Elaboration of a service-orientated software architecture supporting the improvement of energy performance in buildings

Abstract

This thesis describes the development of a service-oriented software architecture with
the aim of improving the energy performance of buildings. Since the global climate
crisis is intensifying, reducing energy consumption and the associated carbon footprint
becomes more important than ever before. Buildings are responsible for a substantial
part of global energy use and carbon dioxide emissions, especially within the European
Union, where they contribute about 35% of all emissions. The proposed architecture,
called the AWARIS (Awareness and Information System), is designed to raise awareness
amongst building residents and enable them to make informed decisions reducing energy usage. The research methodology includes a comprehensive review of related work
and proposes a novel approach based on the European Distributed Data Infrastructure
for Energy (EDDIE) and in line with the European building strategy and standard.
The architecture is developed through a requirement engineering process that includes
the definition of business use cases, high-level architectural components, and detailed
primary use cases. The system includes a user-friendly interface for effective monitoring
of energy consumption. The approach monitors and analyzes operational consumption
metrics that are similar to the performance indicators required in energy performance
certificates and takes into account location-specific, seasonal CO2 factors, and weather
conditions. The implementation of the AWARIS architecture is divided into three subsystems: the edge service (AWARIS ES), the web service (AWARIS WS) and the user
interface (AWARIS UI). The edge service is operated as part of the internal infrastructure, using edge devices for data collection and processing, while the web service and
user interface enable cloud-based data management and user interaction. The architecture is designed to be flexible and modular with room for future expansion, such as
interacting with a harmonized European energy performance certificate database part
of the European Spatial Data Infrastructure (ESDI). This thesis contributes to the field
of energy informatics by providing a scalable and adaptable solution to support the improvement of the energy efficiency of buildings, which has the potential to contribute to
the goals of climate initiatives by significantly reducing energy consumption and carbon
emissions.

Date of Award	2024
Original language	English (American)
Supervisor	Christoph Schaffer (Supervisor)