Search results for "BUILDINGS"
showing 10 items of 199 documents
Towards Positive Energy Districts: Energy Renovation of a Mediterranean District and Activation of Energy Flexibility
2023
The paper presents the analysis of energy retrofitting, integration of renewable energy and activation of energy flexibility in a cluster of buildings in the surroundings of a port on the Mediterranean Sea in Southern Italy, with the aim of checking the potential for it to achieve the status of positive energy district (PED). The objective of this study is to improve the contemporaneity between local energy generation and energy demand and reduce CO2eq emissions by considering signals that reflect the environmental variability of the electricity grid, through flexibility solutions applied to the HVAC system. The proposed scenarios are based on the dynamic simulation of the district and anal…
An Approach to Enhance Chatbot Semantic Power and Maintainability: Experiences within the FRASI Project
2012
The paper illustrates the implementation and semantic enhancement of a domain-oriented Question-Answering system based on a pattern-matching chat bot technology, developed within an industrial project, named FRASI. The main difficulty in building a KB for a chat bot is to handwrite all possible question-answer pairs that constitute the KB. The proposed approach simplifies the chat bot realization thanks to two solutions. The first one uses an ontology, which is exploited in a twofold manner: to construct dynamic answers as a result of an inference process about the domain, and to automatically populate, off-line, the chat bot KB with sentences that can be derived from the ontology, describi…
Earth in ancient Sicilian architecture / La terra cruda nelle costruzioni della Sicilia antica
2011
Il patrimonio archeologico siciliano, notoriamente fra i più ricchi del territorio nazionale, fornisce importanti testimonianze degli impieghi remoti della terra cruda, mentre le architetture più recenti custodiscono forme di impiego poco appariscenti e meno note a confronto con altre Regioni italiane. La Sicilia offre un campo di osservazione privilegiato per gli impieghi antichi della terra cruda a fini costruttivi innanzitutto perché custodisce numerosi reperti, risalenti ad epoche che vanno dalla preistoria all’età romana e che sono riferibili a tipologie costruttive varie. La principale caratteristica che si può riscontrare, sia nelle più remote origini che nelle successive evoluzioni,…
Old or new occupants of energy rehabilitated buildings. Two different approaches for hierarchizing group of buildings
2017
Abstract Public Administrations are frequently entitled to intervene in building stocks with energy rehabilitation actions. Unfortunately, the monetary budget at their disposal is generally limited and, consequently, a prioritization criterion is needed to optimize its allocation. The classification of the building energy performance is increasingly used by Public Administrations for this purpose. Here we argue that a proper prioritization criterion should depend upon the potential subjects to which the rehabilitated buildings are given back. If the energy rehabilitation is conducted on buildings that will be assigned to new dwellers, it would be preferable to use the energy class – which i…
An ex post criticism, based on stakeholders’ preferences, of a residential sector’s energy master plan: the case study of the Sicilian region
2016
Energy master plans are important tools for an effective and sustainable land governance. On the other hand, the stakeholder role in setting priorities for planning energy interventions is dramatically increasing, also in the light of recently issued European directives. The priorities of energy-saving measures of the Sicilian energy and environmental master plan were originally established with the application of typical economic indicators (the cost of saved energy and the cost of avoided pollutant emissions). During the prioritization process, there was a minor contribution from stakeholders who were not directly involved in the priority-setting process but were only asked to express the…
Sustainable and cost-efficient energy supply and utilisation through innovative concepts and technologies at regional, urban and single-user scales
2019
Abstract The environmental impact of the energy sector and the security and economics of energy supply and utilisation have been raising increasing concerns, stimulating the search for innovative solutions for a sustainable use of resources. This article provides an overview of published research in this area, with a focus on papers contributed in special issues of leading journals dedicated to the series of Conferences on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems (SDEWES), including the articles in the current special issue. Based on this review, research trends are identified and achievements supporting the energy transition are highlighted. The studies that focused…
Municipal Building Regulations for Energy Efficiency in Southern Italy
2014
The building sector is still one of the most energy consuming sectors in Italy, like developed countries in Europe. At European level, the main policy driver related to the energy use in buildings is the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD, 2002/91/EC) and its recast. Through the EPBD in- troduction, requirements for certification, inspections, training or renovation are now imposed in Member States. In order to fulfill the expected changes, local regulations are a key factor aiming at sustainable territorial planning. It is thus required support the issue of local rules at municipal level in order to guide local administrators and technicians and to limit discretional power of …
Decoupling Office Energy Efficiency From Employees' Well-Being and Performance: A Systematic Review
2019
Energy efficiency (i.e., the ratio of output of performance to input of energy) in office buildings can reduce energy costs and CO2 emissions, but there are barriers to widespread adoption of energy efficient solutions in offices because they are often perceived as a potential threat to perceived comfort, well-being, and performance of office users. However, the links between offices' energy efficiency and users' performance and well-being through their moderators are neither necessary nor empirically confirmed. The purpose of this study is to carry out a systematic review to identify the existing empirical evidence regarding the relationships between energy-efficient solutions in sustainab…
Historical buildings: luminescence dating of fine grains from bricks and mortar
2010
In the framework of a research program aimed to define the chronology of the structures of the architectonic complex of San Francesco alla Collina (Paternò, Italy), two luminescence dating techniques were applied: Thermoluminescence (TL) on terracotta bricks and Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) on mortars. Dating a historic building through the age of its bricks can be sometimes complex, for the possible gap between the age of the bricks themselves and that of the structure. Considering that the laying of mortar is contemporary to the construction, the principal objective of the work here presented is the verification of the possibility of solving chronological uncertainties of speci…
Unintended Effects of Energy Efficiency Policy: Lessons Learned in the Residential Sector
2021
The European Union has set an ambitious goal to tackle climate change, and energy efficiency in the residential sector is among the measures required to close the gap between targeted and actual greenhouse gas emissions. While different policy tools have been applied, the diffusion rate of these measures remains low. A system dynamics simulation model of the residential sector was developed to assess the advantages and drawbacks of energy efficiency policy in the multi-family building sector based on experience accumulated over the last twelve years in Latvia. The model was validated in expert group model building sessions and with historical trends. Simulating the model, a hypothesis was t…