Andrea Costa

University of Galway | NUI Galway · Department of Civil Engineering

Nowadays many cities around the world are affected by climate change consequences that require them to adopt resilient risk mitigation solutions. ‘Nature-based solutions (NBS)’ can be an effective measure to help resolve climate adaptation and develop resilient and livable cities. However, various types of barriers limit the adoption and implementa...

The European building industry is facing a strong increase of renovation processes, which are still non-cost-effective, involve unproperly coordinated stakeholders, are disturbing for the occupants, and imply important inefficiencies of the overall renovation process. In this context, digitalization and Building Information Modeling (BIM), as an en...

Using the semantic information available in building information models (BIM) during the whole project lifecycle enables faster, safer, and efficient construction, cost-effective operation and maintenance, and cost-effective eventual decommissioning. This paper aims to provide a systematic review of how sustainability rating systems can exploit the...

Digital transformation in the built environment is a fact that will shape the industry, increasing its efficiency and improving its quality. However, there are many challenges still facing the industry to complete this transformation. Under this theme, during the Sustainable Places 2020 virtual conference on 28th October 2020, nine EU-funded resear...

Due to the fast digital transition of the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, Owner Operator (AECOO) industry, a large amount of information is regularly exchanged between the involved participants. Handling and processing the exchanged data remain a major challenge for many related activities, such as Building Energy Performance Simulation (B...

This paper presents the result of the work performed to develop a virtual test-bed for development and testing of Model Predictive Controllers within the district cooling networks field. These controllers are used for its application in improving the cooling energy efficiency in the network’s building. The article explains the use of the different...

Measurement campaigns have shown major discrepancies in buildings energy performance between planned energy demand and real energy consumption, while nowadays most of the newly constructed offices buildings are equipped with BMS systems, integrating a more or less extended measurement layer providing large amounts of data. The HIT2GAP project has d...

The workshop “Reducing energy consumption and carbon footprint by smart and sustainable use” was organized on 29 June 2017 in the context of the International conference Sustainable Places 2017 with the aim to discuss the latest progress and innovations resulting from 7 projects developing solutions to reduce energy consumption and carbon footprint...

Heating and cooling consume half of the EU’s energy and much of it is wasted. The lion’s share of heating and cooling is still generated from fossil fuels, mainly natural gas, while only 18% is generated from renewable energy. In order to fulfil the EU’s climate and energy goals, the heating and cooling sector must therefore sharply reduce its ener...

INNOQUA is a Horizon 2020 EU-funded project involving 20 partners that seeks to demonstrate in real conditions a modular system for water treatment based on the purifying capacity of biological microorganisms (earthworms, zooplankton and microalgae). The configuration of the system will be adjusted according to the targeted markets in order to answ...

Built to Specifications (B2S) is a Horizon 2020 EU-funded project involving 20 European partners that seeks to reduce the gap between a building designed and as-built energy performance. To do this, the project will put a new set of breakthrough technological advances for self-inspection checks and quality assurance measures into the hands of const...

The paper will present an overview of one of the Fault Detection and Diagnosis (FDD) systems developed within the Waternomics project. The FDD system has been developed basing on the hydraulic modeling of the water network, the real time values of flow and pressure obtained from installation of innovative ICT and commercial smart meters and the app...

Cooling demand in buildings is globally increasing, therefore developing more efficient cooling systems is important for the sustainability of European cities. Directive 2012/27/EU of the European Parliament and of the council on energy efficiency states: “Member States should carry out a comprehensive assessment of the potential for high-efficienc...

The paper presents the Fault Detection and Diagnosis (FDD) approach for water networks developed within the Waternomics project. In particular, the FDD system developed is based on the hydraulic modeling of the water network (done using the EPANET software) that is used to the train a Anomaly Detection Withfast Incremental ClustEring (ADWICE) algor...

The need for an efficient Water Management System (WMS) is strongly felt by water utilities, municipalities and by medium to large scale corporates that have to face every day with problems dealing with water usage and supply. Leveraging a sensor data network, an automated system to implement fault detection in a water network at an early stage can...

IEA Annex 60 is developing and demonstrating new generation computational tools for building and community energy systems based on the non-proprietary Modelica modeling language and Functional Mockup Interface (FMI) standards. The anticipated outcomes are open-source, freely available, documented, validated and verified computational tools that all...

The paper discusses the main concerns of an European project, within "H2020-EU.3.5.4. - Enabling the transition towards a green economy and society through eco-innovation". As described on the EC website "INNOQUA will accelerate the path to market of a modular set of innovative, patent protected, award winning and scalable fully ecological sanitati...

The IEA EBC Annex 60 is developing and demonstrating new generation computational tools for building and community energy systems based on the non-proprietary Modelica modelling language and Functional Mock-up Interface standards. The anticipated outcomes are open-source, freely available, documented, validated and verified computational tools that...

