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The market for smart greenhouses has been valued at USD 1.77 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow to 3.39 billion by 2030. In order to make this more efficient, with the help of Internet of Things (IoT) technology, it is desired to eliminate the problem of traditional agriculture, which has poor monitoring and accuracy control of the parameters of a culture. Climate control decisions in a greenhouse are made based on parameter monitoring systems, which can be remotely controlled. Instead of this adjustment of the measured parameters, it would be preferable from the point of view of energy consumption that they should be calculated at optimal values from the design phase of the greenhouse. For this reason, it would be better to perform an energy simulation of the greenhouse first. For the study carried out in this work, a small greenhouse (mini-greenhouse) was built. It was equipped with an IoT sensor system, which measured indoor climate parameters and could send data to the cloud for future recording and processing. A simplified mathematical model of the heat balance was established, and the measured internal parameters of the mini-greenhouse were compared with those obtained from the simulation. After validating the mathematical model of the mini-greenhouse, this paper aimed to find the optimal position for placing a normal-sized greenhouse. For this, several possible locations and orientations of the greenhouse were compared by running the mathematical model, with which the most unfavorable positions could be eliminated. Then, some considerably cheaper “mini-greenhouses” were made and placed in the locations with the desired orientations. Using sensor systems and technologies similar to those presented in this work, the parameters from all mini-greenhouses can be monitored in real time. This real-time monitoring allows for the simultaneous analysis of all greenhouses, without the disadvantages of data collection directly in the field, with all data being recorded in the cloud and other IoT-specific advantages being made use of. In the end, we can choose the optimal solution for the location of a real-size greenhouse.

In recent years, the number of vehicles in cities has visibly increased, leading to continuous modifications in general mobility. Pollution levels and congestion cases are reaching higher numbers as well, pointing to a need for better optimization solutions. Several existing control systems still rely on fixed timings for traffic lights, lacking an adaptive approach that can adjust the timers depending on real-time conditions. This study aims to provide a design for such a tool, by implementing two different approaches: Fuzzy Logic Optimization and an Adaptive Traffic Management strategy. The first controller involves Fuzzy Logic based on rule-based that adjust green and red-light timings depending on the number of vehicles at an intersection. The second model provides traffic adjustments based on external equipment such as road sensors and cameras, offering dynamic solutions tailored to current traffic conditions. Both methods are tested in a simulated environment using SUMO (Simulation of Urban Mobility). They were evaluated according to key efficiency indicators, namely average waiting time, lost time per cycle, number of stops per intersection, and overall traffic fluidity. Results demonstrate that Q-learning maintains consistent waiting times between 2.57 and 3.71 s across all traffic densities while achieving Traffic Flow Index values above 85%, significantly outperforming Fuzzy Logic, which shows greater variability and lower efficiency under high-density conditions.

An estimation by simulation of the heating energy saving in the cold season due to heavily insulated exterior window shutters closed at night was performed for a low-rise to mid-rise office building in the following three major Romanian cities: Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca and Iasi. All three locations are in a wet temperate continental climate region. The studied building, whose number of floors was varied from 3 to 22, has a rectangle-shaped floor surface. The considered shutters, covering at night only the pane of the window, were assumed to be EPS panels with various thicknesses. In addition to its height more parameters related to the building were varied: its orientation, the height of the windows, the width of the building and the internal gains produced by building lights and equipment. Finally, some short evaluations were performed for a low-U glazing. For the initial glazing used in the simulation, very good potential savings were found. As the assumed heavily insulated shutters do not exist in the Romanian market, three possible design ideas for such shutters have been sketched at the end, all involving a system of guide rails.

The dynamics of the registered tourist flows, at both global and every country level has determined the local stakeholders and private investors to develop new solutions in order to meet the demands imposed by the tourism market. The entire mechanism for adapting the natural environment and the already built space to the new tourist requirements, for the economic development, cause some imbalances in the local territorial system. The evolution trends of the built space, in accordance with the dynamics of the tourist phenomenon in Sinaia resort, are presented in the present study. The main purpose of this research is to know the particularities, the potential, the restrictions and future directions of the resort evolution and also of thelocal community inSinaia. The research results reflect the need for cooperation between the people, the governing bodies and the business companies in the area so that the zonal stability and development of the local economyand also of the community in the study areamight be achieved.

An early phase design exercise for shading a South facade of an office building in Bucharest is presented here. The problem to solve is deciding in a simple and quick way (not using the complicated BSDF approach), based strictly on energy-efficiency considerations, between two options in principle: the first, exterior screens, is much cheaper and the send is unmovable horizontal aluminium slats. The tool used to produce the necessary result quantities by building energy simulation is COMFEN 4.1. The conclusion is positive: if aesthetic reasons are ignored, in Bucharest and very likely many other Romanian cities having a quite similar climate, screens can be at least equally effective in saving energy by South facade shading. As they allow a flexible shading strategy (removing them during some months of the heating season), the energy-efficiency realized by having them on throughout the year can be increased further.

