in different domains, especially lighting, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, measurement and control technology, as well as energy efficiency; therefore, we present a framework for building commissioning and describe a deployment process that is capable of supporting the various phases of this approach.

Building Simulation Conference Proceedings

ABSTRACT Building modeling is a repetitive, costly and fallible task, which has potential to be e... more ABSTRACT Building modeling is a repetitive, costly and fallible task, which has potential to be enhanced through automation. This paper presents a case study of thermal and electrical performance simulation using a simplified building model. The model is based on commonly available building information, such as the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) and monitoring data. This case study assesses the feasibility and adoptability of simplified models for realistic performance simulation purposes. An existing office building located in Vienna has been selected as a testbed. Preliminary results demonstrate that there is high level of agreement between the model and the existing office building.

Procedia Computer Science, 2014

Buildings are one of the leading energy consumers in Europe. To improve energy efficiency in the ... more Buildings are one of the leading energy consumers in Europe. To improve energy efficiency in the built environment means to optimise the operation of building systems. Acoustics potentially provide an important information source to support the assessment of the operation of buildings. Recently, different approaches to the application of acoustic sensing technology have been studied. This paper presents an overview of three ongoing projects which look at how sounds can be utilized to reduce energy consumption in buildings. In the "Sounds for Energy Control of Buildings" (S4ECoB) project the primary goal is the establishment of more energy-efficient buildings through the optimization of existing BMS. The "Experimenting Acoustics in Real environment using Innovative Test-beds" (EAR-IT) project aims to develop acoustic mass flows maps which provide awareness of the flows of masses. The "Energy efficient & Cost competitive retrofitting solutions for Shopping buildings" (EcoShopping) project purpose is to increase the energy efficiency of a building and to optimize the investments necessary in building retrofitting. Diverse methodologies and technologies (wired, wireless and mobile) are tested in realistic conditions provided by each demonstrator.

Buildings, 2014

Building automation integrates the active components in a building and, thus, has to connect comp... more Building automation integrates the active components in a building and, thus, has to connect components of different industries. The goal is to provide reliable and efficient operation. This paper describes how simulation can support building automation and how the deployment process of simulation assisted building control systems can be structured. We look at the process as a whole and map it to a set of formally described workflows that can partly be automated. A workbench environment supports the process execution by means of improved planning, collaboration and deployment. This framework allows integration of existing tools, as well as manual tasks, and is, therefore, many more intricate than regular software deployment tools. The complex environment of building commissioning requires expertise in different domains, especially lighting, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, measurement and control technology, as well as energy efficiency; therefore, we present a framework for building commissioning and describe a deployment process that is capable of supporting the various phases of this approach.

This presents a research effort toward an integrated model-based approach to energy-efficient ope... more This presents a research effort toward an integrated model-based approach to energy-efficient operation of building systems. The ingredients of the corresponding concept are as follows: i) A comprehensive building state model underlines all operative entities and activities in the life-cycle of the building. This model includes information on building context (e.g. weather conditions), building topology, components, and systems, as well as building occupancy (user presence and actions); ii) The model is updated real-time via a sensory infrastructure including sensors for outdoor and indoor environmental conditions, occupancy presence and actions, state changes in control devices; iii) The building state model is provided to multiple applications pertaining to facility management and control systems. Such applications use various tools (including building performance simulation, trend analysis and learning algorithms) in order to anticipate the state of building and indoor climate as a result of alternative control options.

IECON 2014 - 40th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, 2014

A Simulation-assisted Building Control (SaBC) system extends state-of-the-art building controls b... more A Simulation-assisted Building Control (SaBC) system extends state-of-the-art building controls by modeling a building's physical properties and using simulation to optimize its performance. In an SaBC, control strategies are first simulated, then the best alternative is selected and actuated by the building automation system. SaBCs enable highly efficient and grid-friendly buildings. Deploying these controls however is a complex process due to the uniqueness of each building along with an increasing complexity of building systems. Typically the deployment tasks are performed manually by highly specialized personnel, which results in a poorly documented and extremely scattered deployment process. This paper improves the workflow for the deployment of a Simulation-aided Building Control service suitable for supporting the operational phase of a building. Some tasks in the deployment process may benefit from machine support, especially data intensive, repetitive and error prone tasks. The proposed approach reduces the complexity of the setup procedure, decreases problems related to the uniqueness of the infrastructure and supports the documentation of the deployment process. As a consequence, the overall performance is improved, deployment costs are reduced with respect to both time and money, and the re-usability is increased.

Resumo-Uma introdução à Inteligência Artificial, mais especificamente sobre representação de conh... more Resumo-Uma introdução à Inteligência Artificial, mais especificamente sobre representação de conhecimento, através das abordagem declarativa e procedimental do conhecimento, com breve passagem por redes semânticas. Palavras chave-Inteligência Artificial, abordagem declarativa e procedimental, redes semânticas.

ABSTRACT The key to success in simulation-supported building management is the speed at which the... more ABSTRACT The key to success in simulation-supported building management is the speed at which the necessary models for building and systems can be created. Current approaches require in depth modeling of all components and are therefore time consuming. The approach presented in this paper shows that modeling effort can be drastically reduced by replacing the (manual) model creation process by an automated process that operates on a very limited set of information. Commonly the required information is found in an energy certificate. The applications of such model based control systems include better integration of renewable energy sources, optimization of operation costs as well as coordination of energy consumption between neighboring buildings.

Building controls can benefit from thermal modeling of building envelope and energy systems by in... more Building controls can benefit from thermal modeling of building envelope and energy systems by integrating the simulation into the controls. Depending on the complexity of the task different approaches between first-order approximations to white box physical modeling are feasible.

