Comfort as a multidimensional preference model for energy efficiency control issues

The incessant need for energy has raised its cost to unexpected heights. In response to this situation, many projects have been started in order to save energy. In this context, RIDER project tries to develop a weak system dependency of energy management framework which could be applied for different systems. Particularly, our RIDER Decision Support System (DSS) focuses on proposing generic control rules and optimization techniques for energy management systems. Therefore, the DSS aims to compute the most relevant target values (i.e., setpoints) to be provided to the energy control system and then, improving thermal comfort sensation or reducing energy costs. Literature proposes reusable system independent statistical models for thermal comfort. However, they are not easily interpretable in terms of a preference model which makes control not intuitive and tractable. Since thermal comfort is a subjective multidimensional concept, an interpretable and reusable preference model is introduced in this paper. Multi Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT) is used for this.