The energy sector is closely interconnected with the building sector and integrated Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) solutions for effective energy management supporting decision-making at building, district and city level are key fundamental elements for making a city Smart. The available systems are designed and intended exclusively for a predefined number of cases and systems without allowing for expansion and interoperability with other applications that is partially due to the lack of semantics. This paper presents an advanced Internet of Things (IoT) based system for intelligent energy management in buildings. A semantic framework is introduced aiming at the unified and standardised modelling of the entities that constitute the building environment. Suitable rules are formed, aiming at the intelligent energy management and the general modus operandi of Smart Building. In this context, an IoT-based system was implemented, which enhances the interactivity of the buildings’ energy management systems. The results from its pilot application are presented and discussed. The proposed system extends existing approaches and integrates cross-domain data, such as the building’s data (e.g., energy management systems), energy production, energy prices, weather data and end-users’ behaviour, in order to produce daily and weekly action plans for the energy end-users with actionable personalised information.

European buildings are producing a massive amount of data from a wide spectrum of energy-related sources, such as smart meters’ data, sensors and other Internet of things devices, creating new research challenges. In this context, the aim of this paper is to present a high-level data-driven architecture for buildings data exchange, management and real-time processing. This multi-disciplinary big data environment enables the integration of cross-domain data, combined with emerging artificial intelligence algorithms and distributed ledgers technology. Semantically enhanced, interlinked and multilingual repositories of heterogeneous types of data are coupled with a set of visualization, querying and exploration tools, suitable application programming interfaces (APIs) for data exchange, as well as a suite of configurable and ready-to-use analytical components that implement a series of advanced machine learning and deep learning algorithms. The results from the pilot application of the proposed framework are presented and discussed. The data-driven architecture enables reliable and effective policymaking, as well as supports the creation and exploitation of innovative energy efficiency services through the utilization of a wide variety of data, for the effective operation of buildings.

This paper presents a novel development methodology for artificial intelligence (AI) analytics in energy management that focuses on tailored explainability to overcome the “black box” issue associated with AI analytics. Our approach addresses the fact that any given analytic service is to be used by different stakeholders, with different backgrounds, preferences, abilities, skills, and goals. Our methodology is aligned with the explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) paradigm and aims to enhance the interpretability of AI-empowered decision support systems (DSSs). Specifically, a clustering-based approach is adopted to customize the depth of explainability based on the specific needs of different user groups. This approach improves the accuracy and effectiveness of energy management analytics while promoting transparency and trust in the decision-making process. The methodology is structured around an iterative development lifecycle for an intelligent decision support system and includes several steps, such as stakeholder identification, an empirical study on usability and explainability, user clustering analysis, and the implementation of an XAI framework. The XAI framework comprises XAI clusters and local and global XAI, which facilitate higher adoption rates of the AI system and ensure responsible and safe deployment. The methodology is tested on a stacked neural network for an analytics service, which estimates energy savings from renovations, and aims to increase adoption rates and benefit the circular economy.