Nuno M.M. Ramos – författare

This book presents the state of the art of two areas: intelligent residential buildings and the behaviour of their occupants. These areas need to be treated together in order to develop new concepts for buildings, which are more efficient, more comfortable and more healthy.

 The concept of intelligent building is associated with the creation of a management system that takes into account the requirements of the occupants in terms of thermal comfort and their daily activities, maintaining good indoor air quality and minimizing energy consumption. In commercial or office buildings, these systems are already at an intermediate stage of implementation. However, in the residential sector they have yet to be significantly implemented. In mild climates, where the interactions of the occupants with the building mechanisms are the primary way to ensure adequate comfort and ventilation, the importance of occupant behaviour studies and their incorporation in the algorithmsof the intelligent buildings becomes even more crucial.

This book offers new concepts on how to bring these aspects together.

The main benefit of the book is that it explores available methodologies for both conducting in-situ measurements and adequately exploring the results, based on a case study that illustrates the benefits and difficulties of concurrent methodologies.

The case study corresponds to a set of 25 social housing dwellings where an extensive in situ measurement campaign was conducted. The dwellings are located in the same quarter of a city. Measurements included indoor temperature and relative humidity, with continuous log in different rooms of each dwelling, blower-door tests and complete outdoor conditions provided by a nearby weather station.

The book includes a variety of scientific and engineering disciplines, such as building physics, probability and statistics and civil engineering. It presents a synthesis of the current state of knowledge for benefit of professional engineers and scientists.