PRELUDE T9.5 – Educational Event Series

The PRELUDE project – Prescient building Operation utilising Real-Time data for Energy Dynamic Optimization – aims at supporting advanced innovative, smart and low-cost solutions for intelligent buildings and proactive optimisation services. Among the others, the project pursues the minimisation of energy uses, the maximisation of self-consumption and renewable sources balance, and the improvement of comfort conditions supporting the maximisation of free-running building potentials.

A significant educational and citizen-science action is conducted among project works, including organising workshops, conferences, and lectures defining the PRELUDE T9.5 – Educational Event Series.

The PRELUDE T9.5 – Educational Event Series will continue till the end of the PRELUDE project. The next events are going to focus on free-running buildings, low-energy building design, retrofitting and operational issues, bioclimatic design and space comfort, and climate change in the built environment.

14th of June 2024 – NEXT EVENT

A seventh conference meeting is under organisation for the 14th of June 2024 | 11:00-13:00 (CET). The event will be held in dual modeonline or at the Politecnico di Torino, Room 5V.

The title of the lecture is “Building resilience to climate changes and urban climate issues”.

The event discusses some of the novelties in climate modelling and introduces the new approaches for building resilience tested during the PRELUDE project. Contents focus on the one side on introducing the climate change dimension with more recent innovations in future climate models from devoted projects and, on the other side, the discussion and presentation of PRELUDE’s innovations regarding urban climate analyses and climate resilience studies, including a new dynamic simulation platform mixing building simulations and climate analyses at both territorial and single site scales.

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24th of May 2024

The sixth conference meeting, held on the 24th of May 2024, has discussed about intelligent building and digital twins.

The focus was on energy and comfort in building management platforms. Contents focused on lessons learnt, including predictive maintenance, BIM and digitai twins, user comfort optimisation, user energy profile optimisation, energy and comfort monitoring platforms, middleware and data treatment issues. Results included demo buildings in different countries and discussion of platforms, systems, and GUls. Speakers were professional experts in the topic.

16th of January 2024

The fifth conference meeting, held on the 16th of January 2024, has discussed about smart building issues, climate-free-running building design, and operational solutions.

The focus was on building monitoring solutions, intelligent control technologies optimisations, and proactive control logic. Contents focused on lessons learnt, including PRELUDE project initial outcomes and external expert experiences. Results included demo buildings and living lab facilities in different countries. Speakers were recognised academic and professional experts in the topic. The event included an introduction and five speeches by experts from 4 countries.

12th of December 2023

The fourth conference meeting, held on the 12th of December 2023 in a hybrid mode, physically at the PoliTO Main campus and online, has discussed about the Parametric, environmental, and smart solutions for building retrofitting. The event hosted an introduction to the education event series by Giacomo Chiesa (POLITO, Turin, Italy) and three presentations by PRELUDE partners. In particular, Nathalie Dumas (ESTIA, Lausanne Switzerland) presented the new EPIQR+ web interface supporting professionals during the complex activity of diagnosis via a systematic approach to identify building degradations and identification of retrofitting solutions considering a fast approach to costs and the newly developed CO2-eq calculations. Valentina Stojceska (Brunel University, London, UK) focused on improving environmental sustainability through retrofitting and renewable energy integration, presenting LCA-LCC’s vision for building retrofitting. The POLITO team (Turin, Italy) discussed the possibility of running sensitivity cost-optimal analyses via the PREDYCE EnergyPlus interface, including costs and massive simulations applied to the Turin PRELUDE demo case.

26th of May 2023

The third conference meeting was held on the 26th of May 2023 in dual mode, both physically at the Valentino Castle (POLITO) and remotely online. This event focused on urban heat island and urban climate topics, detailing innovative microclimate study experiences and methodologies thanks to the presence of recognised invited experts. The conference included an introduction to the educational event series led by Giacomo Chiesa by POLITO and two invited speeches. In particular, Agnese Salvati from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain, detailed her research on urban microclimate and climate change impacts on building performances in the urban environment. Differently, Massimo Palme from the Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Chile, had a lecture on green infrastructure for mitigating the Urban heat island effect in Mediterranean climates. After the presentations, a debate was established within the audience discussing urban climatic issues.

31st of March 2023

The second event of this series was a conference/lecture on low-energy and bioclimatic buildings, discussing “Free-running,  zero energy buildings and climate correlate solutions”. Held on the 31st of March 2023, the event has been followed in a hybrid mode, both physically at POLITO and remotely online. This conference included three technical presentations focussing on PRELUDE-connected topics, including an external presentation, and an introduction to the educational event series led by Giacomo Chiesa by POLITO. In particular, Milica Mitrovic and Laura Carnieletto by Padua University have described their experience in designing and building the UniZEB building, a zero energy building living lab at the UNIPD, detailing the long work done with student workshops,  May Zune by BUL has discussed the PRELUDE indoor/outdoor correlation module, supporting indoor environmental predictions on the base of climate correlations including sample applications on PRELUDE demo sites, Giacomo Chiesa and Francesca Fasano (POLITO) have described the initial development of a new PREDYCE tool usage scenario, supporting geo-climatic studies in the climate change dimension to support local policies and designers in identifying the low-energy bioclimatic potential of different natural technologies. After the presentations, a vibrant debate was conducted discussing the replicability of the illustrated samples, their connections with architectural topics and educational aspects.

13th of January 2023

The first event of this series was a conference/lecture on smart building issues, discussing “Proactive, forecasting, and optimisation approaches for intelligent buildings”. Held on the 13th of January 2023, the event has been followed in a hybrid mode, both physically at POLITO and remotely online. This conference included six technical presentations focussing on PRELUDE topics and an introduction to the educational event series led by Giacomo Chiesa by POLITO. In particular, Michal Pomianowski by AAU has shortly introduced the PRELUDE projects, Kais Dai by TREELOGIC has discussed scaling-up technological approaches considering multiple model aggregations supporting a machine learning vision, Nikos Sofias by CORE IC has introduced the use of machine learning algorithms for weather and energy forecasting in the building sector, Christian Heschl by FB has described data-driven predictive control strategies adopted in the Living Lab Energetikum including their energy saving potentials, Giacomo Chiesa and Paolo Grasso (POLITO) have described some free-running application of the PREDYCE tool to support shading and ventilation scheduling optimisation including white-box model forecasting, Mattia Repossi and Lorenzo Farina (STAM) have discussed the EnPower platform and the application of smart building management technologies. An intense debate followed the presentations discussing the replicability of the illustrated approaches, current limitations and future paths in the intelligent building proactive sector.

The project received funds from the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement N°958345.