Following an intensive period of installation and commissioning across its demonstration sites, SMARTeeSTORY has reached a key transition point. The technical groundwork is largely complete: systems are installed, equipment is operational, and digital infrastructures are in place.

The focus is now shifting. The question is no longer how to set up the system, but how it performs in real buildings, with real users, in real conditions. This marks the beginning of a new phase where the project meets reality.

Turning buildings into connected environments

Commissioning has enabled buildings to become active parts of the SMARTeeSTORY system. Sensors, control systems, and building management infrastructures are now monitoring energy use, indoor environmental conditions, and user behaviour.

At the same time, the platform is beginning to connect with these systems, allowing data to be transferred and aggregated. Initial integrations show how different components: from devices to cloud services, can start working together. In essence, buildings are becoming connected, data-driven environments, forming the foundation for more intelligent operation.

Moving from assumptions to real-world data

A major milestone is the start of pre-monitoring activities across the demo sites. For the first time, the project is generating real operational data on both building performance and user experience. This is a critical shift. Much of the work so far has been based on models and assumptions. Now, SMARTeeSTORY begins to build the evidence needed to validate and refine its approach.

At the same time, this phase reveals complexity. Data is not yet consistently available across all sites or fully integrated into the platform. As a result, the project sits in an intermediate stage: data is being produced, but not yet fully leveraged.

Preparing the intelligence layer

In parallel, advanced work on predictive models and control strategies is largely in place. These tools are designed to optimise energy use and improve comfort based on user needs. However, their full deployment depends on reliable and continuous data streams. Without this, models cannot be properly calibrated or validated.

The project is therefore technically ready, but still needs real-world data to unlock its full potential.The current focus is increasingly on integration: connecting data, models, and building systems into a fully functioning ecosystem. Initial progress is visible, but full end-to-end operation, where the system can analyse and respond in real time, is still ahead. Achieving this requires stable data flows and consistent performance across all demonstration sites.

Navigating real-world complexity

We've learned from our demo sites that working in real buildings inevitably brings challenges. Integration issues between systems, site-specific constraints, and regulatory or procurement processes continue to shape progress. In some cases, planned interventions need to be adapted or postponed, requiring additional coordination and problem solving.

While these factors can slow development, they are essential to understanding how such solutions perform outside controlled environments. They highlight what it truly takes to implement smart, user-centred building systems in practice.

SMARTeeSTORY has laid the necessary groundwork for smart and energy efficient historical buildings. Systems are running, data collection has begun, and analytical tools are ready to be applied. The project is now transitioning from building its technical foundation to demonstrating real-world impact: where the most critical work happens.

The sustainability, energy efficiency, and comfort of a building often lies hand in hand with its facade. Aside from being the most visible part of the building, façades play an important role in creating a healthy indoor environment, contribute to sustainable building practices, and are key in reducing operational costs due to their potential longevity.

SMARTeeSTORY's TU Delft team has contributed to the Massive Open Online Course on Performance-based Façade Design. There, in module 5.4 designed to focus on user comfort in the acoustic and multi domain areas of the building, they explore how facades can be designed with the user comfort in mind:

Users in a building space are simultaneously exposed to different environmental domains: from thermal, visual (light levels and views outside the window), acoustics, and air quality. All these factors combined creates what the user perceives as comfort in an indoor space. Understanding the user experience and how they behave is thus an important measure in determining how successful a design is.

Check out the full course on TU Delft's online learning platform:

SMARTeeSTORY will be holding a training on the 'smartness' of historical building at the Conference on Cultural Heritage and New Technologies 2026 (CHNT31) on the 11th-13th of November in Vienna, Austria.

Training Session:

Smartness of Historical Buildings: Approaches and lessons learnt from a real application

The training aims to address barriers to the renovation of historic buildings by demonstrating how automation of Technical Building Systems (TBS) and the application of the Smart Readiness Indicator (SRI) can increase building smartness while supporting decarbonisation goals.

