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A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Sciences".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 November 2021) | Viewed by 50957

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Michele Roccotelli

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Department of Electrical and Information Engineering (DEI), Politecnico di Bari, Via Orabona, 4, 70125 Bari, Italy
Interests: smart grids; smart buildings; smart mobility; optimization and control methods
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Agostino Marcello Mangini

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Guest Editor

Department of Electrical and Information Engineering (DEI), Politecnico di Bari, Via Orabona, 4, 70125 Bari, Italy
Interests: smart buildings; smart grids; intelligent transportation systems; Petri nets; optimization; autonomous vehicles
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Modern cities are facing the challenge of combining competitiveness on a global city scale and sustainable urban development to become smart cities. A smart city is a high-tech intensive and advanced city that connects people, information, and city elements using new technologies in order to create a sustainable, greener city, competitive and innovative commerce, and an increased quality of life. In recent years, in the smart city context, smart and green building management has become one of the main challenges for automation and building construction. In addition to the utilization of renewable energy resources, the necessity to ensure both high-level comfort and energy efficiency can be satisfied by adopting new suitable and intelligent building energy management systems (BEMSs) to be integrated in building automation control systems. In this context, the main challenge is to minimize energy consumption, guaranteeing a high level of indoor comfort conditions in buildings, which generally depends on three factors: thermal comfort, visual comfort, and air quality comfort. To this purpose, novel models, algorithms, and tools can be proposed to maximize the indoor life quality with the minimum energy consumption both via active “energy consuming” systems (e.g., HVAC) and passive strategies (e.g., natural ventilation).

Dr. Michele Roccotelli
Prof. Dr. Agostino Marcello Mangini
Guest Editors

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Keywords

smart buildings
building energy management system
near-zero energy buildings (NZEB)
smart grids
intelligent power and energy systems
smart urban environments
intelligent transportation systems
green mobility
autonomous vehicles and smart cities

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Published Papers (10 papers)

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Editorial

Jump to: Research, Review

3 pages, 173 KiB

Open AccessEditorial

Advances on Smart Cities and Smart Buildings

by Michele Roccotelli and Agostino Marcello Mangini

Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(2), 631; https://doi.org/10.3390/app12020631 - 10 Jan 2022

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 2110

Abstract

Modern cities are facing the challenge of combining competitiveness on a global city scale and sustainable urban development to become smart cities [...] Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances on Smart Cities and Smart Buildings)

Research

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17 pages, 3666 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Design and Experimental Validation of Power Electric Vehicle Emulator for Testing Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) with Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) Capability

by Eduardo García-Martínez, Jesús Muñoz-Cruzado-Alba, José F. Sanz-Osorio and Juan Manuel Perié

Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(23), 11496; https://doi.org/10.3390/app112311496 - 4 Dec 2021

Cited by 13 | Viewed by 5844

Abstract

Nowadays, the global decarbonization and electrification of the world’s energy demands have led to the quick adoption of Electric Vehicle (EV) technology. Therefore, there is an urgent need to provide a wide network of fast Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) charging stations to support the forecast demand and to enable enough autonomy of such devices. Accordingly, V2G charging stations must be prepared to work properly with every manufacturer and to provide reliable designs and validation processes. In this way, the development of power electric vehicle emulators with V2G capability is critical to enable such development. The paper presents a complete design of a power electric vehicle emulator, as well as an experimental testbench to validate the behaviour of the proposal. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances on Smart Cities and Smart Buildings)

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19 pages, 2439 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Campus City Project: Challenge Living Lab for Smart Cities

by José I. Huertas, Jürgen Mahlknecht, Jorge de J. Lozoya-Santos, Sergio Uribe, Enrique A. López-Guajardo and Ricardo A. Ramirez-Mendoza

Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(23), 11085; https://doi.org/10.3390/app112311085 - 23 Nov 2021

