Special Session on Energy Modeling of Buildings and HVAC Systems for Energy and Comfort Performance Assessment and Near Real-Time Control

Buildings are made for their occupants. Keeping them comfortable currently accounts for an intense use of energy from multiple vectors (gas, diesel, electricity...) with its negative climate, sustainability and economic impacts.

More efficient energy generation systems or renewable sources are often not affordable due to their high associated costs. Solutions based on the optimization of operation and control are cheaper and have faster returns of investment. The main challenges for their implementation are the availability of data and the need for developing accurate and cost-effective prediction models that can be based on physical simulation, data-driven or hybrid approaches.

Beyond control applications, data-driven modelling also enables more accurate performance diagnostics than desktop assessments and can provide more realistic forecasts of the impact of energy renovation measures, with potential integration on measurement & verification schemes.

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Special Session on ELife Cycle Assessment, Digital Solutions, and Sustainable Practices in Building Design and Construction

This special session focuses on the integration of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), advanced digital solutions, and sustainable practices within building design and construction. The session aims to address pressing challenges in reducing the environmental footprint of the built environment while exploring innovative methodologies and digital tools that drive sustainability in the construction sector. Key topics include cutting-edge LCA approaches, the role of BIM and AI in sustainable design, real-world case studies, and regulatory frameworks that promote eco-friendly building practices. This session seeks to foster collaboration among stakeholders to catalyze transformative advancements in sustainable construction.

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Special Session on Humanized Computing: Citizen Science, Co-creation, and Emerging Technologies for Human-Centric Decisions

Human intelligence, IoT, Digital Twins and AI each have their own strengths and weaknesses. Machines are effective and efficient in the discovery of implicit knowledge or hidden patterns from large-scale data. In contrast, humans are good at conducting cognitive analysis such as reasoning, inference, and making instinctive judgments by taking into consideration dynamic and multiple factors. When people are organized into groups to conduct research activities, this is called Citizen Science, which pursues Collective Intelligence.

Citizen science needs more and more technological (accessible to lay people) artifacts to be effective for scientific endeavours. Therefore, humans and machines do not have to be competitive or mutually exclusive, and one does not have to dominate/replace the other. One way to address the two issues mentioned above is to marry the strengths and mitigate the weaknesses of human intelligence and emerging technologies, making them work in collaboration and cooperation. This is very much the rationale behind the concept of the Humanized Computing.

In this Special Session, we will gather evidence from existing research regarding the intersection of Citizen Science, Artificial Intelligence, Digital Twins, authoritative (Open Data, spatial data from Copernicus and IoTthrough low-cost sensors) and crowdsourced data to create communal smart environments where synergyand symbiosis among the agents are enabled. The bottom line is to give place to human understandable information evidence that drive better decisions for humans and the planet. We are especially interested in experiences where communities collaborate with machines/algorithms/DigitalTwins in activities such as data collection (e.g., participatory/opportunistic sensing), modelling, hypothesis testing, analysis, and outreaching for a wide range of applications of crowd-sourced, Internet based information with the focus on pro-environmentalism and pursuing activism towards preserving the planet or co-ideate adaptation strategies to new environmental events related to climate change (e.g., improve the air that we all breath, the buildings and public spaces where we live, make the food system more sustainable and so on).

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Special Session on Decarbonizing Buildings and Enhancing Resilience: Strategies and Innovations for a Future Sustainable Built Environment

The challenge of decarbonizing buildings is increasingly urgent, as outlined by the timeline established in the EU Energy Performance of Building Directive 1275/2024 (EPBD IV), in the context of worrying local and global climate crises. Authoritative monitoring (e.g., WMO, Copernicus, Nasa) of climatic trends and environmental phenomena consistently reveals alarming patterns: each month of recent years has been the hottest compared to the same month in preceding years. Extreme weather events, along with the resulting loss of lives, ecosystems, heritage and infrastructure, are becoming more frequent and severe.

