Analytics for Building-Scale Sustainable Ecosystems

This edited volume comprises of research articles primarily resulting from the recent workshop of US-China Workshop on Analytics for Building-Scale Sustainable Ecosystems, sponsored by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), and held in Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. A group of researchers from both US and China academic institutions present in this volume their views of bottlenecks in engineering, software and social sciences, forming a nexus of critical issues impeding wider application of net-zero-energy (or near zero energy) building technology in the context of defining building-scale sustainable ecosystems. The focus of these investigations is the fundamentals of sciences that lead to a robust, significant improvement towards modelling and predicting building performance indices such as energy usage with user integration and sustainability. Achievements and challenges in research and development initiatives and best-practices from U.S. and China provide a foundation for such development of analytics and possibility of benchmarking and comparability. Intended readers include multidisciplinary researchers in the interested areas, and students in both graduate and senior undergraduate levels. The related disciplines of readers include architecture, sciences (including social and computer sciences), engineering, and public policy.