Sustainable Smart City Building Construction Methods

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for the paper. It was interesting to read. However, I have some minor and significant comments like the following that need to be addressed before publication:

• What does “it” refer to (line 88)?
• The sentence in lines 92 and 93 needs to be edited.
• Is there any reference for the statement in lines 96 to 99?
• Do sensors (line 99) provide precise data that assist in making an effective decision? What about the user experience inside the building?
• What about lighting? It should be part of the smart building components.
• How can alarms (line 116) control appliances and outlets?
• It would be good to explain CNN.
• What are the drawbacks of smart buildings (line 139)?
• It is not clear why we need to consider the proposed approach to solve the issues in smart buildings? What kind of issues!!
• It would be good to explain the proposed approach for your research (line 141).

One of the most critical parameters that has been missed while collecting data for supervisory control for HVAC-DHW system is user behaviour (intervention) and its impact on the building performance. Users’ behaviour has a significant effect on the predicted energy usage and is the neglected factor in most studies. It would be beneficial to explain the reason for not considering that in your research.

Author Response

• What does “it” refer to (line 88)?

Response:

“Sensors and actuators form an essential part of smart buildings. It collects the data about smart appliances and directs with a decision for efficient resource allocation processes.” Here “it” refers to sensors, sensors measures a physical quantity and translate the real world measurements into data for digital domain.

• The sentence in lines 92 and 93 needs to be edited.

Response: As per the reviewer comments the sentence is edited.

“The centralized server continuously monitors smart buildings to automate the control and management processes of building.”

• Is there any reference for the statement in lines 96 to 99?

Response: Yes.

Reference 7: Robichaud, L. B.; Anantatmula, V. S. Greening Project Management Practices for Sustainable Construction. Journal of Management in Engineering 2011, 27, 48–57

• Do sensors (line 99) provide precise data that assist in making an effective decision? What about the user experience inside the building?

Response: Yes, sensors provide precise data that assist in making an effective decision. Sensors detect changes such as air quality, temperature, occupancy, motion, etc and feed that information to the building management systems. This system helps to monitor conditions, where user can automatically alter the settings according to their own preferences in particular areas of the building.

• What about lighting? It should be part of the smart building components.

Response: Lighting is an integral part of smart buildings. It is designed for energy efficiency and it derives real operational benefits and makes adjustments based on conditions like daytime accessibility and use.

• How can alarms (line 116) control appliances and outlet?

Response: Smart buildings consists devise corrective action and automation as a response to alarms created by a system. However, home owner uses a mobile phone to set his alarm and control their appliances by enable and disable or perform other tasks.

• It would be good to explain CNN.

Response: A Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) is a DL algorithm which can take input image and assign importance to various aspects/objects in an image and able to differentiate one from the other. Modern buildings adapt to both internal and external elements and thrive on increasing data sources such as sensors and smart devices. CNN in smart building helps for relevance analysis of a large set of parameters, including indoor facade temperature, solar radiation outdoor temperature history, outdoor humidity and many more.

• What are the drawbacks of smart buildings (line 139)?

Response: At present, there exists a variety of approaches for energy and power consumption management for smart buildings but it still requires greater improvements. Such drawbacks are cost, security and privacy, system compatibility, sedentary lifestyle and many more.

• It is not clear why we need to consider the proposed approach to solve the issues in smart buildings? What kind of issues!!

Response:

Due to scarcity of non-renewable resources, research areas gain attention towards utilizing renewable resources, based on this concept we proposed solar and wind energy based RES-PP to supply power to HVAC-DHW system as well as to the main electric power grid and to make the city smart and sustainable with efficient energy consumption supply.

• It would be good to explain the proposed approach for your research (line 141).

Response: We propose renewable solar and wind energy enabled hybrid heating and cooling HVAC-DHW system in which energy consumption is evaluated using optimized NARX-ANN and Fuzzy controller based on user needs, dynamic behavior of atmospheric environment and spatial distribution of energy supply. First, via sensor, heating and cooling effect of environment and building is sensed and these sensed inputs are then fed into deep learning based NARX-ANN that forecast internal building temperature. This forecasted temperature is fed into a fuzzy controller for optimizing output based on user demand. This processed information leads to energy distribution based on their requirement using a smart energy sensing system.

One of the most critical parameters that has been missed while collecting data for supervisory control for HVAC-DHW system is user behaviour (intervention) and its impact on the building performance. Users’ behaviour has a significant effect on the predicted energy usage and is the neglected factor in most studies. It would be beneficial to explain the reason for not considering that in your research.

Response: In our research, in order enhance the energy saving with solar and wind energy utilization we proposed self-tuning HVAC – DHW system utilizing solar and wind energy by using fuzzy controller based nonlinear autoregressive artificial neural network (NAR-ANN).

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The topic of the article is very topical. The structure of the paper is good and clear. The paper is organized as follows: Chapter 1 provides a brief introduction to the proposed approach. The literature review is given in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 describes the proposed energy-efficient solution. Results and discussions are given in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 includes the conclusion. 

Literary review could be more comprehensive. References can be evaluated very positively, minimum reference is older than 10 years and all reflect current development and research in the field.