You can attend our training session by attending CHNT31.
Already attending? Register for the training session here

About CHNT31

Cultural heritage is understood most clearly when encountered in the places where it originates: in the field, within historic structures, and across landscapes shaped by human activity. Digital technologies—whether applied in surveying, documentation, analysis, or interpretive work—play a decisive role across the heritage field. Yet their true significance emerges not in controlled settings, but in real operational contexts, where dust, weather, material decay, human presence, and logistical constraints influence every choice. The conference invites researchers, practitioners, site managers, policy actors, students, and community representatives to jointly reflect on the shared responsibilities and opportunities that arise when scientific knowledge, digital innovation, and management practice intersect.

Early bird registrations are open for CHNT31 until August 2026!

The Conference on Cultural Heritage and New Technologies (CHNT31) addresses the practical realities of cultural heritage work – from archaeological and architectural field research to World Heritage management, including but not limited to:

• Digital documentation
• AI-supported analysis, interpretation
• Community engagement
• Responsible data governance
• FAIR and open data
• Virtual reconstruction
• Computational archaeology
• 3D data acquisition and management
• Citizen science

About CHNT31

Cultural heritage is understood most clearly when encountered in the places where it originates: in the field, within historic structures, and across landscapes shaped by human activity. Digital technologies—whether applied in surveying, documentation, analysis, or interpretive work—play a decisive role across the heritage field. Yet their true significance emerges not in controlled settings, but in real operational contexts, where dust, weather, material decay, human presence, and logistical constraints influence every choice. The conference invites researchers, practitioners, site managers, policy actors, students, and community representatives to jointly reflect on the shared responsibilities and opportunities that arise when scientific knowledge, digital innovation, and management practice intersect.
This year's edition happens on the 11-13 November in Vienna, Austria.
Paper submission open until 30th of April

Join SMARTeeSTORY at CHNT31! Learn more about SMARTeeSTORY's training session.

The SMARTeeSTORY consortium is pleased to announce that our project has been featured by CORDIS, the European Commission’s primary platform for disseminating research outcomes funded under EU programmes.

This coverage reflects the relevance of our work and its contribution to the broader European agenda on sustainable energy, digitalisation, and heritage preservation. The article, titled “A web tool for smart historic buildings”, highlights SMARTeeSTORY new Smart Readiness Indicator (SRI) Calculation Web Tool designed to support the digital and energy transition of non-residential historic buildings across Europe.

The feature is now publicly available in six languages, expanding the visibility of our results across Europe and beyond.

Learn more about the SRI Calculation Web Tool here.

Test the tool directly here.

Bringing historic buildings into the digital age is not about replacing their character or radically altering their structure. It is about enabling these buildings to operate more intelligently—using data, automation and digital control to improve energy performance and comfort while respecting heritage constraints. In SMARTeeSTORY, this digital transition begins with a critical step: making sure that newly installed systems can function together as a coherent, reliable whole.

That step is known as commissioning: marking the moment when historic buildings move from having digital equipment installed to being truly digitally operational. Commissioning ensures that sensors, controllers, automation software and communication networks are correctly configured, connected and responsive. In practical terms, it confirms that the building is ready to generate trustworthy data, execute control strategies and support the next phase of smart energy management.

In simple terms, it’s best described as “making sure everything talks to each other properly.” For experts, it’s the detailed validation of communication protocols, power availability, automation logic, device behaviour, remote access, and alignment with the SMARTeeSTORY Building Energy Management System (BEMS) architecture.

 During the site visit, partners verified that data flows were stable and devices responded as designed. This way they made sure that each building was technically ready for the next stage: optimisation.

 Across the three demonstrators, commissioning means bringing different systems into alignment. While each building has its own combination of technologies, the work broadly centred on three areas:

• Environmental responsiveness: from weather‑linked controls to shading or lighting adjustments where applicable.
• Thermal comfort: ensuring HVAC systems respond predictably to real occupancy and usage patterns.
• Digital integration: validating data flows, communication protocols and the automation server that coordinates monitoring and control.

