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INTRODUCTION
Having a dream is the impetus to new inventions. Just like the dream of having intelligent buildings in the 1980s, a New York Times article, on 13th May, 1984, described a new type of building that could think for itself. Then in November 1985, an issue of Engineering Digest published an article on building intelligence; the idea of intelligent building has become widespread and deep-rooted and is now becoming a necessary installation in all new developments.
The United Technology Building Systems Corporation advertised that the City Place Building in Hartford, Connecticut, USA completed in July 1983 was the first intelligent building; it only provided some automation in the facilities. In fact, it took several decades to make the dream come true (So et al. , 1999). Building intelligence models can now be divided briefly into four main generations, namely (1) automated building, (2) responsive building,(3) effective building models (Harrison et al. , 1998), and (4) learning model (Yiu and Yau, 2006), as shown in Figure 1 - See PDF,.
The first generation of building intelligence emphasised the achievement of building automation. The second generation strengthened the responsiveness of the systems to environmental changes, such as the Variable-Air-Volume (VAV) air-conditioning system or the angle adjustment of the shading devices by sensing the direction of sunlight. Communication and integration systems have been developed to enhance the responsiveness. In the late 1990s, the idea of intelligent building was shifted from building responsiveness to the enhancement of building users' efficiency. For example, So et al. (1999) claimed that 'Intelligent buildings are not intelligent by themselves but they can furnish the occupants with more intelligence and enable them to work more efficiently'. Unfortunately, this idea has become just a slogan as it cannot be directly observed, let alone be scientifically measured. Then Yiu and Yau (2005) put forward a novel learning model of building intelligence. They argued the importance of the learning skills of a building, which entitle it to be regarded as intelligent. The first three concepts of intelligent building have been widely applied (as reviewed in Yiu and Yau, 2005), including building services installations, construction methods, environmental friendliness in the built environment, etc. The learning model, however, has just been launched, and the only example is...