MODERATE creates an open marketplace for building data, bridging the gap between information and sustainable decision-making.
The building sector stands at a critical juncture in Europe’s journey toward climate neutrality. With buildings accounting for approximately 40% of energy consumption and 36% of greenhouse gas emissions across the European Union, the need for data-driven approaches to optimise building performance has never been more urgent. Yet despite the ever-increasing deployment of building monitoring and control systems, a fundamental challenge persists: the lack of interoperability among data platforms creates isolated data silos that prevent stakeholders from accessing the insights they need.
The MODERATE project – Marketable Open Data Solutions for Optimised Building-Related Energy Services – addresses this challenge head-on. Funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme under grant agreement No 101069834, this ambitious four-year, €5m initiative brings together 20 partners from across Europe to create an open marketplace for building data. Coordinated by Eurac Research’s Institute for Renewable Energy in Bolzano, Italy, MODERATE aims to formalise a set of procedures and techniques that enable building owners, policymakers, facility managers, real estate developers and utility companies to openly share their data, gain insights, and make informed decisions whilst complying with regulations.
The challenge – Data silos in building energy management
The building data challenge
Current approaches to building data management face several critical limitations. Firstly, there is no standardised protocol for data sharing and anonymisation that complies with GDPR whilst preserving the statistical properties that make data valuable. Secondly, data owners lack solutions that enable them to share their datasets openly whilst maintaining economic value and control. Finally, most existing platforms operate with proprietary code and closed architectures, making it extremely difficult to use research results beyond the project consortium.
These barriers prevent the development of robust, improved, and consistent monitoring of building performance across energy use, indoor environmental quality, and lifecycle impacts. They also hinder better-informed planning of building infrastructure – from renovation roadmaps and heating and cooling systems to energy sharing in districts and strategies for whole-life carbon reduction.
The moderate solution – an open platform architecture
A new paradigm for building data
MODERATE takes a fundamentally different approach by developing a fully open platform that embraces leading-edge technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, blockchain/distributed ledger technologies, and the Internet of Things. The platform enables users to analyse real-time building data from various building systems whilst providing insight into multiple dimensions of building performance.
The architecture consists of three core components that work seamlessly together:
Data Nodes form the basis of MODERATE’s modular architecture. These flexible nodes, based on open standards, allow data producers to maintain complete control of their datasets whilst making them accessible through the platform. Each node can be hosted and managed by the data producer themselves, creating a distributed ecosystem that respects data ownership whilst enabling collaboration.
Data Synthetisation and Augmentation represent one of MODERATE’s most innovative features. Using advanced machine learning techniques, the platform generates synthetic datasets that preserve the statistical properties and analytical value of original data whilst ensuring complete anonymisation. This approach – not yet widely applied in the construction industry – has the potential for open data sharing, facilitating more reliable services, and generating business opportunities without compromising privacy or commercial value.
The Analytics and Services Layer bridges the gap between raw data and actionable knowledge. MODERATE has developed a comprehensive suite of open-source, data-driven analytics tools that address real-world needs across the building lifecycle.
Comprehensive toolkit – From analysis to action
Building performance tools
The MODERATE platform currently offers 11+ sophisticated tools and services, each designed to address specific challenges faced by building professionals:
The Building Benchmarking tool provides a comprehensive view of energy efficiency and performance metrics, enabling facility managers to compare building performances and identify optimisation opportunities through relevant KPIs and their interdependencies.
BrickLLM leverages Large Language Models to generate RDF files conforming to the BrickSchema ontology, streamlining the process of creating standardised building data models that enhance interoperability. Building upon, Brick Assistant takes the concept further by enabling users to query and interact with their building data sources using natural language-answering questions such as “what is the average temperature in building X over the last week?” or “list all the air handling units and their associated zones” through an AI-powered interface.
The Contextual Anomaly Detector autonomously identifies infrequent patterns in energy timeseries. With self-tuning capabilities, it helps energy and facility managers detect abnormal energy usage and inefficiencies, enabling informed decisions to reduce waste and optimise performance.
Geospatial and energy community tools
The Geoclustering Tool allows users to cluster buildings based on geospatial location and relevant features, with sensitivity analysis capabilities to evaluate the impact of different clustering parameters. The current version analyses Energy Performance Certificates in different regions, demonstrating scalability potential across Europe.
The Local Energy Community Assessment Tool addresses one of the most pressing challenges in building decarbonisation: identifying optimal locations for establishing Local Energy Communities. These communities are pivotal in advancing decarbonisation, fostering social cohesion, and promoting renewable energy integration. The tool pinpoints viable sites and produces a standardised report, enabling stakeholders to efficiently identify locations where communities can thrive.
