General Track

Full track papers, short track papers and doctoral submissions within the scope of the conference may be submitted to one of the following General Track sessions. These papers will be reviewed by knowledgeable referees, and if accepted, allocated to sessions for presentation at the conference.

Authors may also submit to an Invited Session if invited to do so by the session chair, or their paper fits the scope of the session better than the General Track.

The General Track Sessions are as follows:-
Note: The content of the tracks is subject to review and change.

G01: Sustainable Buildings

The Sustainable Buildings track invites papers that considers the environmental, economic, and social and community challenges for designing, constructing and enhancing the performance of buildings and their controls, and also the comfort, health and wellbeing of occupants and users of these buildings; and their immediate micro environment for smart cities and smart rural conurbations.

Sustainable Buildings include new low carbon, zero carbon, zero carbon plus, and net positive buildings, and also existing buildings (heritage or otherwise) that are retrofitted with improvements to increase their performance, occupant comfort, reduce energy usage and increase their acoustic and fire performance for their users.

There are numerous processes involved in creating Sustainable Buildings, including design, construction or retrofit, commissioning and finally operation. The application of building science and technology can be used to assess, monitor, optimise, reflect upon and test Sustainable Buildings, their Controls and the Building's immediate environment. In addition, to considerations for bioclimatic design.

In this track, papers are invited that address one aspect of more of the considerations discussed, and/or fall under the following themes:
- Sustainable buildings for comfort and health; building construction and envelope systems; HVAC systems; user behaviour, operational vs embodied energy. Analyses through either quantitative or qualitative techniques during the design, construction, commissioning, handover, operation or retrofit and refurbishment process in existing neighbourhoods in rural or urban (smart towns and cities) conurbations, cities or in new Smart Cities. Techniques can include: desktop (theoretical) case studies; physical testing of internal comfort and health conditions versus energy use and climate conditions; building users comfort and health; occupant and design team interviews.
- Building performance assessment: dynamic thermal modelling, dynamic hygrothermal modelling, thermal bridge analysis; thermography; air tightness testing; heat flux testing; energy profiling; monitoring energy use, thermal comfort, indoor air quality versus climatic conditions; moisture mapping; whole building smoke tests; co-heating; fire performance assessment and building safety measurements and surveys; acoustic measurements, including audits, surveys and tests.
- Design tools and methodologies: Building Information Modelling; education and training; development of assessment, monitoring and optimisation methods; comparison of methodologies and regulations in one country or between countries; modelling, optimisation and validation of building, neighbourhoods and cities.
- Post occupancy and in-use evaluation: building system performance; building integrated renewable energy performance; user interaction in buildings, neighbourhoods and cities; use and evaluation of user guides; evaluation of design team and occupant walk-throughs.

Chair:
John Littlewood, Cardiff Metropolitan University, Wales, UK

G02: Energy management in the Smart City

Cities currently account for about two-thirds of global primary energy demand and three quarters of total energy related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The energy and carbon footprint is bound to increase with urbanization and the growing economic activity of urban citizens.

Mass urbanization is, therefore, one of the most urgent worldwide challenges of the 21st century. Cities have to face issues related to poor air quality, urban heat island effect, environmental quality, energy shortage, energy and grid management, etc. Moreover, urban services highly depend on energy availability and on the opportunity to reduce the related harmful emissions.

In particular, this session aims to address energy management in the built environment for smart cities. Research papers covering the following topics but not limited to are welcome:
- Urban Building Energy Modelling (UBEM)
- Urban Metabolism
- Building stock energy data mining and analytics
- Energy Management Systems (EMS) at district/urban scale
- Energy data visualization and city dashboards
- Energy storage in urban applications
- Demand-Response procedures in urban areas
- Energy data and privacy
- Outdoor air quality and comfort management
- Prosumers interconnected to smart energy grids
- Optimization of district heating and cooling systems

Chairs:
Alfonso Capozzoli, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
Francesco Causone, Politecnico di Milano, Italy

G03: Renewable Energy Technologies

The Renewable Energy Technologies track focuses on recent developments to improve the application of renewable energy to meet the energy demand economically. This includes Solar photovoltaic energy, solar thermal energy systems, concentrating solar power, wind power; wave, ocean and hydro power; biomass and bio energy; geothermal energy technologies; ground-source and air-source heat pumps; materials for renewable energy technologies; hydrogen production and storage, fuel cells; power conversion systems, stand alone and grid-connected converters; designs for renewable energy; integration of renewable energy sources with buildings and the built environment; financial incentives, policies, regulations and solutions for the transition to renewable energy; combined heat and power; renewable energy based district heating and cooling, Grid integration of renewable energy and battery technologies.

Papers submitted under this track fall under following themes:-
- Harvesting Renewable energy - Solar photovoltaic energy, solar thermal energy systems, concentrating solar power, wind power; wave, ocean and hydro power; biomass and bio energy; geothermal energy technologies; ground-source; fuel cells, materials for renewable energy technologies;
- Energy storage - Battery technologies, hydrogen production and storage, Hydro pump storage, compressed air storage, storage technologies
- Application and Integration of renewable energy - Grid integration of renewable energy , integration of renewable energy sources with buildings and the built environment, power conversion systems, designs for renewable energy integration, application of heat pumps, stand alone and grid-connected converters, Grid reliability with renewable energy
- Energy policies - financial incentives, policies, regulations and solutions for the transition to renewable energy

Chair:
Chandima Ekanayake, Griffith University, Australia