From historical buildings to smart buildings via middleware and interoperability

The vast majority of historical buildings are very energy inefficient; as energy costs continue to rise, they need smarter energy management strategies, since traditional ways of improving energy efficiency through structural retrofits are very expensive and not always possible in historical buildings. The paper shows the development of a new smart strategy to improve the energy efficiency of historical buildings without significant construction work. The strategy is based on Information Technologies and Wireless Sensor Networks, Building Information Modelling and interoperable energy simulation tools and also requires and stimulates an improvement of human awareness and competence. The paper reports the results of the first phase of the Smart Energy Efficient Middleware for Public Spaces project that addresses reduction in energy usage and the CO2 footprint of existing public buildings and spaces, by an intelligent ICT-based service which monitors and manages the energy consumption. Preliminary results have led to the development of a middleware tool which enables the interoperability of software and Wireless Sensor Networks to monitor energy consumption, controlling environmental parameters such as luminance and temperature to take advantage of natural resources (i.e. daylight and solar energy) in order to ensure the best possible comfort conditions with the most efficient use of energy. The research project is a demonstrator for a theoretical model that can be applied to wide typologies of historical buildings in Europe, especially public buildings.