Considering that the largest part of end-use energy consumption worldwide is associated with the buildings sector, there is an inherent need for the conceptualization, specification, implementation, ...and instantiation of novel solutions in smart buildings, able to achieve significant reductions in energy consumption through the adoption of energy efficient techniques and the active engagement of the occupants. Towards the design of such solutions, the identification of the main energy consuming factors, trends, and patterns, along with the appropriate modeling and understanding of the occupants' behavior and the potential for the adoption of environmentally-friendly lifestyle changes have to be realized. In the current article, an innovative energy-aware information technology (IT) ecosystem is presented, aiming to support the design and development of novel personalized energy management and awareness services that can lead to occupants' behavioral change towards actions that can have a positive impact on energy efficiency. Novel information and communication technologies (ICT) are exploited towards this direction, related mainly to the evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT), data modeling, management and fusion, big data analytics, and personalized recommendation mechanisms. The combination of such technologies has resulted in an open and extensible architectural approach able to exploit in a homogeneous, efficient and scalable way the vast amount of energy, environmental, and behavioral data collected in energy efficiency campaigns and lead to the design of energy management and awareness services targeted to the occupants' lifestyles. The overall layered architectural approach is detailed, including design and instantiation aspects based on the selection of set of available technologies and tools. Initial results from the usage of the proposed energy aware IT ecosystem in a pilot site at the University of Murcia are presented along with a set of identified open issues for future research.
The design of solutions that are able to exploit the available data collected in smart cities environments can lead to insights that can guide the implementation of approaches that have the potential ...to significantly improve the quality of life within a city. Such solutions include tools for the production of advanced analytics considering data fusion challenges. The preparation of qualitative input data sets, collected in many cases through heterogeneous sources and represented in various formats, constitute a very important step toward a meaningful analysis. Such input data sets, combined with approaches that reduce the data processing burden and support the easy and flexible-in terms of configuration-replication of an analysis, can lead to the next generation analytics tools. In this paper, a novel approach toward the production and consumption of linked data analytics in urban environments is presented. The approach is based on the exploitation of linked data principles, enhancing the ability of managing and processing of data, in ways not available before. In addition to the description of the overall technical approach, the application of the proposed solution into a real-life scenario for examining the health impact of outdoor air pollution in urban areas within an international, national, and regional perspective is detailed. A set of interesting results are produced along with their interpretation toward the provision of suggestions for policy making purposes.
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