Smart buildings: A monitoring and data analysis methodological framework

Abstract This paper proposes a methodology for monitoring and data analysis in buildings, leading the user in the design and implementation of smart environments able to collect information on spaces and the comfort perceived by their inhabitants. A systematic descriptive framework is defined to identify the most convenient strategies for monitoring and data interpretation, driven by the constraints and goals set by how data will be exploited. A wide body of field works has been analyzed and put in relation to the methodology, highlighting the difficulty to extract general guidelines with respect to the same goal and to reveal use case specificity, preventing the possibility to learn from previous solutions. We claim the need to overcome the specific features of each case study to elicit general knowledge, and thus the quest for a unified framework, useful in different scenarios.