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Public Administrations are frequently entitled to intervene in building stocks with energy rehabilitation actions. Unfortunately, the monetary budget at their disposal is generally limited and, consequently, a prioritization criterion is needed to optimize its allocation. The classification of the building energy performance is increasingly used by Public Administrations for this purpose. Here we argue that a proper prioritization criterion should depend upon the potential subjects to which the rehabilitated buildings are given back. If the energy rehabilitation is conducted on buildings that will be assigned to new dwellers, it would be preferable to use the energy class – which is based on a standardized energy consumption – because a change of the building users will occur with a consequent plausible change of the building energy usage profile. Instead, if same dwellers will occupy the retrofitted building, a criterion based on a usage profile – that is actually the one established by these occupants – seems to be more appropriate. The priority orders of 23 buildings of the Sicilian stock, obtained using their energy class and real energy consumption, are presented and compared. Results show at which extent these two rankings differ, thus warning Public Administrations about prioritization criteria to adopt.

The energy retrofit of the existing building stocks is considered a preeminent strategy to lowering the energy consumption of the building sector. Other than the definition of the most successful combination of energy saving measures, the definition of a suitable ranking of all the buildings of the stock, on which implementing established energy retrofit measures, is quite a relevant issue. The most eligible criterion for prioritizing the buildings seems their energy consumption because it combines the building energy performance and their size. To investigate the role played by the building dimension in determining the order of priority of all the buildings of a given stock, this paper presents and compares different hierarchical orders of 25 existing buildings that were obtained with and without consideration of the size of the buildings. Results show that, when the size of buildings is covered in the calculations, the generated prioritized order differs significantly. In addition, it has found that the entity of the variations compared to the hierarchy that does not contemplate the size of buildings, is logarithmically correlated with the net surface. Additionally, some concerns have arisen regarding the role of the EP index for the building energy classification.

Several studies analyze the thermal performance of vegetated roofs, presenting either mathematical models or experimental quantifications of heat transfer process through them, also showing the effect of vegetation and soil parameters on the thermal and energy performance of this type of roofing system. However, presently the level of availability of these parameters, has not been enough considered. This work intends to investigate this underestimated issue of the green roofs’ thermal modeling, through the consideration of the availability of parameters pertinent to the shortwave radiation exchange, which are adopted by models based on leaf area index (LAI) and on the fractional vegetation coverage (σf). From the analysis of these models, the importance of a precise knowledge of such parameters arises, despite the availability of their values is still limited. In addition, the absence of a proper database including several green roof plant species and information on their stage of growth, to which a technician possibly will refer in the case of lack of field data, represents quite a worthwhile matter because it may lead to inaccurate estimations of the thermal loads for climatization of buildings equipped with green roofs. In this respect, the manuscript reports an estimation of the errors potentially occurring when not specific vegetation data are used. This evaluation is based on simulations, performed with the DesignBuilder© software, showing the energy effects produced by different assumptions in the green parameters (that is by adopting experimental data revealed by authors and a potential mix of the literature available parameters). Thus, the mission of the paper is to enlighten a difficulty that a technician possibly will encounter when performing an energy and thermal simulation of a green roof; therefore a strong call for making the current database more tailored on green roofs has also arisen.

In this paper, a dynamic simulation of a building located in the Campus University of Palermo, Italy, has been carried out. We considered two different scenarios; in the first one, the building as it is, with a conventional covering, while in the second one the roof was equipped with a green roof. The results of the two simulations have been compared, suggesting that such building component could contribute to the energy savings of the building. However, it has to be considered as part of other possible actions devoted to improve the energy efficiency of the whole building. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC-BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the CENTRO CONGRESSI INTERNAZIONALE SRL In this paper, a dynamic simulation of a building located in the Campus University of Palermo, Italy, has been carried out. We considered two different scenarios; in the first one, the building as it is, with a conventional covering, while in the second one the roof was equipped with a green roof. The results of the two simulations have been compared, suggesting that such building component could contribute to the energy savings of the building. However, it has to be considered as part of other possible actions devoted to improve the energy efficiency of the whole building.

The “Smart Cities & Communities Initiative” of the Strategic Energy Technology Plan is the strategic European response to lead cities and regions to a carbon free future. In this contest energy efficiency in buildings has a crucial role and must be considered in a holistic approach to the urban planning. In order to implement the minimum requirements stated by the European Directive about the Energy Performance of Buildings, and in order to consider different planning layers with the view to a smart city planning, local regulations are a key factor aiming at sustainable territorial planning. This paper investigates the possibility to draft a basic structure of Municipal Building Regulations in order to guide local administrators and technicians and to limit discretionary power of bureaucracy. The paper is organized as follows. First, a review of the most common practices for building regulations in Europe is proposed, then the basic structure of a municipal building regulation for the city of Palermo (Southern Italy) accounting for sustainability is discussed.

