General Track

Full track papers, short track papers and doctoral abstracts/A1 posters within the scope of the conference may be submitted to one of the following General Track sessions. These papers will be reviewed by knowledgeable referees, and if accepted, allocated to oral or poster sessions for presentation at the conference. There will be prizes for the best full paper, the best short paper, the best doctoral poster, and the best invited conference track.

Authors may also submit to an Invited Session if invited to do so by the session chair, or their paper fits the scope of the session better than the General Track.

The General Track Sessions are as follows:-

Sustainable Buildings for Smart Cities and Rural Conurbations

The Sustainable Buildings track considers the environmental, economic, and social and community challenges for enhancing the performance of buildings and their controls, and also the comfort, health and wellbeing of occupants and users of these buildings; and their immediate micro environment for smart cities and smart rural conurbations. Sustainable Buildings include new low carbon, zero carbon and net positive buildings, and also existing buildings (heritage or otherwise) that are retrofitted with improvements to increase their performance, comfort, reduce energy usage and increase their acoustic and fire performance for their users. There are numerous processes involved in creating Sustainable Buildings, including design, construction or retrofit, commissioning and finally operation. The application of building science and technology can be used to assess, monitor, optimise, reflect upon and test Sustainable Buildings, their Controls and the Building's immediate environment. In this track, papers are invited that address one aspect of more of the considerations discussed, and/or fall under the following themes:
- Sustainable buildings for comfort and health; building construction and envelope systems; HVAC systems; user behaviour, operational vs embodied energy. Analyses through either quantitative or qualitative techniques during the design, construction, commissioning, handover, operation or retrofit and refurbishment process in existing neighbourhoods in rural or urban (smart towns and cities) conurbations, cities or in new Smart Cities. Techniques can include: desktop (theoretical) case studies; physical testing of internal comfort and health conditions versus energy use and climate conditions; building users comfort and health; occupant and design team interviews.
- Building performance assessment: dynamic thermal modelling, dynamic hygrothermal modelling, thermal bridge analysis; thermography; air tightness testing; heat flux testing; energy profiling; moisture mapping; whole building smoke tests; co-heating etc; fire performance assessment and building safety measurements and surveys; acoustic measurements, including audits, surveys and tests.
- Design tools and methodologies: Building Information Modelling; education and training; development of assessment, monitoring and optimisation methods; comparison of methodologies and regulations in one country or between countries; modelling, optimisation and validation of building, neighbourhoods and cities.
- Post occupancy and in-use evaluation: building system performance; building integrated renewable energy performance; user interaction in buildings, neighbourhoods and cities; use and evaluation of user guides; evaluation of design team and occupant walk-throughs.

Chair:
John Littlewood, Cardiff Metropolitan University, Wales, UK

Smart Cities and Smart Districts

The Smart City concept aims to improve the performance of cities with a vision not only for citizen’s prosperity but the sustainability of cities environmentally, socially and economically by using emerging technologies such as Big Data, Internet of Things, Building Information Modelling, City Information Modelling, Building Automation Systems to integrate the key systems of the city for effective and efficient interactions, that would include Smart Grids for renewable integration to the energy supply; Smart meters for real time energy use management, control and optimisation; Smart city planning processes with social innovation and Smart health services for social sustainability; Smart motorways for efficient and effective transport systems. Examples can be more when smart cities concept is associated with sustainable cities.

In this track, we will welcome research papers about Smart Cities covering the following topics but not limited to:
- Cloud computing as the driver of innovation for Smart Cities - Internet of Things for Smart City deployment
- Big Data analytics for smart processing data for Smart Cities
- Cloud BIM for Supply Chain Integration in Civil projects for Smart Cities
- Social innovation for Smart City Planning
- Building Information Modelling for Digital Design and Construction
- 3DGIS and City Information Modelling for Smart City Planning.

This conference track will present and publish on state-of-the-arts and emerging technologies for Smart City developments. It will compile research outcomes and useful insights for clear-cut understanding of Smart Cities and reveals areas of improvement to meet current challenges for Smart City deployments.

Chair:
Professor Yusuf Arayici, Hasan Kalyoncu University, Turkey

Renewable Energy Technologies

Solar photovoltaic energy, solar thermal energy systems, concentrating solar power, small- and large-scale installations; wind power; wave, ocean and hydro power; biomass and bio energy; geothermal energy technologies; ground-source and air-source heat pumps; materials for renewable energy technologies; hydrogen production and storage, fuel cells; electrical engineering for renewable energy, power conversion systems, stand alone and grid-connected converters; designs for renewable energy; integration of renewable energy sources with buildings and the built environment; financial incentives, policies, regulations and solutions for the transition to renewable energy; combined heat and power; renewable energy based district heating and cooling.

Chairs:
Prasad Kaparaju, Griffiths University, Australia
Chandima Ekanayake, Griffiths University, Australia