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The paper presents some results of a project carried out within the 7 th European Research Framework Program, aimed at developing an event-driven user-centric middleware for monitoring and managing energy consumption in public buildings. One of the strengths of the designed system is to allow an easy integration of heterogeneous technologies and their hardware independent interoperability. This is a feature of great importance to existing buildings, where standing controls could be integrated with new technologies to enhance a greater building energy efficiency. The functionality of the system has been tested in some representative spaces of existing public buildings. Control strategies and hardware infrastructures have been defined to manage the operation of HVAC and lighting plants. The paper focuses on the results obtained by applying the designed system and control strategies to the electric lighting plants of different office spaces.

In this paper, we report a methodology, developed in the context of Smart Energy Efficient Middleware for Public Spaces European Project, aimed at exploiting ICT monitoring and control services to reduce energy usage and CO2 footprint in existing buildings. The approach does not require significant construction work as it is based on commercial-off-the-shelf devices and, where present, it exploits and integrates existing building management systems with new sensors and actuator networks. To make this possible, the proposed approach leverages upon the following main contributions: (a) to develop an integrated building automation and control system, (b) to implement a middleware for the energy-efficient buildings domain, (c) to provide a multi-dimensional building information modelling-based visualisation, and (d) to raise people's awareness about energy efficiency. The research approach adopted in the project started with the selection, as case studies, of representative test and reference rooms in modern and historical buildings chosen for having different requirements and constraints in term of sensing and control technologies. Then, according to the features of the selected rooms, the strategies to reduce the energy consumptions were defined, taking into account the potential savings related to lighting, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems and other device loads (PC, printers, etc.). The strategies include both the control of building services and devices and the monitoring of environmental conditions and energy consumption. In the paper, the energy savings estimated through simulation, for both HVAC and lighting, are presented to highlight the potential of the designed system. After the implementation of the system in the demonstrator, results will be compared with the monitored data

The paper presents some results of a project carried out within the 7 th European Research Framework Program, aimed at developing an event-driven user-centric middleware for monitoring and managing energy consumption in public buildings. One of the strengths of the designed system is to allow an easy integration of heterogeneous technologies and their hardware independent interoperability. This is a feature of great importance to existing buildings, where standing controls could be integrated with new technologies to enhance a greater building energy efficiency. The functionality of the system has been tested in some representative spaces of existing public buildings. Control strategies and hardware infrastructures have been defined to manage the operation of HVAC and lighting plants. The paper focuses on the results obtained by applying the designed system and control strategies to the electric lighting plants of different office spaces.