Laure Itard

Professorship chair

Building Energy Epidemiology (Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Department Architectural Engineering + Technology (AE+T)).

Research area

The topic of my research is performance analysis, diagnosis, and optimization of energy systems in operation, at the level of buildings, neighborhoods and the national building stock, with focus on heating and cooling.

We research and develop analysis methods combining data science (e.g. based on CBS microdata or high frequency monitoring data from Energy Management Systems) and statistics with physic-based thermodynamic models, building physics and behavioral sciences.

This way we are able to understand better the complex interactions between scales (from building to city to country) and between buildings, indoor climate equipment, and occupants, delivering input to designers and policy makers.

Recent results

The IEBB project (Integral Energy Transition in Existing Buildings) was subsidized by MMIP 3&4 (Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs & Climate Policy as well as the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations).TUD delft, TNO (MBE-Positive Built Environment), TU/e and many other partners worked together. In IEBB-2 (Data driven optimization of renovation concepts), new knowledge was developed on user-centric designs, lots of monitoring data before and after renovation of houses was collected, and digital twins were developed to predict energy use and also to characterize buildings using inverse engineering of smart meter data. Most results can be found via this link.

I am currently leading the project Brains4Buildings, a multi-year project with 39 partners (companies, universities, TNO and diverse professional organizations) ,focused on developing methods to harness big data from smart meters and building management systems to reduce energy consumption, increase comfort, respond flexibly to user behaviour and local energy supply and demand, and to save on installation maintenance costs. From TNO-EMT side, we work at advancing the implementation of the heating and cooling transition at system level, by collecting data and developing knowledge, models and tools to support the decision making of national and local governments, grid operators, heating suppliers, banks or energy communities.. Examples of such tools are Hestia for energy transition scenario analysis in the built environment; Energy Potential Scan for the energy transition of cluster 6 industries.

PHD supervision

Currently:

• Z. Wang, ‘DBN-based fault diagnosis methods for optimal operation & energy flexibility’,
• A.I. Joseph Thaddeus ‘Characterization of buildings’ physical characteristics through ML and smart meter data analytics’

Top publications

• C Lu, Z Wang, Martín Mosteiro-Romero, LCM Itard Introducing Causality to Symptom Baseline Estimation: A Critical Case Study in Fault Detection of Building Energy Systems; The 5th Asia Conference of International Building Performance Simulation Association 2024. December 8-10^th, Osaka, Japan
• Rasooli A. Itard L., 2020, Automated in-situ determination of buildings’ global thermo-physical characteristics and air change rates through inverse modelling of smart meter and air temperature data, Energy and Buildings 229, 110484 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2020.110484
• Taal A.C., Itard L., 2020, P&ID-based automated fault identification for energy performance diagnosis in HVAC systems: 4S3F method, development of DBN models and application to an ATES system; Energy & Buildings 224 (2020) 110289 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2020.110289
• Ioannou, T. & Itard, L. 2018, In-situ and real time measurements of thermal comfort and comparison with the adaptive comfort theory in Dutch residential dwellings,Energy and Buildings. 170 (2018), p.229-241. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2018.04.006
• Majcen, D., Itard, L. & Visscher, H. Actual heating energy savings in thermally renovated Dutch dwellings, 2016, Energy Policy. 97, p. 82-92https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2016.07.01
• Majcen D.,  Itard L., Visscher H, Theoretical vs. actual energy consumption of labelled dwellings in the Netherlands: Discrepancies and policy implications  January 2013, Energy Policy 54 (2013), 125-136 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2012.11.008
• Blom, IS, Itard, LCM & Meijer, A (2011). Environmental impact of building-related and user-related energy consumption in dwellings. Building and Environment, 46(8), 1657-1669. https://doi.org//10.1016/j.buildenv.2011.02.002
• O. Guerra Santin, L. Itard, H. Visscher, The effect of occupancy and building characteristics on energy use for space and water heating in Dutch Residential stock, Energy & Buildings , July 2009, number 41, pp. 1223-1232. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2009.07.002