ABSTRACT
Buildings are on the way to transform from passive isolated elements to smart buildings, able to adapt to occupants needs and behave as active nodes, integrated to the energy grids and other infrastructures. The potential of smart technologies in the building sector was heavily emphasized in the 2018 revision of the European Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) and the creation of the Smart Readiness Indicator concept. While technologies are available to increase buildings’ smartness and the related benefits, numerous challenges remain to ensure their societal and regulatory adoption as well as their technical integration within building and into relevant services. The European project SmartBuilt4EU, aims to foster collaboration between stakeholders of the smart building innovation community in order to address such remaining challenges. The Task Forces set up by the project gather a variety of stakeholders within this community and aiming to address in a collective manner some specific topics related to smart buildings that require further investigation to enable their full uptake. This paper synthesizes the first topics investigated by the Task Forces: 1) End-users acceptance and attractiveness; 2) Interoperability; 3) Providing flexibility to electricity grids; 4) Business models and smart financing. It presents the key questions tackled by each Task Force, the barriers and drivers detected in relation to each topic, and the resulting research and innovation gaps identified.