Cited by 20 | Viewed by 4030

Abstract

This work presents the Campus City initiative followed by the Challenge Living Lab platform to promote research, innovation, and entrepreneurship with the intention to create urban infrastructure and creative talent (human resources) that solves different community, industrial and government Pain Points within a Smart City ecosystem. The main contribution of this work is to present a working model and the open innovation ecosystem used in Tecnologico de Monterrey that could be used as both, a learning mechanism as well as a base model for scaling it up into a Smart Campus and Smart City. Moreover, this work presents the Smart Energy challenge as an example of a pedagogic opportunity for the development of competencies. This included the pedagogic design of the challenge, the methodology followed by the students and the results. Finally, a discussion on the findings and learnings of the model and challenge implementation. Results showed that Campus City initiative and the Challenge Living Lab allows the identification of highly relevant and meaningful challenges while providing a pedagogic framework in which students are highly motivated, engaged, and prepared to tackle different problems that involve government, community, industry, and academia. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances on Smart Cities and Smart Buildings)

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23 pages, 3451 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Novel Application Based on a Heuristic Approach for Planning Itineraries of One-Day Tourist

by Agostino Marcello Mangini, Michele Roccotelli and Alessandro Rinaldi

Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(19), 8989; https://doi.org/10.3390/app11198989 - 27 Sep 2021

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2663

Abstract

Technological innovations have revolutionized the lifestyle of the society and led to the development of advanced and intelligent cities. Smart city has recently become synonymous of a city characterized by an intelligent and extensive use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) in order to allow efficient use of information. In this context, this paper proposes a new approach to optimize the planning of itineraries for one-day tourist. More in detail, an optimization approach based on Graph theory and multi-algorithms is provided to determine the optimal tourist itinerary. The aim is to minimize the travel times taking into account the tourist preferences. An Integer Linear Programming (ILP) problem is introduced to find the optimal outward and return paths of the touristic itinerary and a multi-algorithms strategy is used to maximize the number of attractions (PoIs) to be visited in the paths. Finally, a case study focusing on cruise tourist in the city of Bari, demonstrates the efficiency of the approach and the user interaction in the determination of the itinerary. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances on Smart Cities and Smart Buildings)

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15 pages, 6378 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Long Term Household Electricity Demand Forecasting Based on RNN-GBRT Model and a Novel Energy Theft Detection Method

by Santanu Kumar Dash, Michele Roccotelli, Rasmi Ranjan Khansama, Maria Pia Fanti and Agostino Marcello Mangini

Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(18), 8612; https://doi.org/10.3390/app11188612 - 16 Sep 2021

Cited by 17 | Viewed by 3046

Abstract

The long-term electricity demand forecast of the consumer utilization is essential for the energy provider to analyze the future demand and for the accurate management of demand response. Forecasting the consumer electricity demand with efficient and accurate strategies will help the energy provider to optimally plan generation points, such as solar and wind, and produce energy accordingly to reduce the rate of depletion. Various demand forecasting models have been developed and implemented in the literature. However, an efficient and accurate forecasting model is required to study the daily consumption of the consumers from their historical data and forecast the necessary energy demand from the consumer’s side. The proposed recurrent neural network gradient boosting regression tree (RNN-GBRT) forecasting technique allows one to reduce the demand for electricity by studying the daily usage pattern of consumers, which would significantly help to cope with the accurate evaluation. The efficiency of the proposed forecasting model is compared with various conventional models. In addition, by the utilization of power consumption data, power theft detection in the distribution line is monitored to avoid financial losses by the utility provider. This paper also deals with the consumer’s energy analysis, useful in tracking the data consistency to detect any kind of abnormal and sudden change in the meter reading, thereby distinguishing the tampering of meters and power theft. Indeed, power theft is an important issue to be addressed particularly in developing and economically lagging countries, such as India. The results obtained by the proposed methodology have been analyzed and discussed to validate their efficacy. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances on Smart Cities and Smart Buildings)

