Visual Analytics for Energy Monitoring in the Context of Building Management

Abstract

Building management systems (BMS) provide monitoring and control of most large-building assets (heating, ventilation, air conditioning, lighting, security systems, and so on). With the recent advancement of the Internet of Things and data management systems, BMS must gather and manage increasingly detailed data coming from a greater number and diversity of sources. The availability of such data should help building managers optimise the energy consumption of buildings. However, current BMS don't allow efficient visualisation of such data, which means that even if the data is available, it is not used to its full potential. In this paper, we describe a prototype BMS interface providing interactive visualisations of traditional building data (temperature, energy consumption), as well as more novel data (comfort feedback from occupants and live occupancy). We evaluate this prototype by first showing how it could be used to plan a long- term energy saving strategy, and then in a feedback session involving facility managers at a university.