Open Access

Data-driven models for building thermal dynamics are a scalable approach for enabling energy-efficient operation through fault detection & diagnosis or advanced control. To obtain accurate models, measurement data from a target building spanning months to years are required. Transfer Learning (TL) mitigates this challenge by employing pretrained models based on single or multiple source buildings. General multi-source TL models promise to outperform single-source TL, but alternative multi-source modeling architectures remain to be explored, and evaluation on real-world data is missing. Moreover, time series foundation models (TSFM) have emerged as candidates for the best-performing general models. Hence, we conduct a first, comprehensive assessment of general modeling approaches for building thermal dynamics, including multi-source TL and TSFMs. Our assessment includes ablations using four state-of-the-art multi-source TL architectures and evaluations on synthetic as well as real-world data. We demonstrate that multi-source TL models are highly effective in accurately modeling buildings in real-world applications, yielding up to 63% lower forecasting errors compared to single-source TL. Moreover, our results suggest a trade-off between multi-source TL models exclusively pretrained with building data and TSFMs pretrained with a multitude of different time series, revealing that data from 16-32 source buildings must be available over 1 year for pretraining multi-source TL models to consistently outperform TSFMs as evaluated using the mean absolute error. These findings provide practical guidance for selecting modeling strategies based on the number of source buildings available for pretraining multi-source TL models.

Das Buch bietet eine umfassende und praxisorientierte Einführung in die wesentlichen Grundlagen und Konzepte der Informatik. Es umfasst den Stoff, der typischerweise in den ersten Semestern eines Informatikstudiums vermittelt wird, vertieft Zusammenhänge, die darüber hinausgehen und macht sie verständlich. Die Themenauswahl orientiert sich an der langfristigen Relevanz für die praktische Anwendung. Praxisnah und aktuell werden die Inhalte für Studierende der Informatik und verwandter Studiengänge sowie für im Beruf stehende Praktiker vermittelt.

The present paper examines which benefit an automated documentation of the IT infrastructure can have for the configuration management process of ITIL, and whether it is possible to fully automate documentation. The result is the conclusion that the documentation process can be fully automated. It follows from this analysis that the automated documentation can “only” supply information for the ITIL configuration management, respectively for the CMDB.

The use of multimedia can significantly improve the quality of case studies, especially with regard to their presentation of reality. The development of multimedia case studies poses a challenge of both a creative and a technical nature. This paper describes the various stages of the development of the case study itself as well as an action model which supports the application of didactical aims in a multimedia case study. This paper then describes experiences with a multimedia case study used at the Department of Information Systems for training students in data processing for business purposes. The report includes a description of how the case study was integrated as a didactic element in a university course, with special emphasis being given to theoretical aspects of presentation and learning. Additionally, a description of the case study and its development rounds off the article. The experiences were gained within the framework of an explorational, empirical study whose results are presented at the end of this paper and form the basis of suggestions for how the case study could be developed further.

The IT architecture for meter reading and utility services is at the core of new business models and has a decisive role as an enabler for resource efficiency measures. The communication architecture used by those services has significant impact on cost, flexibility and speed of new service rollout. This article describes how the dominant system model for meter reading came about, what alternative models exist, and what trade-offs those models have for rollout of new services by different stakeholders. Control of a self learning home automation system by dynamic tariff information (Real-Time-Pricing) is given as an application example.