Towards a Context-Driven Platform using IoT and Big Data Technologies for Energy Efficient Buildings

Context-awareness is crucial for leveraging energy-efficient buildings by developing intelligent control approaches in which sensing and actuation tasks are performed according to the contextual changes. This could be done by including the users' actions and behaviours in up-to-date context taking into account the complex interlinked elements, situations, processes, and their dynamics. In this paper, we introduce a holistic platform that integrates recent sensing/actuating and Big data technologies for monitoring and data processing. The main aim is to develop context-driven control approaches whereby energy consumption, production, and storage could be controlled according to actual situations (e.g., occupancy, occupant behaviour patterns, energy production patterns, and weather data). A platform prototype was deployed in our university test site. Experiments have been conducted and preliminary results show the usefulness of this holistic platform for monitoring and data processing in energy efficient buildings.