The general aim of the experimental study, presented in this paper, was that to investigate the relationship between the characteristics of five different types of LED (Light Emitting Diode) lamps, which are nowadays those allowing the highest energy consumption reduction, and the humans non image-forming (NIF) reactions.

The need to reduce greenhouse gases emission produced by the building sector leads to the research of renewable and less impacting materials that can replace traditional ones. This subject has encouraged new researches on biocomposite concretes with the aim to exploit renewable resources like vegetal fibres intended as materials whose production processes are generally characterized by low costs and energy demand. This biocomposite is obviously much lighter than concrete and, therefore, can be suitably used in such cases where a structure cannot be overloaded, for instance in the realization of a green covering on top of a preexistent building. In this work, a first analysis of the thermal and structural behaviour of a biocomposite concrete, constituted by a mineral matrix (lime) with the addition of vegetal fibres (hemp), has been carried out, with particular attention to the amount of fibres and its granulometry in the mixture. The drying process contemplate a permanence of the material in a thermostatic chamber. The analysis carried out shows that hemp can be used both for the realization of insulation panel (hemp fibres alone) and as a construction material (hemp bast and concrete mix). This biocomposite has shown good insulation properties and some mechanical resistance. However, the results show that further analyses should be carried out on the drying process of the material, as it can greatly influences thermal and mechanical properties.

The functional performances of conventional roundabouts (single-lane and multi-lane) and innovative roundabouts (spiral, flower, C and turbo) can be improved through right-turn bypass lanes controlled by stop, yield or free-flow signs. The article presents evaluations of the emissions of air pollutants (carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particle pollution (PM10 and PM2.5)), fuel consumption and construction, management, energetic and environmental costs in roundabouts without or with bypass lanes (controlled by stop, yield or free-flow). The suggested methodology has a general character and can be applied as a multi-parametric criterion for choosing road intersections, although, in the present paper, it has been employed only for a case study. For the aims of this research, we employed recent closed-form formulations to determine roundabout performances, moreover, we used the COPERT IV® software to estimate air emissions in nine different types of vehicles. Numerous traffic simulations were carried out. The variation in the maximum hourly traffic Qmax and annual traffic QTOT provided the appropriate domains of the examined geometric layouts, both in functional and environmental terms and with regard to generalized costs, estimated for a 10-year period. It resulted that the introduction of right-turn bypasses in all arms of conventional roundabouts with a one ring lane and one lane at the entries (single-lane roundabouts) is the most cost-effective when the flows entering the roundabout are higher than Qmax = 2000 veh/h. Moreover, free-flow bypass lanes always provide greater capacity and lower delays than stop- or yield-signaled bypasses. However, with extremely high Qmax values, stop-controlled bypasses guarantee lower fuel consumption, while those with a yield sign lower total costs.

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552 Recent years have seen an increasing public interest in issues related to energy saving and environmental pollution reduction in the building sector. As a result, many directives have been issued, the most important being the Directive 2010/31/EU (EPBD Recast) on the energy performance of buildings, which requires that "Member States shall ensure that by 31 December 2020 all new buildings are nearly zero-energy buildings". This goal can be obtained not only by reducing energy demand for heating and cooling, but also, for example, by improving building envelope performances. In this work, a first analysis of the thermal and structural behaviour of a biocomposite material, constituted by a natural resin (rosin) and vegetal fibres (hay), has been performed, with particular attention to the share of fibres and the granulometry in the mixture. The biocomposite has shown both good insulation properties and mechanical resistance. However, the results show that further analyses should be performed on the optimisation of the samples' preparation process.

In this chapter, we try to connect the urban design features with energy consumption and consequent pollution parameters. After a review of a selected set of approaches to Urban Energy Systems study with a special focus on electrical power systems, urban energy systems are proposed as networks of multi-source hybrid energy hubs, where different energy flows are collected at the same bus and can be stored, delivered or transformed as needed. Resources at the hub and infrastructures interact with each other; therefore, both definition and boundaries of such energy systems at urban level are difficult to be clearly outlined. Similarly, the possibility to generate new operational models based on existing critical urban infrastructures is also challenging. This contribution proposes a preliminary study of urban energy hubs. Operations of thermal, electrical and mobility infrastructures are considered as qualifying features of the hub, but still the interconnected operation is not taken into account. The application part shows, indeed, the analysis and optimized design of the energy system serving two different urban districts. The related optimized parametric design of power generation infrastructures is considered as a function of urban features. The results about emissions and costs provide some interesting conclusions about the linkage between energy planning and urban features at district level, thus allowing, as possible application of this work, an energy-based territorial planning for urban contexts.

