Caring Buildings; a concept to implement individual comfort and well-being

Energy research Centre of the Netherlands ABSTRACT: Global warming, caused largely by energy consumption, has become a major problem. During the last decades the introduction of energy saving technologies has strongly reduced energy consumption of buildings. In comfort control strategy there is an exciting development: the user’s preferences and their behaviour have become central in the building services control strategy. Synergy between end-user and building is the ultimate in the intelligent comfort control concept. This new comfort control technology, based on the use of the latest ICT development in agent technology, can further reduce energy consumption of buildings. This paper reviews Multi Agent Intelligent Internet mediated control and combines the most useful insights into a new technology; FACT, Forgiving Agent Comfort Technology. The TU/e (University of Technology Eindhoven) is developing this FACT technology further into a concept for Caring Buildings (CB). Keywords: energy, comfort, agent technology