Using DEVS for modeling and simulation of ambient objects in intelligent buildings

Abstract

Modern intelligent buildings should be designed to provide comfort and optimal quality of life for occupants. Therefore, smart home devices that allow for the control of actual indoor ambience, which is critical to minimizing dissatisfaction, and simultaneously reduce the energy consumption must be modeled. In this paper, we propose an original model of the contribution of objects, where each object contributes to a type of ambience, namely, thermal, visual, acoustic and air quality. In other words, a given indoor ambience is defined by the contribution of objects. The discrete event system specification (DEVS) is a formalism for describing simulation models in a modular way. The modular nature of the DEVS formalism is exploited in this study by forming submodels of smart objects that allow domain experts to develop simulation techniques independently and later combine their work for reducing energy consumption and improving comfort. We have incorporated fuzzy reasoning methods in the DEVS formalism to account for the human perception error in an indoor environment, allowing for improved indoor environmental quality management in buildings.