Riga City Hall: Reinforcing the building’s intelligence layer

Riga’s focuses on turning a historic government building into a smarter, more responsive system. During commissioning, partners made sure that the building’s “intelligence layer” operated cleanly and consistently. This means checking the building systems connection to controllers, sensors, automation server and monitoring equipment. They also integrated new elements such as solar panels, EV chargers and a weather station. All of these components feed data into upcoming optimisation strategies.

Granada’s Royal Chancellery: Stability in a heritage landmark

Granada presents a different kind of complexity: a mix of historical architecture and modern mechanical equipment. Commissioning here was about ensuring that the systems enabling comfort — HVAC equipment, fan coils and lighting — responded precisely to control logic.

TU Delft Faculty of Architecture: A complex testbed for user‑centric control

The Delft demonstrator sits within a heritage‑protected university building that is driven by a mission. TU Delft aims to reach CO₂‑neutral and circular operations by 2030. The office spaces that make up the demonstrator in Delft are used by a variety of people for different purposes during the week. This variable occupancy and diverse uses of space makes Delft ideal as a testing ground: showing how digital systems adapt to people rather than the other way around.

Looking Ahead: From Verified Systems to Smarter Buildings

With commissioning in all three sites complete, the demonstrator buildings are now connected and ready for the next steps. The project will begin data collection, test advanced control strategies and evaluate performance under real day-to-day use. As the system learns from these conditions, the team will refine comfort models and, where necessary, install additional sensors or actuators.

Historic buildings are often seen as difficult to modernise. So what’s most exciting is SMARTeeSTORY's broader implication: historic buildings can become future‑ready. With careful digital integration, they can support smarter energy use, higher comfort levels and better management without losing the cultural value that makes them irreplaceable.

Riga City Hall, the Royal Chancellery in Granada, and TU Delft’s Faculty of Architecture have now reached a key milestone in the SMARTeeSTORY project: all three buildings are fully equipped, connected, and ready to operate as smart‑ready energy systems. Following an extensive period of installing sensors, smart devices, automation components, and digital infrastructure, the project has completed the step that ensures these systems work together reliably. Each historic building is now prepared for advanced energy management and optimisation.

With the buildings now fully equipped, the project has recently successfully completed the commissioning of the systems in all three herigate building. This is an essential step in SMARTeeSTORY, turning installed technology into a working, reliable system.

Up to this point, the work has been successfully carried out by Schneider Electric alongside the local partners responsible for each pilot: TU Delft for the Delft site, Cuerva Energia for Granada and the Riga Energy Agency for the Latvian demonstrator. Their roles were crucial in navigating the challenges that each heritage building presents during installation and commissioning.

Demo site updates

Riga

Focus: Upgrading the building’s intelligence layer and improving its ability to sense and respond to changes in user needs.

Particularities: Integration of EV chargers, installation of a new weather station and assessment of existing shading systems as part of the preparation for future automation.

Granada

Focus: Improving energy efficiency and user comfort through enhanced indoor environment control.

Particularities: A complex mix of historical architecture and modern building equipment requires careful integration of HVAC, fan coils and lighting into a responsive control environment.

Delft

Focus: Enhancing digital control over a selected office area to support the university’s carbon‑neutral goals.

Particularities: Optimisation of lighting, HVAC and smart blinds/shading control, alongside the integration of the weather station in a highly dynamic university setting.

Overall status

All three buildings are now fully instrumented, connected and prepared to support the implementation of the SMARTeeSTORY Building Energy Management System. The upcoming steps involve continuous data collection, deployment of control strategies and further refinement based on real operational conditions.

SMARTeeSTORY partner RINA has presented promising new research at the 13th International Conference on Improving Energy Efficiency in Commercial Buildings and Smart Communities (IEECB&SC’26), demonstrating how advanced control strategies can significantly improve the performance of heritage office buildings. 

