Energy-Efficient Buildings as Complex Socio-technical Systems: Approaches and Challenges

On the fast actual demographic trend and increasing comfort level, consumers are becoming more and more demanding in the areas of heating, cooling, ventilation, air conditioning, and lighting. Reducing energy consumption is necessary in all key sectors, such as buildings and construction, cities, and urban areas. Recent studies showed that using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) will have a significant impact on improving energy efficiency and occupant comfort in complex real buildings. The main aim is to develop energy efficient control approaches and solutions to improve energy efficiency and occupant comfort by using innovative ICT techniques. These solutions could integrate techniques from different domains mainly intelligent control approaches using context-awareness and predictive analytics with a strong focus on occupant expectation, profile, and behavior. In this chapter, we put more emphasis on the influence of occupants’ activities, complex building’s systems on energy saving by reviewing existing approaches and tools for energy efficiency in complex real buildings.