Interactive Buildings

Dear Colleagues,

Buildings have, heretofore, been considered passive consumers of electricity and fuels. However, advances in automated demand response, thermal storage and battery energy storage, on-site renewable energy or cogeneration, and sophisticated controls and forecasting will allow the buildings of the future to be interactive with the serving utility and surrounding communities in ways that minimize environmental impact and financial cost, maximize comfort, and enhance the resilience and the mission of the facility.

This Special Issue focuses on advances in interactive buildings; buildings that can respond to changes in their environment and participate in demand management and distributed generation that integrate into a larger energy, water and transportation systems and support the surrounding community.

The scope of this special edition encompasses advancements in materials and components; electrical and mechanical systems; plumbing systems; building models and design tools; energy storage; distributed generation; and energy management and control systems.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to further cooperation and progress in all aspects of interactive buildings.

The role of buildings in the overall energy context is growing and changing rapidly. Buildings used to be passive consumers of energy, with efficiency being the primary approach to cost savings, sustainability, and resilience. New market developments (low-cost photovoltaics, batteries) now allow buildings to produce as well as consume energy and active control systems can respond to utility demand requirements. Forecasting of buildings loads, forecasting of distributed generation, and demand response systems, combined with the dispatch of battery storage will require a high level of sensor capability and the optimization of control logic for the economic dispatch of resources and scheduling of loads. Rapidly evolving information systems allow building occupants (people) to increase their awareness and participate in decision-making. A high level of automation is also be required, as is a large increase in telecommunications bandwidth to accommodate building system information exchange. Considering the vast and rapidly growing area of buildings, we will publish research ranging from building materials and components level, to whole building analysis, design and evaluation, and on integration in a larger utility system. This Special Issue will explore current research and the frontier of discovery in these various areas of the buildings sector. An introduction or conclusion of the edition will highlight related challenges and research opportunities from these and other areas that require future research. We will try to get a diversity of authors from universities, industrial companies, and research laboratories.

Dr. Andy Walker
Dr. Sheila Hayter
Dr. Roderick Jackson
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Interactive buildings
• Climate-responsive buildings
• Distributed generation
• Energy Storage
• Forecasting
• Controls
• Materials
• Building components
• Buildings mechanical and electrical systems
• Building modeling & design tools