In the last few years, more and more attention has been focused on energy issues, as it is pointed out, for example, by the Directive 2002/91/EC on the Energy Performance of Buildings and Directive 2009/28/EC on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources. However, in order to do that, reliable tools for technicians to design systems for such topics should be provided. Nowadays, several software are available; the weak point is the availability of reliable climatic data and, above all, the ones referring to solar radiation. In this work, after a short overview of the world climatic databases, a description of three statistical methods for the elaboration of a climatic reduced set of data is reported. Then, referring to the climatic station of Palermo, Italy, we build three different sets of data utilizing the three statistical methods and compare these sets of data by means of two applications, namely the energy consumption of a simple building and the energy produced by a photovoltaic (PV) system.

Worldwide, governments are introducing several rules and standards in the aim of limiting the quantity of primary energy for air conditioning of buildings and supporting the use of renewable source of energy for generating thermal and electric energy to be utilized in buildings such as the European Directive on the Energy Performance of Buildings [1]. Along with these interventions, another important action takes currently place in the building sector, that is the introduction of passive structural components of the envelope, able to reduce the requirements of energy for air conditioning purposes. Among these building components, the so-called green roofs are becoming more and more interesting for designer and buildings owners. This simple technical solution, in fact, apart its effectiveness in lowering particularly the summer cooling loads, could make more attractive the shape of each single building and, when adopted on a large extension, of an entire city district, reducing the risks for urban heat island phenomena that represent a severe problem in urban contexts. In this work, a short review of the literature models for computing the energy balance of roof coverings will be proposed, with particular reference in modelling the heat exchange of a canopy.

The rapid improvement in the standard of living requires more detailed and sophisticated methods of evaluating comfort conditions. But, maintaining thermal comfort conditions in confined environments may require complex regulation procedures and the proper management of heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. In turn, the requirements for indoor thermal comfort do not necessarily coincide with those of energy saving purposes, which in the last years are becoming a crucial issue owing to the enactment of the European Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD). The aim of this work is to compare different indoor control thermal comfort strategies in view of the evaluation of the energy cost of quality in buildings. In particular, a new PID-fuzzy controller is presented and compared with a classic ON–OFF controller. The performances of the two controllers are quantified and compared by means of two cost functions that are based on the quadratic forms of the overall energy required by the thermal fluid and of the deviation from the preferred set point of the predicted mean vote (PMV). It is found that the application of the PID-fuzzy controller results in lower costs of energy input and lower deviation from set point of PMV.

This paper addresses an important problem in the evaluation of the thermal comfort of people living or working in the sort of confined spaces typical of current architecture. In the details, a new algorithm is proposed for the evaluation of the angle factors of people within rooms characterized by complex shapes, where the envelope components are not always mutually orthogonal. The algorithm is based on field data obtained by means of an experimental photographic apparatus which allows measurements of projected area factors of seated or standing people in such complex confined environments.

Thermal indoor microclimate conditions in museum buildings refer to two important requirements: the preservation of works of art and the comfort of visitors to these buildings and/or those working inside them. Unfortunately, different works of art have different internal parameters which render the management and control of the indoor thermal microclimate difficult. In this work the values proposed by various standards for the thermal environment of museum buildings have been revised. Moreover, the indoor microclimatic conditions relating to people's comfort have been described, with the aim of singling out possible common ranges for these parameters. With this aim, a useful simultaneousness index has also been introduced. Finally, the proposed approach has been applied to an old Italian building for purposes of clarification.

The history of prisons is full of contradictions in every historical period and the evolution of prison buildings expresses many faces in the history of each country. The concept of punishment imposed on the offender has undergone several changes over the centuries, related to culture, politics, and to the evolution of the human thought. For centuries, tiny closed spaces have been adapted for the offenders' detention, without ever thinking to create an ad hoc functional distribution of spaces. The issue of the design of prisons has often been a reason of debate, and it is still an open field of discussion. From a legal point of view, in recent years there has been a rethinking of the problem. From a social point of view, detention should be seen as a time for change and transformation of the offender into a rehabilitated subject, and the EU is forcing the Countries to make important steps ahead. But, to achieve this goal, we all as a high level cultural society need a change in the way of thinking and approaching the problem and adequate structures, to support individuals by offering them the opportunity, “which in civil life they did not have or have not been able to exploit”. The Smart Cities “revolution” could represent the right opportunity to introduce a change of perspective and technical design thinking approach also in this kind of buildings. In this work, we describe a preliminary step of an emblematic case study of a recent prison building, which has many common characteristics to most Italian prison buildings. We propose a completely new approach to understand and deal with the prisons' environments and users.

