Urban development

Objectives and significance

The overarching goal of this project is to develop advanced soft controls that allow buildings to optimally plan and manage their energy loads, and use the energy savings to engage in transactive energy trade within a community of buildings.

Thermal Response Modeling of Building Zones
Integrated Building Zone Controls In our framework
Community Level Controls In a smart and integrated community
Thermal Response Modeling of Building Zones

Methodology and project structure

The focus of the project will be on the development of methodologies that support connected buildings and
communities, and the analysis of their impacts on urban development and social trends. The proposed
research will encompass three major tasks and a number of subtasks as described next.

Social impacts, barriers and challenges in Qatar

Analysis that encompasses human factors, social dimensions, energy consumption, CO 2 and other environmental impacts, and occupancy patterns and requirements.

Thermal Response Modeling of Building Zones

The team already has a general formulation of a thermal response model that dynamically and in near real time takes into account each zone’s orientation, exposure to sun and wind.

Community Level Controls

In a smart and integrated community, buildings will share assets and resources, and will cooperate to reduce their loads and the load of the whole community.

Integrated Building Zone Controls

In our framework, building energy load includes heating, cooling and mobility. Our objective is to develop an integrated hierarchical control.

Outputs and outcomes

The intellectual merits of this research are novel algorithms for building thermal response mapping,
integrated building control (which includes advanced building control and load balancing between HVAC and
mobility loads), and smart community control. The original intellectual contributions are itemized as follows.

Course Development 90%

Dissemination of Knowledge 80%

Enhancing Students Participation 70%