OPTIMUS 2014 - Special Session on Linking Smart Cities with Energy optimization

One of the major challenges that EU faces within the scope of sustainable energy development is the increasing energy demand patterns of cities.
Nowadays, the cities are characterized by a concentration of people, communities, activities, flows and impacts leading to severe sustainability challenges. Energy is an essential component of life in cities, since it supports the whole spectrum of their economic activities, and secures a certain level of quality of life to their residents.
Although there are plenty of energy and other related data sets available at the city level, their appropriate integration for local authorities’
decision support remains a challenge. Approaches exploiting multidisciplinary data sources to analyze and integrate them in a smart way, towards cities’ energy optimization remain still a challenge.
To contribute to solve the problems of increasing energy consumption, cities are turning to advanced technologies to become “Smart Cities”.
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure is considered a key enabler in the process of building sustainable energy cities.
Aim of the current special session is to present the latest research efforts towards energy use optimization at the city level using multidisciplinary data sources. Indicatively, energy decisions at the city level could be affected by a series of parameters, such as:
* Upcoming weather conditions
* Upcoming events for the city (e.g. public holidays, strikes on public transportation, concerts, festivals, sport events, etc.) and forecasted participation of citizens.
* Energy consumption patterns & parameters in buildings of different use & scope (e.g. hospital, schools, stadiums, etc.)
* Prices of energy provided by various energy producers
* Level and type of energy production from any energy production facilities available to the city
In this respect, this special session will emphasize on effective ways of data capturing from different input flows of data sources, to drive towards energy optimization approaches.
Moreover, the special session will also welcome studies that propose frameworks of evaluating the energy status of a city, taking into consideration the achievement of the 2020 energy objectives and their commitment and engagement towards energy savings and emission reductions.
Organizing Committee:
Prof. John Psarras, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
Assistant Prof. John Paravantis, University of Piraeus, Greece
Dr. Haris Doukas, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
Important Dates:
Paper submission: Friday February 28, 2014
Author notification: Monday March 31, 2014
Camera-ready paper submission: Friday April 18, 2014
Contact Information:
Prof. John Psarras, National Technical University of Athens
Assistant Prof. John Paravantis, University of Piraeus, email: paravantis-AT-gmail.com & jparav-AT-unipi.gr
Dr. Haris Doukas, National Technical University of Athens, email: h_doukas-AT-epu.ntua.gr