Nearly 23% of the European building stock dates back to before World War II, while renovation rates remain below 1% per year. These buildings are often subject to architectural constraints, such as protected façades and windows, that limit traditional retrofit options. As a result, the most effective lever for reducing energy consumption lies in the way existing systems are operated, including heating, ventilation, lighting, and shading. 

Conventional building management systems are still largely based on simple rule-based logic (e.g., “if temperature falls below a threshold, switch heating on”). While straightforward, this approach struggles to handle the complexity of large buildings with diverse occupancy patterns, varying comfort requirements, and multiple interacting systems. 

To address these limitations, SMARTeeSTORY partners investigated a multi-domain Model Predictive Control (MPC) approach. Unlike reactive control strategies, MPC is a method that anticipates future conditions, such as weather and occupancy, and continuously optimises system operation to minimise energy use and costs while maintaining indoor comfort and air quality within defined targets. 

Half the energy, full comfort 

The approach was tested through a detailed simulation of the Faculty of Architecture at TU Delft, a large and complex historic building and one of the project’s demonstration sites. The model accounted for: 

• 8 thermal zones within the building 

• 3 thermal comfort archetypes representing different occupant preferences 

• Multiple dimensions of indoor environmental quality, including thermal comfort, air quality (CO₂, humidity, particulate matter), and visual comfort 

The MPC strategy was benchmarked against a conventional rule-based controller using the same building model and system configuration. Both approaches were evaluated over a 24-hour period with 15-minute time steps under varying occupancy scenarios. 

Compared to the rule-based approach, MPC delivered substantial improvements: 

• Approximately 50% reduction in thermal energy consumption, corresponding to about 148 kWh/m²/year of primary energy savings over the heating season 

• Operating costs were reduced from around €55/day to €27/day 

• Full compliance with thermal comfort requirements during occupied hours 

• Effective control of particulate matter and strong visual comfort performance, supported by a daylight-first strategy for lighting and shading 

Additionally, MPC demonstrated advanced operational behaviours that rule-based systems cannot replicate, including anticipatory preheating in the morning, intelligent trade-offs between ventilation and heat losses, and occupancy-aware temperature adjustments to operate near optimal comfort thresholds. 

From simulations to real buildings 

These results are based on physics-based simulations for a representative day and should be interpreted as indicative rather than definitive performance values. 

The next phase of the project will focus on refining the simulation framework and validating results using more detailed and consistent models. Partners also plan to integrate machine learning techniques to improve short-term heating demand forecasts and progressively deploy the control strategy in the real building. 

A digital path for heritage buildings 

The findings highlight a key insight: when physical retrofit options are limited, digital solutions can play a transformative role. Predictive control can effectively act as a “virtual retrofit”, saving energy and cost while preserving occupant comfort and respecting architectural constraints. 

SMARTeeSTORY demonstrates that intelligent control is more than an incremental improvement. It is a practical and scalable strategy to improve the energy performance of Europe’s historic building stock. 

SMARTeeSTORY’s mission is to build an intelligent building automation and control system for historic non-residential buildings. The integrated digital platform will combine monitoring, optimization, user interaction, and digital building tools into a single ecosystem. An important development in the platform is the finalization of one of the core components: TERA’s new cloud monitoring service.

What is the cloud monitoring service? 

The Cloud Monitoring Service helps building owners and facility managers understand how their buildings use energy. It gather information from different systems, puts it in one place, and shows it through simple dashboards. This makes it easier to spot unusual behaviours, track improvements and make smarter decisions.

How does the Cloud Monitoring Service work?

The objective of the Cloud Monitoring Service is to provide a unified environment for data analysis and system monitoring, enabling real-time visibility into energy behaviours, performance trends, and operational anomalies. By centralising data from multiple sources into a cloud-based infrastructure, the platform allows stakeholders to monitor key indicators through clear dashboards, interactive charts, and intuitive visual analytics.

Why a Cloud Monitoring Service?