IECON 2013 - 39th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, 2013

ABSTRACT Peak heat loads influences negatively the performance of district heating (DH) systems. ... more ABSTRACT Peak heat loads influences negatively the performance of district heating (DH) systems. During peak loads fuel based heat boilers (e.g. gas boiler) are used resulting in expensive operational costs and large CO2 emissions. Within the project SmartHeatNet intelligent network operation and control strategies to reduce peak heat loads have been developed and implemented. Demand Side Measures (DSM), such as load shifting/shedding, were investigated and monitoring results from a test case in the DH network of Altenmarkt in Pongau (from the ESCO Salzburg AG) have been used to validate simulations and assess energy savings. To enable a cost effective monitoring process, it is important to allow a rapid deployment of the monitoring system. To fulfil that a field-ready kit consisting of hardware, software, monitoring concepts and accompanying evaluation concepts has been developed. This paper contributes with the definition of a workflow for the deployment of monitoring system. The proposed approach supports the documentation of the monitoring process and reduces the complexity of the deployment procedure. The process model has been validated in realistic test deployment. Focus was the indoor comfort for building users.

IECON 2013 - 39th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, 2013

The deployment of Simulation-aided Building Controls is a complex process due to the uniqueness o... more The deployment of Simulation-aided Building Controls is a complex process due to the uniqueness of each building along with an increasing complexity of building systems. Typically the deployment tasks are performed manually by highly specialized personnel which results in a poorly documented and extremely scattered deployment process. This paper introduces a workflow for the deployment of a Simulation-aided Building Control service suitable for supporting the operation phase of a building. Some tasks in the deployment process may benefit from machine support, especially data intensive, repetitive and error prone tasks. These may be fully or semi-automated. The proposed approach reduces the complexity of the setup procedure, decreases problems related to the uniqueness of the infrastructure and supports the documentation of the deployment process. Specially large facility management service providers may profit from this deployment process.

Building energy modeling is a complex and time consuming process. Automation may reduce the compl... more Building energy modeling is a complex and time consuming process. Automation may reduce the complexity and cost associated to the building modeling process; especially when highly specialized personnel are necessary. This paper presents a prototypical building model generation tool which automatically generates a complex building model for thermal simulation. The generated models allow forecasting of yearly or monthly thermal energy demand of a building, and are able to consider individual conditions for every floor with respect to different load profiles as well as geometry. These two features improve the quality of the energy consumption forecast significantly, especially by increasing the range of possible applications to multiusage buildings e.g. partially used as residential or office building. A proof of concept has been performed for typical building geometries to outline the following benefits: reduction of modeling effort, improvement of the energy performance evaluation and comparability between buildings with similar geometries.

This presents a research effort toward an integrated model-based approach to energy-efficient ope... more This presents a research effort toward an integrated model-based approach to energy-efficient operation of building systems. The ingredients of the corresponding concept are as follows: i) A comprehensive building state model underlines all operative entities and activities in the life-cycle of the building. This model includes information on building context (e.g. weather conditions), building topology, components, and systems, as well as building occupancy (user presence and actions); ii) The model is updated real-time via a sensory infrastructure including sensors for outdoor and indoor environmental conditions, occupancy presence and actions, state changes in control devices; iii) The building state model is provided to multiple applications pertaining to facility management and control systems. Such applications use various tools (including building performance simulation, trend analysis and learning algorithms) in order to anticipate the state of building and indoor climate as a result of alternative control options.

Building modeling and simulation are resource intensive tasks. The modeling effort for thermal ... more Building modeling and simulation are resource intensive tasks. The modeling effort for thermal building models can be reduced significantly by automatic model generation. In previous work, a tool for semi-automated building modeling has been developed.

In this work, an extension of the existing prototypical building model generation tool chain, which automatically creates building models suitable for thermal building simulation on different scales, was developed. Using these models it is possible to forecast annual or monthly energy demand of buildings. Leveraging different building information sources can be especially interesting for integration of collaborative mapping solutions into building thermal simulations.

This paper discusses the validation of an improved tool chain for automated generation of building models for thermal simulation. For that, first a model of an existing building was manually created. This serves the purpose of defining a baseline for state of the art building modeling and simulation. Second, the previously developed semi-automated tool was used to generate a model of the same building. Third, geometrical information from a collaborative mapping service was used to generate a model of the building automatically. Then, for each model a simulation was performed calculating the energy demand of the building. Finally, the simulation results were evaluated to assess the quality of the generated models and to identify the simplification validity boundaries.

The results show both the validity of the automated process, as well as possible levels of detail for the automatically created model, aiming at different applications. Further work will focus on coupling with official GIS data and additional semantic data to fully automate the process.

A Simulation-assisted Building Control (SaBC) system extends state-of-the-art building controls b... more A Simulation-assisted Building Control (SaBC) system extends state-of-the-art building controls by modeling a building's physical properties and using simulation to optimize its performance. In an SaBC, control strategies are first simulated, then the best alternative is selected and actuated by the building automation system. SaBCs enable highly efficient and grid-friendly buildings. Deploying these controls however is a complex process due to the uniqueness of each building along with an increasing complexity of building systems. Typically the deployment tasks are performed manually by highly specialized personnel, which results in a poorly documented and extremely scattered deployment process. This paper improves the workflow for the deployment of a Simulation-aided Building Control service suitable for supporting the operational phase of a building. Some tasks in the deployment process may benefit from machine support, especially data intensive, repetitive and error prone tasks. The proposed approach reduces the complexity of the setup procedure, decreases problems related to the uniqueness of the infrastructure and supports the documentation of the deployment process. As a consequence, the overall performance is improved, deployment costs are reduced with respect to both time and money, and the re-usability is increased.