38 Living Laboratory as a Testbed and Teaching Tool (Prof. Tea Žakula) Prof. Tea Žakula outlined her research work in collaboration with the Ruder Boškovic Technical School in Zagreb, focused on developing the “RCK Rudera Boškovica” Living Laboratory. This laboratory serves as a testbed for exploring various HVAC systems and controls, with a strong emphasis on occupant input and comfort as key performance indicators. Prof. Žakula first outlined the "Smart Readiness Indicator" (SRI), a recent addition to the European Energy Efficiency Directive for Buildings. The metric refers to a building’s ability to sense, interpret, communicate, and actively respond in an efficient manner to changing conditions in relation to operations, the external environment, and demands from building occupants. A typical new commercial building has an SRI of around 40%, whereas the Living Laboratory is set to achieve an SRI of around 85% in the near future. The goal of this research work is to improve the scalability of predictive controls in buildings in order to find an optimal predictive control architecture that minimizes the implementation cost for a variety of buildings. In the Living Laboratory, this research involves a variety of sensor availability scenarios. The goal of sensors is to reduce first cost and reduce electricity costs and the research aims to use less sensors but gain more insights from them. Another goal of the Living Laboratory is to develop human-centered predictive control - a user-oriented control system and apply it to an actual building. They tested Fig 4.4 Images shared by Prof. Zakula of the deployment of human-centered control in a high school building
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