Although there are numerous high performance BMS (Building Management System), which monitor the indoor climate parameters, data access, sensor positioning, and other aspects may not be under control. On the other hand, IoT (Internet of Things) is experiencing exponential growth, as more and more devices and sensors are connected to the cloud. Thus, a sensor monitoring solution for indoor climate parameters was developed. The proposed solution is not expensive, and it is based on a Raspberry Pi board endowed with temperature, humidity, and pressure sensors. The developed application reads the values detected by the sensors, processes the date, and afterwards transmit the information to the IoT ThingSpeak platform. The large area is characteristic of open space offices, so the influence of radiant walls is small, and the operative temperature can be approximate with air temperature. This type of building is conditioned by the air conditioning system, so the air speed in this indoor environment is usually low and could be approximated by the design. So, with the data read by the developed solution the thermal comfort parameters can be approximated. If inadequate values are found, teams that carry out complex and precise measurements could be sent to the site. To achieve this goal a PMV calculator software is developed. Its validity is tested in accordance with the European standard ISO 7730. After that, the PMV computer is used with data read from sensors. Both the data read from the sensors and the newly calculated PMV are sent to the ThingSpeak IoT platform.

In the last period, Internet of Things (IoT) is experiencing an increasing development, and the tendency of hosting applications and especially data, in cloud computing systems is growing. Currently, most of the Building Management System (BMS) analyse directly data or transfer it to the cloud. In this context, the proposed solution aims to read indoor thermal climate data from cloud computing platform and based on them operate a hydraulic motor. The input data could be generated by an in-house sensor monitoring solution or by a foreign BMS system that transmits open source data to cloud. In this study some conditions are imposed to the input data and as a result, control current is generated and transmitted in order to command proportional electro-hydraulic valve that drive a hydraulic motor. The electro-hydraulic valve is controlled with the help of an amplifier, by a data acquisition board (DAQ) that runs LabView application. With the help of the developed software, the motor speed and the direction of rotation can be controlled. In last years, the number of requests for architectures projects with moveable elements has increased because they multiply the possible use of the buildings. With the information generated by the sensors that measure the indoor climate parameters, the hydraulic motor could be used in such a construction. Examples of atypical buildings with special functionalities that the architects would propose and that needs high torque actuation are presented in this paper.

The first Passive House (PH) was built in 1990/1991 in Darmstadt-Kranischstein (Germany). It was the first real-size implementation of a concept proposed by Wolfgang Feist. Since then, several empirical design solutions have been developed by the Passive House Institute (PHI) of Darmstadt. This paper deals with the feasibility of the PH concept in Southern Hemisphere. The paper compares general climate conditions for 13 European localities and 38 localities in South America, South Africa, mainland Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. Further analysis is performed by estimating the energy performance of a prototype passive building when located in any of these localities. The prototype passive building is AMVIC PH built in 2008 in Bragadiru (Romania). The energy performance is evaluated by using the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP) developed by PHI. Passive buildings located in Tasmanian and South American localities at latitudes higher than 53° have a higher heating demand than European localities at similar latitudes. New Zealand and South American localities at latitudes lower than 53° generally have lower heating demand than European localities at the same latitude. The cooling demand is generally smaller in Southern Hemisphere than in Northern Hemisphere. Passive buildings placed in Tasmania, New Zealand, and South America do not require cooling while those located in South Africa and mainland Australia require a reduced amount of cooling.

European Directives which establish energy targets for 2020 and 2030 are the main legislation when it comes to reducing the energy consumption of buildings. Energy efficiency is a large field of study, it doesn't mean only energy consumption minimization by improving measures applied to building envelope and its systems. An efficient use of energy and spaces is very important too. Facility Management (FM) is a field of study that considers all the aspects of a building in this regard. Main pieces of software in the field were reviewed in order to find the better software to use for space management analysis. A well known software - ARCHIBUS, that can integrate Building Information Models (BIMs) was chosen. BIMs are files containing physical and functional characteristics of the building and linked data, which can be exchanged or networked to support decision-making. Using a Romanian office building and its digital plans, a BIM has been done. For this BIM, a space allocation in agreement with organizational company structure, with functional company structure and with a Romanian standard, SR 1907-2, relate to design indoor temperature, was done in ARCHIBUS software. From all space classifications the methods of energy improvement are discussed.

Global current requirement is to increase thermal comfort in residential and non residential buildings. A field survey was accomplished in a naturally ventilated university classroom in Bucharest, Romania, in winter and spring. Comfort parameters were measured and comfort questionnaires were distributed to the students. Questions were related to thermal sensation of the occupants. This paper compares the experimental results with the occupant's response. It analyzes the variation of Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) and Predicted Percent of Dissatisfied (PPD) with temperature. It is made a comparison between PMV and thermal sensation vote. The results show PMV values different from Thermal Sensation Vote (TSV) values which means there is a poor approximation of indoor comfort. In conclusion the comfort parameters should be reviewed and should be proposed other evaluation methods. Possible explanations are discussed in relation with thermal regime of the buildings.