As a part of BIM4REN (Building Information Modelling based tools & technologies for fast and efficient RENovation of residential buildings) H2020 project, an analysis of the barriers of the renovation process, the potential of digitalization to overcome those barriers, and the requirements to ensure a successful digital workflow. This paper focuses on the Italian market where surveys, interviews, and a workshop were conducted, and then a diagnosis was made on the results obtained. Results show that technological innovation on BIM tools cannot be a stand-alone action to reach a full digitalization of the renovation sector, but it shall be supported by a major awareness of the actors involved, improved skills, and competences, as well as an important change of approach in the current construction practice.

The need for an efficient Water Management System (WMS) is strongly felt by water utilities, municipalities and by medium to large scale corporates that have to face every day with problems dealing with water usage and supply Leveraging a sensor data network, an automated system to implement fault detection in a water network at an early stage can be a valuable tool that saves water, energy, time and money. This paper introduces a novel FDD (fault detection and diagnosis) approach for water networks developed within the FP7 Waternomics Project by modeling a water network in the simulation environment EPANET and applying an anomaly detection algorithm named ADWICE (Anomaly Detection With fast Incremental ClustEring) to real time data of water flow and pressure to infer performance and operational anomalies. The method is currently being implemented at the Linate Airport water network in Milan, and initial results are presented in this paper.

The work presented is the result of an ongoing European H2020 project entitled DR-BOB Demand Response in Blocks of Buildings (DR-BOB) that seeks to integrate existing technologies to create a scalable solution for Demand Response (DR) in blocks of buildings. In most EU countries, DR programs are currently limited to the industrial sector and to direct asset control. The DR-BOB solution extends applicability to the building sector, providing predictive building management in blocks of buildings, enabling facilities managers to respond to implicit and explicit DR schemes, and enabling the aggregation of the DR potential of many blocks of buildings for use in demand response markets. The solution consists of three main components: the Local Energy Manager (LEM), which adds intelligence and provides the capacity for predictive building management in blocks of buildings, a Consumer Portal (CP) to enable building managers and building occupants to interact with the system and be engaged in demand response operations, and a Decentralized Energy Management System (DEMS^®, Siemens plc, Nottingham, England, UK), which enables the aggregation of the DR potential of many blocks of buildings, thus allowing participation in incentive-based demand response with or without an aggregator. The paper reports the key results around Business Modelling development for demand response products and services enabled by the DR-BOB solution. The scope is threefold: (1) illustrate how the functionality of the demand response solution can provide value proposition to underpin its exploitation by four specific customer segments, namely aggregators and three types of Owners of Blocks of Buildings in different market conditions, (2) explore key aspects of the Business Model from the point of view of a demand response solution provider, in particular around most the suitable revenue stream and key partnership, and (3) assess the importance of key variables such as market maturity, user engagement, and type of blocks of buildings as drivers to market penetration and profitability. The work presented is framed by the expected evolution of DR services in different market contexts and the different relationships between the main stakeholders involved in the DR value chain in different EU countries. The analysis also relies on the results of interviews conducted at the fours pilot sites of the DR-BOB project with key representatives of the management, operations, and marketing. These are used to better understand customer needs and sharpen the value proposition.

As a part of BIM4REN (Building Information Modelling based tools & technologies for fast and efficient RENovation of residential buildings) H2020 project, the analysis of the barriers to the use of BIM tools in renovation processes, as well as the necessary requirements to ensure a successful digital workflow is presented. This paper focuses on the Italian market where surveys, interviews and a workshop are carried out. The full study provides information by type of stakeholder, type of renovation work and the phase of the process, to instruct the development of the BIM platform in subsequent steps of BIM4REN project.

Residential flexibility (a.k.a demand response) is a key component of smart grids to reduce our carbon footprint, to have reliable power (balance between power and demand, and avoiding congestion) and more affordable electricity tariffs. However, to have a significant participation in the flexibility markets, households needs good price signals. Today, the electricity bill components (volumetric and capacity for both consumption and generation) are evolving and grid services are increasingly more available to households. This is due to the evolution in the energy mix, deployment of new technologies (smart meter roll-out, gradual uptake of electric vehicles, heat pumps and batteries), regional integration (interconnectors and integration of balancing markets) and evolution of society (sharing economy or Peer2peer and ubiquity of smartphones). These trends will have a quantitative impact on the different energy bills in the short term (2020) and longer term. Further investigation is also suggested to go from the qualitative analysis to a better quantitative analysis.

GEOFIT, “Deployment of novel GEOthermal systems, technologies and tools for energy efficient building retrofitting,” is a recently launched 4-year H2020 project funded by the Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA) under the call topic LCE-17-2017: Easier to install and more efficient geothermal systems for retrofitting buildings. GEOFIT is a part of INEA’s Energy Portfolio Low Carbon Economy (LCE), Renewable Energy Technologies (RET) and brings together 24 partners from 10 European countries to work on the development of novel and smart shallow geothermal systems. This paper introduces the project.