System of Systems theory as a new perspective on building control

Abstract

Energy efficiency of buildings has been identified as a core element in facing the climate change and the scarcity of energy resources. The energy supply system for a building is, especially with view on thermal interrelations, a highly complex and heterogeneous system that emerges jointly with the building construction, the user's behavior, the weather conditions and the surrounding energy and price policy to a real system-of-system. The building control system as the “intelligent instance” of the System of Systems (SoS) takes a special role in realizing the potential of the joint operating constituent systems due to the energy efficiency of the building or district. We apply SoS as an innovative engineering approach to a complex energy system.