One of the key strengths of the solution lies in its ability to transform complex datasets into accessible insights. Users will be able to explore energy flows, compare consumption and production patterns, and monitor system performance over time through dynamic visualisations. This helps simplify decision-making and supports optimisation strategies for energy efficiency and resource management.

Development previews: graphical visualisations of consumption and production over time

As shown in the development previews, the interface focuses on clarity and usability. Graphical representations of environmental and energy variables and temporal trends allow users to quickly identify irregular behaviours or performance peaks. In simple terms: dynamic charts helps users quickly see when something looks unusual or inefficient.

The upcoming release also showcases our contribution to the project through advanced cloud architecture and data management capabilities. The platform brings together monitoring tools, data storage, and analytics into one system. This makes it easier for operators to continuously observe building performance without juggling multiple tools.

Why This Matters for Building Owners, Cities, and Operators

• Easier detection of unusual energy use
• Faster decision‑making thanks to clear dashboards
• Better long‑term planning based on trends
• Less time needed to gather data manually

Overall, the Monitoring Service makes energy management easier, clearer, and more transparent. Whether you’re a building operator or a city energy planner, it provides the insights needed to act confidently and efficiently.

This service represents an important step toward improving how energy data is collected, visualised, and interpreted across distributed systems, supporting both technical stakeholders and end users in making informed decisions.

Beyond technical monitoring, the Monitoring Service contributes to the broader SMARTeeSTORY vision by enabling data-driven decision processes and supporting the digital transformation of energy management practices. It lays the groundwork for future enhancements, including advanced analytics, automated insights, and intelligent control mechanisms. This release marks an exciting milestone, highlighting how cloud technologies can support smarter, more transparent, and more efficient energy systems.

Author: Raffaele Piscitelli, Project Manager, TERA

As Europe moves toward a carbon-neutral future, the refurbishment of historic buildings presents a unique challenge: how do we achieve modern energy standards without losing cultural identity? The FuturHist Retrofit Academy offers a specialised, two-stage capacity-building programme designed to bridge the gap between heritage conservation and high-performance energy efficiency.

Co-organised by the Sendzimir Foundation and ICOMOS, with the participation of academic and technological partners involved in the Horizon Europe FuturHist project, this programme provides practitioners with the methodologies, tools, and innovative solutions developed within the project.

Fill in the enrollment form!

Who is the programme for?

This programme is specifically tailored for professionals operating within the European Union and associated countries who are looking to specialise in the sensitive retrofit of the historic building stock:

• Architects and Urban Designers
• Civil and Energy Engineers
• Building Sector Specialists (Conservation officers, energy auditors, and project managers)
• Emerging Professionals looking to enter the sustainable heritage sector.

What are the benefits of taking part?

By joining the FuturHist Retrofit Academy, you will:

• Gain Competitive Expertise: Master the “typological approach” to renovation – moving from time-consuming and expensive, one-off case studies to scalable, efficient retrofit models.
• Access Cutting-Edge Tech: Be among the first to explore and test the FuturHist Toolkit, a step-by-step decision support system that streamlines the planning of energy retrofits.
• Network Internationally: Build relationships with top-tier experts from across Europe, including partners from the FuturHist Horizon Europe project consortium.
• Future-Proof Your Career: Equip yourself with the skills to meet stringent European energy policies and green building standards for heritage assets.

What will you learn?

The curriculum is designed to transform theoretical knowledge into practical, billable skills:

• Technical Solutions: Deep dives into innovative passive solutions (biomaterials, self-healing lime renders, and window retrofits) and active systems (HVAC and Renewable Energy integration).
• Practical Implementation: Implement the knowledge gained to the real-life case study buildings in Krakow, Poland and other participating countries.
• Simulation & Assessment: Gain hands-on experience with hygrothermal simulation of building envelopes and Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA).
• Decision-Making: Learn a multidimensional methodology to balance energy performance, occupant comfort, and conservation compatibility.
• Policy & Standards: Navigate the legal and technical barriers of European building stock renovation.