Waternomics is an EU-funded research project that addresses key challenges regarding the efficient management of, and decision support tools within, the water supply sector. A novel aspect of the Waternomics project is to apply Fault Detection and Diagnostics (FDD) to building water networks in order to identify faults (leaks, malfunctioning equipm...

WATERNOMICS is a three years EU funded research project and responded to the call FP7-ICT-2013- 11. The partners variously specialize in ICT & Automation systems development, water sensors development, business model development, water system design, open source based platform, energy and sustainable management, exploitation, dissemination and comm...

Built to Specifications (Built2Spec), a new Horizon 2020 EU-funded project in the Energy Efficiency in Buildings domain, seeks to eliminate the gap between a building's designed and as-built performance. Among others, the project focuses on developing instruments and procedures to quickly check and characterize Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) conditions d...

WATERNOMICS focuses on the development of ICT as an enabling technology to manage water as a resource, increase end-user conservation awareness and affect behavioral changes. Unique aspects of WATERNOMICS include personalized feedback about end-user water consumption, the development of systematic and standards-based water resource management syste...

This research work deals with an Environmental Research Institute (ERI) building where an underfloor heating system and natural ventilation are the main systems used to maintain comfort condition throughout 80% of the building areas. Firstly, this work involved developing a 3D model relating to building architecture, occupancy & HVAC operation. Sec...

The management of water consumption is hindered by low general awareness and absence of precise historical and contextual information. Effective and efficiency management of water resources requires a holistic approach considering all the stages of water usage. A decision support tool for water management services requires access to a number of dif...

The ProAir Indoor Climate Control System (PAICCS) system is a heat recovery ventilation sys-tem that combines a patented reverse flow enthalpy recuperator with an air-to-air heat pump such that the overall efficiency is maximized. In this sense, maxi-mum energy is recovered at all times and the indoor air can be heated/cooled and humidi-fied/dehumi...

In this paper we describe the motivations, development and results of EDVE: the Energy Diagnosis Visualization Environment that helps to quickly visualize faults and anomalies in energy consumption at the whole building level. EDVE relies in visual comparisons against predicted benchmarks using calibrated building models plus a set of predefined pe...

This paper describes the use of building performance simulation into a wider implementation of an energy management system (EnMS) based on ISO 50001 requirements. The CASCADE project, funded by the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) call "ICT for Energy Efficient Buildings" aims to test different modelling strategies supporting Faul...

This paper presents the key factors methodology that supports energy managers in determining the optimal building operation strategy in relation to both energy consumption and thermal comfort. The methodology is supported by the utilization of calibrated building energy simulation models that match measured data gathered by an extensive measurement...

This paper demonstrates a systematic, evidence-based methodology for calibrating whole building energy models. The methodology uses version control software to store a complete history of the calibration process, including the evidence on which decisions were made. This paper details the calibration of a whole building energy model to hourly energy...

Performance based design, construction, commissioning and operation of buildings requires virtual testing and validation of project alternatives. In the case of environmental and energy management of buildings, whole Building Energy Simulation (BES) models can be used to determine indoor environmental conditions, building energy consumption, system...

Buildings consume 40% of global primary energy and contribute to in excess of 30% CO2 emissions. The potential to save energy by systematic building management is known to be significant and estimates range from 5% to 30%. Many research projects have developed IT tools and methodologies to address the complex problem of building energy performance...

This paper presents a novel methodology that aims at optimising energy flows and HVAC control in Sport and Recreation Buildings. The proposed methodology integrates the use of building simulation and artificial neural networks to support better operation of Sport facilities, which are unique in terms of variable energy demand profiles and complex e...

This paper discusses the fragmented nature of the management of building information throughout the building lifecycle, detailing a lack of coherent systematic methods and tools for the specification, analysis and comparison of predicted building performance with actual building performance. This information deficit restricts the achievement of opt...

Buildings consume 40% of Ireland's total annual energy translating to €3.5 billion (2004). The EPBD directive (effective January 2003) places an onus on all member states to rate the energy performance of all buildings in excess of 50 m2. Energy and environmental performance management systems for buildings generally and consist of an ad-hoc integr...

This paper outlines a novel methodology for calibrating building energy simulation (BES) models through the use of an evidence-based approach and detailed simulation modelling. The proposed calibration methodology is applied to a 30,000m 2 office building. The case study illustrates the results of calibrating the model to Energy Monitoring System (...

This paper presents the Key Factors methodology that supports energy managers in determining the optimal building operation strategy in relation to both energy consumption and thermal comfort. The methodology is supported by the utilisation of calibrated building energy simulation models that match measured data gathered by an extensive measurement...

Existing Building/Energy Management Systems (BMS/EMS) fail to convey holistic performance to the building manager. A 20% reduction in energy consumption can be achieved by efficiently operated buildings compared with current practice. However, in the majority of buildings, occupant comfort and energy consumption analysis is primarily restricted by...