Inteligent building research a review.docVIP

Intelligent building research: a review Abstract：Within the last two decades, substantial amount of literature on intelligent building has been generated. However, there is a lack of systematic review of existing research efforts and achievements. A comprehensive review on existing research provides great benefits to identify where more efforts are needed and therefore the future research directions. For this purpose, this paper reviews the literature related to the subject area of intelligent building. Our review indicates that previous research efforts have dealt mainly with three research aspects including advanced and innovative intelligent technologies research, performance evaluation methodologies and investment evaluation analysis. It is also identified that among the three research aspects, relatively less literature has been found addressing the issues of investment evaluation of intelligent buildings. Based on a comprehensive literature review, the paper also summarizes a few future research directions, which are useful to researchers working in this important area. D 2004 Published by Elsevier B.V. Keywords: Intelligent building; Definition; Performance evaluation; Investment evaluation; Net present value; Life cycle costing analysis; Cost benefit analysis; Analytical hierarchy process; Fuzzy set theory。 Introduction The word ‘intelligent’ was first used to describe buildings in the United States at the beginning of the 1980s. The concept of ‘intelligent building’ was stimulated by the development of information technology and increasingly sophisticated demand for ‘comfort living environment and requirement for increased occupant control of their local environments’. Research on intelligent building has been conducted ubiquitously and research results have been published in many academic journals. Much research work has been focusing on the discussion of intelligent building technology development and performance evaluation methodologies. However, little