A semantic service-oriented platform for energy efficient buildings

The construction industry is under pressure to increase the sustainability of its practices to meet UK commitments for reducing energy consumption and alleviating climate change. The research uses a mixed-method approach drawn from recent studies to explore the readiness, maturity and level of engagement of construction stakeholders in adopting the UK government sustainability agenda. Limited positive energy practices and sustainability regulatory awareness, combined with information provision deficiencies, form some of the key barriers to sustainable construction faced by industry. A service-oriented platform that provides integrated access to sustainability resources in the form of interactive, dynamic and user-oriented services that fully exploit latest advances in computing technologies is proposed to address these barriers. In this paper, we specifically elaborate on how a service-oriented system can be efficiently used for performing (near) real-time energy optimisation in buildings, greatly contributing to engaging construction stakeholders with sustainability practices. The solution disseminates energy efficient practices and provides support for building managers in implementing energy efficient optimisation plans. The solution is tested and validated through a number of energy efficiency scenarios developed as part of the EU FP7 SportE2 project.