The figures are in relatively low graphic processing and deserve to be reworked.

Chapter 4 Simulation Results should be more detailed and supplemented with comments and discussions.

Minor formal deficiencies (for example, subchapter numbering).

After a small addition of comments, grammatical correction, image adjustment and compliance with the formal requirements of the template recommended for publication.

Author Response

The topic of the article is very topical. The structure of the paper is good and clear. The paper is organized as follows: Chapter 1 provides a brief introduction to the proposed approach. The literature review is given in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 describes the proposed energy-efficient solution. Results and discussions are given in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 includes the conclusion.

Response: Thank you for your valuable comment.

Literary review could be more comprehensive. References can be evaluated very positively, minimum reference is older than 10 years and all reflect current development and research in the field.

Response: As per the reviewer comments it is revised in the manuscript.

The figures are in relatively low graphic processing and deserve to be reworked.

Response: As per the reviewer comments, all figures are reworked with high graphic processing.

Chapter 4 Simulation Results should be more detailed and supplemented with comments and discussions.

Response: As per the reviewer comments it is revised in the manuscript.

Minor formal deficiencies (for example, subchapter numbering).

Response: As per the reviewer comments, the numberings are given in sequence.

After a small addition of comments, grammatical correction, image adjustment and compliance with the formal requirements of the template recommended for publication.

Response: As per the reviewer comments the changes are done in manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for responding to the comments. However, I still have some concerns about the paper and responses as the following:

• Regarding the first response, “it” should refer to a singular word and not a plural word like sensors.
• How sensors provide precise data that assist in making an effective decision? It is not clear. They collect measurements from the building without considering user behaviour. While users can still change the settings themselves, this system again does not consider their behaviour in its evaluation.
• I am not sure how the authors integrated lighting in the smart building. Their response and the paper do not provide a satisfactory answer.
• It is also still clear how alarms can control appliances and outlets.
• The response to the following comments is not still clear and needs more work:

One of the most critical parameters that has been missed while collecting data for supervisory control for HVAC-DHW system is user behaviour (intervention) and its impact on the building performance. Users’ behaviour has a significant effect on the predicted energy usage and is the neglected factor in most studies. It would be beneficial to explain the reason for not considering that in your research.

• There are also so many abbreviations in the paper that have never explained.

Author Response

Thank you for responding to the comments. However, I still have some concerns about the paper and responses as the following:

• Regarding the first response, “it” should refer to a singular word and not a plural word like sensors.

Response: sensor provide precise information and involve in measuring several metrics for which smart building in smart cities performance are estimated.

• How sensors provide precise data that assist in making an effective decision? It is not clear. They collect measurements from the building without considering user behaviour. While users can still change the settings themselves, this system again does not consider their behaviour in its evaluation.

Response:  Several metrics are estimated using sensor to evaluate the performance of smart buildings, various parameters including temperature, humidity, wind speed other metrics are gathered, user behaviour does not involve here due to fact that the manual calculation will have lesser accuracy when compared to sensor. Alarms are designed in the buildings for avoiding miscalculation of data by sensor.

• I am not sure how the authors integrated lighting in the smart building. Their response and the paper do not provide a satisfactory answer.

Response:  Lighting plays a significant role in smart city building enhancement due to fact that it pretends handling capabilities as well as simplicity to utilize and monitor. A significant feature of lighting method is its innovative handling technology can normally provide unique luminaire to give lightning systems which controls the building environment in smart city. This states that there exists control solution methodology which is capable of making intelligent decisions for smart buildings and helps in forming smart buildings quickly after installations.

• It is also still clear how alarms can control appliances and outlets.

Response:  Function of sensor may cause some variation due to different environmental conditions, this type of situation can lead to false notification of data by sensor which, here alarm plays a significant role in capturing the functions of sensor where in abnormal functioning of sensor will lead to alarm sound thus preventing the damage caused by over functioning of sensors and providing significant protection to smart building during data collection and working environment.

• The response to the following comments is not still clear and needs more work:

One of the most critical parameters that has been missed while collecting data for supervisory control for HVAC-DHW system is user behaviour (intervention) and its impact on the building performance. Users’ behaviour has a significant effect on the predicted energy usage and is the neglected factor in most studies. It would be beneficial to explain the reason for not considering that in your research.

Response: Human intervention does not exist in the model due to fact that, sensor collect precise information where the metrics involved has more accuracy, here with user intervention may mislead the sensor which are placed in centralized control and monitoring system. Based on the environmental situation in the building the sensor analyze the metrics and collects the information such as temperature, speed of wind, ambient, humidity etc, where this may not be possible for humans to measure manually

• There are also so many abbreviations in the paper that have never explained.

Response: various abbreviations which forms the technical background of this study are illustrated using abbreviations.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for the responses. My last comment is that the limitation section of your work could be improved. I hope you work on this part a little more before publication. 

Author Response

Thank for your kind consideration regarding the limitation section as I have included about some limitations which is applicable only using the proposed work and it is mentioned in conclusion section which will help readers to clearly identify the major aspect of this research work.