energies

Editorial
Internet of Things Systems and Applications for
Smart Buildings
Jose A. Afonso 1,2, * , Vitor Monteiro 3 and Joao L. Afonso 3

1 CMEMS-UMinho, University of Minho, 4800-058 Guimarães, Portugal

2 LABBELS–Associate Laboratory, University of Minho, 4800-058 Guimarães, Portugal
3 ALGORITMI Research Centre/LASI, University of Minho, 4800-058 Guimarães, Portugal
* Correspondence: [email protected]

Recent research advances in sensors, wireless communications, network protocols,

microelectronics, cloud computing, and machine learning, among others, are driving the
growth of the Internet of Things (IoT). The proliferation of IoT systems is increasingly
pervasive, covering application areas such as smart grids, industrial automation, health-
care, sports/fitness, smart farming, environmental monitoring, smart cities, intelligent
transportation systems, logistics, etc.
One of the main driving areas of the IoT is in the context of smart buildings and smart
homes, where several applications are envisioned, such as: energy consumption reduction;
energy management of smart grids, battery storage systems, electric mobility, and renew-
able energy sources; monitoring and control of indoor environment parameters, such air
quality and thermal comfort; and structural health monitoring. In this sense, the IoT system
generally comprises, among other components, a network of IoT devices interfacing with
sensors and actuators that are remotely configured, monitored and controlled, manually
by the users and/or through intelligent automatic algorithms, with the support of cloud
computing services.
In this editorial, we provide a brief review of the application of the IoT paradigm in
different research areas, with the focus on smart home and smart building scenarios.
The real-time monitoring and control of electric loads in homes using IoT technologies
provides tools to reduce waste and optimize the energy consumption of buildings, enhanc-
Citation: Afonso, J.A.; Monteiro, V.; ing their energy efficiency. In this sense, Sanchez-Sutil et al. present in [1] an example
Afonso, J.L. Internet of Things of an IoT-ready smart plug designed to measure and control the energy consumed by
Systems and Applications for Smart electrical loads in different types of buildings. The developed smart plugs monitor voltage,
Buildings. Energies 2023, 16, 2757. current, power and energy, sending this information in real-time to an IoT cloud using the
https://doi.org/10.3390/
LoRaWAN (Long-Range Wide-Area Network) wireless technology. The authors performed
en16062757
experimental tests in six households to demonstrate the performance of the proposed IoT
Received: 12 October 2022 system in terms of functionality, simplicity, reliability and cost. The authors also conducted
Revised: 10 March 2023 an analysis and comparison of various types of smart plugs, encompassing both research
Accepted: 14 March 2023 prototypes and commercially available options.
Published: 16 March 2023 In [2], J. Oh presents an empirical study on the implications of educating users on
the use of IoT systems to reduce home energy consumption and encourage behavior
changes toward energy savings and sustainability. Over a period of 15 months, home
owners received training regarding smart plug devices for energy consumption monitoring
Copyright: © 2023 by the authors.
and reduction, after which surveys were performed to assess parameters such as user
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
satisfaction and frequency, and their relation with energy consumption reductions. The IoT
This article is an open access article
distributed under the terms and
products provided to the users were smart plugs and switches currently available on the
conditions of the Creative Commons
market, with functions such as power monitoring and control, scheduling and timers, and
Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// using 5G, LTE, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless network technologies.
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ In [3], Balakumar et al. present a demand side management (DSM) scheme integrated
4.0/). into an IoT system designed to schedule electrical appliances in smart homes effectively,

Energies 2023, 16, 2757. https://doi.org/10.3390/en16062757 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/energies