Despite over two decades since the first European Directive on building energy efficiency, the construction sector continues to account for approximately 40% of total energy demand—a share largely unchanged since 2002, when the first EPBD was introduced. This persistent energy consumption significantly impacts the energy balance of European countries. The built environment, with its high energy intensity, is a contributing factor to global warming. Although slow and steady improvements in energy performance have been achieved, these benefits are offset by increasing comfort demands, which lead to the proliferation of energy uses, equipment, and devices, and effectively diminish the benefits of energy efficiency measures.

To face the climate crisis and adhere to temperature increase thresholds identified by international agreements as critical to ensuring future sustainability, it is necessary to curtail these uncontrolled energy demands and to allow, as soon as possible, a carbon-neutral building stock that is resilient to climate change, enhances livability, and mitigates urban overheating. This requires adopting measures - primarily through retrofitting, given the very low turnover rate of buildings in Europe - that improve indoor conditions. These measures must address increasingly overheated urban environments, more frequent extreme events, the need to reduce energy costs for microclimatic control, and the adoption of passive mitigation strategies, and low-energy cooling technologies, particularly in the context of the dramatic phenomenon of energy poverty.

The symposium provides a platform to explore innovative research across a wide range of approaches—numerical, analytical, and experimental—on strategies to improve energy efficiency and reduce energy demands in buildings.

Key topics include advanced building envelopes, passive cooling and bioclimatic technologies, systems for indoor microclimate control, building automation and smart technologies, renewable energy integration, occupant behavior, and energy policies applicable at building, district, and urban scales.

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Special Session on Smart Distributed Electrical Network: Opportunities and Challenges for Integration of Renewable Energy Systems

A future ‘Smart Distributed Electrical Energy Network’ will serve as a dynamic network for multi-directional energy flows, linking widely distributed small capacity intermittent renewable energy systems at consumer level (distribution network) and centralized higher-capacity power generators, facilitating active participation of customer choice for demand side management, energy production / storage, and providing real-time information on the performance and optimal operation of the smart electrical energy network.

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Special Session on Cybersecurity in Healthcare and Medicine (CyHeMe)

The Third International Special Session on Cybersecurity in Healthcare and Medicine (CyHeMe) fosters discussion related to information security and cybersecurity, resulting from the need to build secure, reliable and robust systems and services that not only support healthcare and medicine, but also foster well-being, encourage patients and the population in general to live according to healthy lifestyle recommendations, and address the specific safety needs of an aging population. This multidisciplinary special session will bring together practitioners and researchers from relevant disciplines. Among other objectives, CyHeMe aims to: i) develop approaches that support multiple perspectives of information security and cybersecurity in healthcare and medicine; ii) develop or refine methods for achieving and raising cybersecurity of systems and services that promote well-being or health; and iii) identify open research and industry challenges, as well as validation objectives for proposed solutions. This is the third CyHeMe special session, and it will take place on-site.

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Special Session on Artificial Intelligence of Things and Edge Intelligence

The true potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) lies in its convergence with artificial intelligence (AI), giving rise to the concept of Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT), which brings intelligence into IoT solutions. AIoT environments can learn, reason and make autonomous decisions based on the data continuously generated by many IoT devices, and can operate devices autonomously at the edge of the network. AIoT is closely related to the concept of Edge Intelligence which refers to the use of AI within the edge-to-cloud computing continuum. Edge devices are resource-constrained, but typically closer to IoT devices than to the cloud, which reduces response time, network traffic and load on cloud servers, and has a positive impact on user privacy. AIoT and edge intelligence are bringing AI models into our physical environment and breaking down the boundaries between the physical and digital worlds, opening up new opportunities for device intelligence and autonomy in the physical environment.

This special session explores the potential of AIoT and edge intelligence from both research-oriented and industry-led perspectives. The goal is to identify emerging research areas, present solutions to existing challenges and foster collaboration and the exchange of ideas between researchers and stakeholders.

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