Developing a standardized categorization system for energy efficiency measures (1836-RP)

AbstractThe growth of legislation to reduce energy use in existing buildings is producing a rich new trove of data about energy efficiency measures (EEMs), which has the potential to unlock new insights into the built environment. However, the lack of standardized EEM naming conventions and categorization methods is currently a major barrier to aggregating and analyzing this data. The goal of this study was to develop and test a novel standardized system for categorizing EEMs. The system consists of two components: a three-level building element-based categorization hierarchy, and a set of measure name tags, which are used to label an EEM and categorize it on the hierarchy. A demonstration and testing process was developed and applied to two sample datasets to evaluate the ability of the system to categorize a variety of EEMs. The results show that most EEMs can easily be categorized manually according to the new system, and highlight several challenges for automated categorization, including EEM names that are missing an element, contain a term not in the tag list, or contain synonyms or abbreviations. These results provide a replicable and systematic framework for the translation, aggregation, and analysis of EEM datasets from different sources.DisclaimerAs a service to authors and researchers we are providing this version of an accepted manuscript (AM). Copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proofs will be undertaken on this manuscript before final publication of the Version of Record (VoR). During production and pre-press, errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal relate to these versions also.