Qatar Greener Schools Initiative

In this project, we propose a new Energy Management System (EMS) for greener schools in Qatar. The proposed model architecture aims at providing a new perspective for automatic and intelligent management of electricity distribution networks integrating green energy (e.g. solar energy) and enabling secure and reliable ICT within the future Qatar Smart Grid infrastructure. School buildings are selected because they house current and future generations of citizens who will be educated on green technologies and behaviors. This project provides participating schools with the resources and communications support they need to educate their students and staff community on renewable energy and energy efficiency best practices. The technical part of project tackles both hardware and software approaches for intelligent monitoring, benchmarking and controlling of the energy production and consumption by selected schools. Artificial intelligence is applied for monitoring and displaying, benchmarking and controlling the energy usage. Device-to-device as well as Internet-of-Things (IoT) communication frameworks and protocols will be considered and further developed, enabling better system security, reliability, flexibility, and expandability. Due to their specific occupants, activities and occupancy pattern, schools require special attention on energy monitoring and building energy management system, since, indoor environmental quality (IEQ) are more important than energy efficiency issues. Students' comfort in schools is principally determined by three factors: thermal comfort, visual comfort, and indoor air quality comfort, which are typically controlled through heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system and lighting system. However, sustaining high comfortable indoor environment always leads to extreme energy consumption. Moreover, if the school includes local renewable energy generation facility to be more environment friendly, maximizing this renewable energy is an additional objective. In most of multi-objective optimization problems, usually the objectives are in conflict with each other and a set of trade-off solutions representing the best possible compromises among the different objectives can be found. Therefore, an intelligent multi-zone multi-objective school energy management system will be developed with a multi-objective optimization technique. Furthermore, an accurate and fair benchmarking system is developed, which allows the classifications and ranking of different participating schools based on well-defined key performance indicators.

Given the heterogeneity of the sensing, controlling and communication components involved in this project, the security framework is based on a lightweight Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) Key Policy Attribute Based Encryption Scheme, which guarantees both the security and the privacy of the data from its early acquisition (secure sensing), throughout the different communication channels (secure communications), to the final phases of processing and acting (secure processing).This is tackled to overcome challenges related to resource-constrained IoT devices that collect sensor data over time.

The communication topology is a mesh communication network enabling a flexible self-forming and organizing network of all member IoT devices that are not necessarily within range of the service provider (i.e. the access point).

Schools can provide hands-on experience for their students by involving them in responsible use of energy to understand how everyday actions impact on the environment so their attitude to other environmental issues becomes more positive. Despite some research attempting to place children at the central stage, there is a struggle to provide rich and valid quantitative and qualitative understanding of children’s roles in energy behavior in Qatar. Furthermore, this issue of children’s’ knowledge and behavior regarding saving energy is common to Qatar, which has one of the largest energy consumption per capita in the world). The ‘Qatar National Vision 2030’ emphasizes the importance of increasing awareness of protecting the country’s environment. However, psychological research is required to further understand and establish the key cognitive factors influencing children’s barriers to energy behavior. Therefore, part of this project focuses on how to increase energy saving awareness, attitudes and behaviors in Qatari primary and secondary schools. Researching this topic will stimulate a better understanding of Qatari children’s’ and adolescents’ attitudes, knowledge and behavior towards saving energy and environmental issues. Both National utility (KAHRAMAA) and selected world-class multinational utilities (IBERDROLA) are involved to grant the necessary short and long-term interrelations and support. For instance, IBERDROLA and KAHRAMAA agreed to this collaboration, by co-funding (in cash and in kind) this project and supplying experts and engineers to support the researchers during the whole project and beyond.​