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On the 5^th of May 2021, University of Florence (Italy), partner of Med-EcoSuRe, hosted an online event to propose tools and instruments supporting the decision process of the project stakeholders, with the aim to obtain a vey effective and user friendly toolkit to renovate buildings and to ensure the well being of occupants in Mediterranean universities.

The event was divided into three parts:

1. The results of the survey “Challenging Energy Efficiency in University Buildings” 

Exploiting the Living Lab of Med-EcoSuRe, a survey was launched in order to calibrate the tool of passive solutions developed, according to how Mediterranean universities actually deal with the retrofit process. The main objective of the survey was to have a knowledge framework of the Mediterranean Universities approach foreseeing retrofit processes in the university buildings assets.

The survey had the participation of energy managers, decision makers, engineers and technicians from 12 Mediterranean countries and from the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research in Tunisia. One of the main results drawn from the survey are:

• No clear/difficulties in having a clear framework of retrofitting in public universities when the number of buildings is important.
• The reasons behind not performing energy audits are lack of personnel, high costs, and the fact that audits are not compulsory by the law in some cases.

Following the analysis of the survey results, the team defined a matrix of focal points (summarized in the figure below) in order to overcome the existing criticalities of the retrofit process and to calibrate the project toolkit:

Figure.1. a matrix of focal points proposing solutions r to overcome the existing criticalities of the retrofit process

2. The environmental monitoring system implemented in the pilot site of the University of Florence

The environmental monitoring process/setting in the pilot site “Santa Verdiana” of the university of Florence was presented;

The monitoring system was implemented with the aim to propose solutions enabling to achieve energy efficiency, internal comfort and well being in terms of thermal air quality and lighting conditions…

Some of the actions already achieved are:

• Development of a digital Twin (virtual representation) in order to evaluate the performance of the pilot building in the university;
• Development and design of systems for data acquisition, post processing and data visualization. This will allow a real time monitoring and assessment of the building behavior as well as the comfort level inside;
• Evaluation of the occupancy and perceived  indoor environment, in collaboration with the Italian company Luce5.

Figure.2. Presentation of the environmental monitoring system installed at the pilot building of University of Florence

3. The experience of collaborating with the Technical Office of University of Florence to establish the project Living Lab and to develop the toolkit of passive solutions for Higher education buildings

In collaboration with the technical office, the first BIM (Building Information Modeling) model of the pilot site Santa Verdiana was built and integrated with digital twin solutions with the aim to display and assess the building energy performance and indoor environmental quality (IEQ) by means of a continuous monitoring system.

The project team has set up an approach to support the building management while improving performance and reducing costs by connecting management to operation. Adapting this approach in Med-EcoSuRe will enable to create scenarios such as quality assessment and control, building automation, intelligent decision making support…

Finally, the analysis of the context will lead to a greater knowledge of the criticalities and therefore to the definition of priorities, planning and monitoring in order to be able to intervene with corrective actions, which is one of the main goals of Med-EcoSuRe project.