The Solar Cadastre enables users to evaluate the solar energy potential of buildings and assess the efficiency of installed solar panels through an interactive map interface. Users can select buildings, perform energy calculations, and retrieve cadastral data to support investment decision-making.
Advanced analytics for operational excellence
The Measurement and Verification Tool implements Option C of the International Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol (IPMVP), providing a standardised approach to quantifying energy savings from efficiency measures – crucial for Energy Service Companies and Energy Performance Contracting.
Through the SYNAVISION platform integration, MODERATE offers Fault Detection and Forecasting capabilities that provide intelligent monitoring enabling predictive maintenance for technical building systems. Energy managers can identify faults in near-real time and optimise operations accordingly.
The Energy System Optimisation tool offers a customisable environment for optimising building energy systems through time series data analytics. It enables smart control of heating requirements based on weather forecasts, allowing for automated temperature adjustments that maximise comfort whilst minimising energy consumption – especially effective when integrated with building automation systems.
The Timeseries-based Energy Benchmarking tool performs advanced benchmarking of operational energy performance using hourly electricity consumption data. It evaluates and compares buildings against reference peer groups selected from a stock of buildings based on similar consumption features, delivering actionable insights for energy managers.
Finally, the Quality Check Reporting Tool automates the validation and analysis of Energy Performance Certificates in XML format, identifying inconsistencies and discrepancies through predefined validation rules and providing immediate feedback through a user-friendly interface.
Real-world impact and future outlook
Demonstration and implementation
MODERATE’s effectiveness is validated through partnerships with industrial stakeholders across Europe which contributed from conception to testing of the different tools in real use cases, leveraging their availability of electricity consumption data, photovoltaic systems’ production data, cadastral data, technical building information, Energy Performance Certificates, maintenance costs and operational patterns from thousands of residential, commercial and office buildings from across EU.
This extensive dataset portfolio – covering different building types, usage patterns, and geographical locations – enables robust validation of MODERATE’s analytical tools and demonstrates scalability across diverse European contexts.
Breaking down barriers
MODERATE addresses critical barriers that have long hindered building energy optimisation. Political and regulatory frameworks across the EU increasingly support data-driven building management through directives on Energy Efficiency, Building Energy Performance, and Renewable Energy. MODERATE’s innovative approach to data sharing aligns perfectly with this policy landscape, whilst supporting the overcoming of economic barriers, the mitigation of energy performance risks for service providers and the mitigation of investment risks for real estate developers.
Social barriers – particularly mistrust from customers regarding data privacy – are addressed through MODERATE’s transparent, secure platform architecture. The robust infrastructure, open codebase, inspectable synthetisation techniques, and secure protocols provide stakeholders with confidence in data handling. Technological barriers are overcome through conscious intellectual property protection strategies whilst maintaining open-source accessibility for the research community.
Looking ahead
As MODERATE approaches the final phase of its 48-month programme (June 2022 to May 2026), the project continues to develop and refine its tools whilst actively engaging with stakeholders across Europe. The platform infrastructure is under active development, with tools becoming publicly available as they reach maturity. A significant recent milestone is the release of pyBuildingEnergy, an open-source Python library developed by Eurac Research that enables assessment of building energy performance and comfort conditions using the Standard ISO EN 52016 and other relevant standards mentioned in the EU EPBD Directive recast – making it possible for anyone to calculate energy needs for heating and cooling, IEQ, and systems behaviour to hourly scale.
The project represents a significant step forward in making building data accessible, interoperable, and valuable for the entire ecosystem of building professionals – from architects and engineers to facility managers, ESCOs, utilities, real estate developers, and policymakers. By combining cutting-edge data science with practical tools addressing real-world challenges, MODERATE is transforming how Europe approaches building energy management in the pursuit of climate neutrality.
The open-source nature of MODERATE’s platform and tools ensures longevity beyond the project lifetime. With a commercial-friendly open-source licensing model, comprehensive documentation, and a growing community of researchers and developers, MODERATE is creating sustainable infrastructure for building data sharing that will continue to evolve and improve long after the project concludes.
For researchers, developers, building professionals and SMEs seeking to leverage building data for improved energy performance, indoor environmental quality, and lifecycle sustainability, MODERATE offers not just a platform but a new paradigm – one where knowledge from data flows freely, privacy is protected, and SMEs can adopt validated tools and get insights to drive meaningful action toward a sustainable built environment.
Funding acknowledgement:
“This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101069834”
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