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28 pages, 31695 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Assessing Urban Accessibility in Monterrey, Mexico: A Transferable Approach to Evaluate Access to Main Destinations at the Metropolitan and Local Levels

by Ana Luisa Gaxiola-Beltrán, Jorge Narezo-Balzaretti, Mauricio Adolfo Ramírez-Moreno, Blas Luis Pérez-Henríquez, Ricardo Ambrocio Ramírez-Mendoza, Daniel Krajzewicz and Jorge de-Jesús Lozoya-Santos

Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(16), 7519; https://doi.org/10.3390/app11167519 - 17 Aug 2021

Cited by 16 | Viewed by 6979

Abstract

Cities demand urgent transformations in order to become more affordable, livable, sustainable, walkable and comfortable spaces. Hence, important changes have to be made in the way cities are understood, diagnosed and planned. The current paper puts urban accessibility into the centre of the public policy and planning agenda, as a transferable approach to transform cities into better living environments. To do so, a practical example of the City of Monterrey, Mexico, is presented at two planning scales: the metropolitan and local level. Both scales of analysis measure accessibility to main destinations using walking and cycling as the main transport modes. The results demonstrate that the levels of accessibility at the metropolitan level are divergent, depending on the desired destination, as well as on the planning processes (both formal and informal) from different areas of the city. At the local level, the Distrito Tec Area is diagnosed in terms of accessibility to assess to what extent it can be considered a part of a 15 minutes city. The results show that Distrito Tec lacks the desired parameters of accessibility to all destinations for being a 15 minutes city. Nevertheless, there is a considerable increase in accessibility levels when cycling is used as the main travelling mode. The current research project serves as an initial approach to understand the accessibility challenges of the city at different planning levels, by proving useful and disaggregated data. Finally, it concludes providing general recommendations to be considered in planning processes aimed to improve accessibility and sustainability. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances on Smart Cities and Smart Buildings)

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17 pages, 4287 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Inferring Long-Term Demand of Newly Established Stations for Expansion Areas in Bike Sharing System

by Hsun-Ping Hsieh, Fandel Lin, Jiawei Jiang, Tzu-Ying Kuo and Yu-En Chang

Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(15), 6748; https://doi.org/10.3390/app11156748 - 22 Jul 2021

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2585

Abstract

Research on flourishing public bike-sharing systems has been widely discussed in recent years. In these studies, many existing works focus on accurately predicting individual stations in a short time. This work, therefore, aims to predict long-term bike rental/drop-off demands at given bike station locations in the expansion areas. The real-world bike stations are mainly built-in batches for expansion areas. To address the problem, we propose LDA (Long-Term Demand Advisor), a framework to estimate the long-term characteristics of newly established stations. In LDA, several engineering strategies are proposed to extract discriminative and representative features for long-term demands. Moreover, for original and newly established stations, we propose several feature extraction methods and an algorithm to model the correlations between urban dynamics and long-term demands. Our work is the first to address the long-term demand of new stations, providing the government with a tool to pre-evaluate the bike flow of new stations before deployment; this can avoid wasting resources such as personnel expense or budget. We evaluate real-world data from New York City’s bike-sharing system, and show that our LDA framework outperforms baseline approaches. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances on Smart Cities and Smart Buildings)

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30 pages, 935 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Cycle Logistics Projects in Europe: Intertwining Bike-Related Success Factors and Region-Specific Public Policies with Economic Results

by Carlo Giglio, Roberto Musmanno and Roberto Palmieri

Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(4), 1578; https://doi.org/10.3390/app11041578 - 9 Feb 2021

Cited by 15 | Viewed by 3778

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether and which specific, distinctive characteristics of European cycle logistics projects and the corresponding supporting policies have an impact on their economic performances in terms of profit and profitability. First, we identify project success factors by geographic area and project-specific characteristics; then, we statistically test possible dependence relationships with supporting policies and economic results. Finally, we provide a value-based identification of those characteristics and policies which more commonly lead to better economic results. This way, our work may serve as a basis for the prioritization and contextualization of those project functionalities and public policies to be implemented in a European context. We found that cycle logistics projects in Europe achieve high profit and profitability levels, and the current policies are generally working well and supporting them. We also found that profit and profitability vary across the bike model utilized: mixing cargo bikes and tricycles generates the highest profit and profitability, whilst a trailer–tricycle–cargo bike mix paves the way for high volumes and market shares. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances on Smart Cities and Smart Buildings)