The smart city is increasingly becoming a concept of reference for what concerns the planning and the spatial development of cities. The concept of smart city cannot be easily standardized. It is based on a multi-service and multi-sectorial planning regarding various urban functions (energy, mobility, waste, etc.) and places them under a common denominator: the use of advanced technologies for minimizing resources consumption and simultaneously increase the quality of life of the citizens. This paper aims to give an overview on the concept of smart city and outline what, at present, are the main intervention areas considered at European level. Then the paper focuses on the public lighting that is among the sectors most affected by “smart actions” by the Public Administrations. The work concludes with a proposal for a retrofit of the public lighting system in a small town in Sicily (Italy).

Today the utilization of renewable energy sources is very important to support the traditional ones, and also in order to reach the objectives fixed by the Kyoto Protocol. In this context, also well-known technologies related to the electric energy production, formerly not suitable – due to the poor technological level of the components or due to the high costs linked to the system efficiency – may now find a suitable collocation. Among these technologies, the thermoelectric effect may be very advantageous in some particular applications of small power. A power generation system utilizing this technology has been studied by the authors. This system utilizes the thermal difference between a lower temperature sink, e.g. a water reservoir, and a higher temperature source, such as exhaust heat (e.g. from industrial processes) or as produced by solar energy captured by an extended surface. The thermoelectric generator is made up of thermocouples placed on the internal surface of a tubular heat exchanger, located inside the water body and filled up with hot water coming from the energy source. In this paper, the physical mechanisms and the energy balances governing the system are described in order to evaluate its energetic feasibility. Once fixed, the electrical power required by the end user, the system parameters are optimized with the aim to have the most compact equipment and components. A simulation of the proposed system was performed referring to the city of Palermo, Italy. A very poor economic convenience of the system has been found in this applications.

Italy, like several Mediterranean countries, holds a very large number of cultural artifacts that are often exhibited and saved inside museums. Museums are usually part of historical buildings that, not rarely, originally had a different intended use and that have been currently transformed in place for conservation and for exhibition of works of art. The use of historical buildings as museums leads to limitations in the management and distribution of exhibition space, in design and managing HVAC systems and in the achievement of targets relating to the continuous monitoring of the microclimate for people comfort and for preservation of works of art. Moreover, the costs of the operation and maintenance of the HVAC system for this particular type of confined environment are often very expensive and the proper optimization of the required operations plays a main role. In this paper, authors propose a new decision support tool for curators regarding the operation and maintenance management of HVAC systems in museums especially in the case of their belonging to cultural heritage buildings.

Recently linear synchronous generator for the exploitation of sea wave energy has been proposed. That solution does not require reactive power to magnetize but needs permanent magnets to assure the excitation. The electrical energy generated by such a device must be converted and conditioned in order to match the instantaneous utility requirements and a power link from the sea to an interconnection is needed. In this paper in order to overcome that difficulty, the authors propose the use of the electrical energy generated to generate “in situ” hydrogen. As a result the output of the generation would be hydrogen that can be stored and used when needed The proposed electrical generator is a PM linear synchronous generator.

The control and the monitoring of indoor thermal conditions represents a pre-eminent task with the aim of ensuring suitable working and living spaces to people. Especially in industrialised countries, in fact, several rules and standards have been recently released in order of providing technicians with suitable design tools and effective indexes and parameters for the checking of the indoor microclimate. Among them, predicted mean vote (PMV) index is often adopted for assessing the thermal comfort conditions of thermal moderate environments. Unfortunately, the PMV index is characterised by non-linear features, that could determine some difficulties when monitoring and controlling HVAC equipment. In order of overcoming these problems, a fuzzy control for HVAC system is here described. It represents a new simple approach, focused on the application of an adaptive fuzzy controller that avoids the modelling of indoor and outdoor environments. After a brief description of the method, some simulation results are presented. A simplified application, referring to a room belonging to an university building, is finally reported. © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

In museums, environmental indoor conditions should, contemporaneously, preserve the exhibited works of art and ensure the comfort conditions for people. Unfortunately, human and artworks requirements are characterised by different values of the physical indoor parameters that, occasionally, could become conflicting. In the paper, these problems are addressed by means of a literature analysis, with a specific attention to thermal comfort conditions of people. The possibility of finding common ranges of values for both requisites is finally discussed. Some recent technical recommendations on the matter have also been considered for indicating some HVAC equipment and appliances to be adopted in museums.