Energies 2023, 16, 2757 2 of 3

in order to reduce the electricity tariff of the consumers and minimize the peak load. The
proposed scheme encourages the consumers to utilize renewable energy sources (RESs) to
generate energy that can be used for their own load and/or sold to the grid, thus reducing
the grid’s load. In addition, the authors propose a dynamic pricing scheme to influence the
consumers to run their appliances as per the scheduled time, so that planned scheduling can
be executed effectively. The IoT system is based on Modbus, a real time wired networking
protocol commonly used in process automation in a wide variety of industrial applications,
whereas the developed DSM scheme is based on the binary firefly optimization algorithm.
Based on experimental and simulation results, the authors conclude that dynamic incentives
and pricing can helps to reduce tariffs for smart home users significantly.
Noticing that photovoltaic (PV) power fluctuations due to weather changes may cause
mismatches in power demand and supply, Ahn et al. proposed in [4] a PV power short-
term forecast system based on IoT sensors and deep recurrent neural networks (RNNs)
designed to increase the efficiency and reliability of the power grid operation. The authors
investigated various parameters of the proposed forecast model combined with weather
parameters to optimize the model. Experimental results show that the proposed short-term
forecast algorithm achieves higher prediction accuracy compared with other models.
Hossain et al. applied in [5] the IoT paradigm in the context of a building energy man-
agement system, with the goal of improving the environmental performance of buildings,
as well as to enhance the learning experience on energy and sustainability. The evaluation
scenario was an educational building in a London university campus. Multiple types of IoT
sensor devices were deployed within three floors of the building for continuous real-time
monitoring of ambient air temperature, relative humidity, illuminance, carbon dioxide and
sound levels. Educational workshops using IoT sensor devices and portable Bluetooth sen-
sors, providing real-time data visualization, were also performed to increase the students’
awareness of the effects of environmental and behavioral changes on energy consumption
savings, where feedback from the students was collected using online questionnaires.
Another application area of IoT systems is on improving the thermal comfort of
buildings. In [6], Tanasiev et al. explore the use of IoT systems to connect devices and
equipment to monitor and control heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems
in a real case scenario. The proposed solution uses the MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry
Transport) application layer protocol and RESTful APIs as the underlying communication
layers for data exchange. At software level, the integration was achieved using the Node-
RED programming tool to interconnect multiple flows of data and applications. The
authors refer the simplicity of integrating various devices, the reduction of the debugging
and deploying time, as well as the flexibility and ease of replicating the system in other
application areas, as some advantages of the proposed solution. The developed system was
tested using a proportional integral derivative (PID) controller and a local programmable
logic controller (PLC).
Chiesa et al. [7] present an IoT system for real-time monitoring of ambient parameters
in buildings, including air velocity and mean radiant temperature, and the calculation of
the thermal comfort indicators, namely the predicted mean vote (PMV) and the predicted
percentage of dissatisfied (PPD). The system was designed to use low-cost IoT devices and
includes a mobile application, which was developed for data visualization and end-user
feedback collection. Based on experimental tests in real environmental conditions, the
authors discuss the system limitations and propose improvements to increase the number
of connected devices, the robustness of the IoT system against data loss or sensor faults,
and the number of comfort models and parameters.
In [8], Calvo et al. propose an IoT system based on low-cost open-source hard-
ware/software, and on a scalable IoT architecture with edge, fog and cloud layers. This
system was designed for monitoring the indoor environmental quality (IEQ) parameters in
buildings with the following main goals: to ensure that temperature and humidity condi-
tions are adequate, to introduce actions to reduce energy consumption, and to guarantee
the air quality. A prototype of the IoT system was built and deployed at the university
Energies 2023, 16, 2757 3 of 3

building using the existing Wi-Fi infrastructure, and a smart sensor node was designed to
measure temperature, humidity, equivalent CO2 and volatile organic compounds (VOC).
The ability to monitor the integrity of a wide variety of civil structures in a continuous
and fine-grained way using low-cost technologies is essential both from an economic and
from a life-saving standpoint. In the last paper covered by this editorial [9], Di Nuzzo et al.
propose an IoT system applied to structural health monitoring in buildings. The design
of its wireless sensor node is based on low-cost MEMS accelerometers and employs the
NB-IoT protocol to provide low-power, long-range communication with a server via 4G
networks. Through experimental performance evaluation tests, the authors achieved a
lifetime of more than ten years with a 17,000 mAh battery and, alternatively, unlimited
lifetime with energy harvested from a small solar panel. Compared to a high-precision
measurement instrument, results show a difference of less than 0.08% in the accuracy of
estimating the modal vibration frequencies, with a cost reduction of around ten times.
In conclusion, the range of potential applications of IoT systems in the context of smart
homes and smart buildings is vast, offering advantages such as enhanced energy efficiency
and sustainability, improved occupant comfort and safety, and predictive maintenance.
Nevertheless, some criticalities and drawbacks are associated with the deployment of IoT
systems, not only in this context, but also in other application areas. IoT systems collect
large amounts of data, which can be vulnerable to security breaches, raising data privacy
and safety concerns. IoT devices and software are often developed by different vendors
and may use different protocols and standards, leading to interoperability issues. While
wireless sensor nodes eliminate the costs associated with cable installation and maintenance,
the current cost of IoT devices and systems may limit their adoption, although costs are
expected to decrease as the technology evolves. Finally, the technical expertise required to
install, maintain and use IoT systems may delay their adoption. All these issues should be
considered for the successful deployment of IoT systems.

Author Contributions: Writing—original draft preparation, J.A.A.; writing—review and editing,

V.M. and J.L.A. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

References
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[CrossRef]
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