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Review

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29 pages, 4476 KiB

Open AccessReview

Sensors for Sustainable Smart Cities: A Review

by Mauricio A. Ramírez-Moreno, Sajjad Keshtkar, Diego A. Padilla-Reyes, Edrick Ramos-López, Moisés García-Martínez, Mónica C. Hernández-Luna, Antonio E. Mogro, Jurgen Mahlknecht, José Ignacio Huertas, Rodrigo E. Peimbert-García, Ricardo A. Ramírez-Mendoza, Agostino M. Mangini, Michele Roccotelli, Blas L. Pérez-Henríquez, Subhas C. Mukhopadhyay and Jorge de Jesús Lozoya-Santos

Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(17), 8198; https://doi.org/10.3390/app11178198 - 3 Sep 2021

Cited by 91 | Viewed by 11182

Abstract

Experts confirm that 85% of the world’s population is expected to live in cities by 2050. Therefore, cities should be prepared to satisfy the needs of their citizens and provide the best services. The idea of a city of the future is commonly represented by the smart city, which is a more efficient system that optimizes its resources and services, through the use of monitoring and communication technology. Thus, one of the steps towards sustainability for cities around the world is to make a transition into smart cities. Here, sensors play an important role in the system, as they gather relevant information from the city, citizens, and the corresponding communication networks that transfer the information in real-time. Although the use of these sensors is diverse, their application can be categorized in six different groups: energy, health, mobility, security, water, and waste management. Based on these groups, this review presents an analysis of different sensors that are typically used in efforts toward creating smart cities. Insights about different applications and communication systems are provided, as well as the main opportunities and challenges faced when making a transition to a smart city. Ultimately, this process is not only about smart urban infrastructure, but more importantly about how these new sensing capabilities and digitization developments improve quality of life. Smarter communities are those that socialize, adapt, and invest through transparent and inclusive community engagement in these technologies based on local and regional societal needs and values. Cyber security disruptions and privacy remain chief vulnerabilities. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances on Smart Cities and Smart Buildings)

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25 pages, 8133 KiB

Open AccessReview

A Systematic Review of Technologies, Control Methods, and Optimization for Extended-Range Electric Vehicles

by David Sebastian Puma-Benavides, Javier Izquierdo-Reyes, Juan de Dios Calderon-Najera and Ricardo A. Ramirez-Mendoza

Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(15), 7095; https://doi.org/10.3390/app11157095 - 31 Jul 2021

Cited by 39 | Viewed by 6612

Abstract

For smart cities using clean energy, optimal energy management has made the development of electric vehicles more popular. However, the fear of range anxiety—that a vehicle has insufficient range to reach its destination—is slowing down the adoption of EVs. The integration of an auxiliary power unit (APU) can extend the range of a vehicle, making them more attractive to consumers. The increased interest in optimizing electric vehicles is generating research around range extenders. These days, many systems and configurations of extended-range electric vehicles (EREVs) have been proposed to recover energy. However, it is necessary to summarize all those efforts made by researchers and industry to find the optimal solution regarding range extenders. This paper analyzes the most relevant technologies that recover energy, the current topologies and configurations of EREVs, and the state-of-the-art in control methods used to manage energy. The analysis presented mainly focuses on finding maximum fuel economy, reducing emissions, minimizing the system’s costs, and providing optimal driving performance. Our summary and evaluation of range extenders for electric vehicles seeks to guide researchers and automakers to generate new topologies and configurations for EVs with optimized range, improved functionality, and low emissions. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances on Smart Cities and Smart Buildings)

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