About Us +
Researchers in the Building Technology & Urban Systems Division (BTUS) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory develop data and technologies that increase energy efficiency and improve the health, safety and comfort of building occupants, in the United States and worldwide.

We work closely with industry partners, academics and government officials to achieve these goals, and share our research widely
Research +
We are at the forefront of cutting-edge research that redefines building technology and explores all areas of urban systems.

We have been leaders for decades in developing energy-efficient windows, improving indoor air quality, coming up with new ideas to fix the nation's electricity grid, and so much more.

Visit our research areas at the right to find out more.
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Publications +
Enjoy presentations from Building Technology & Urban systems research experts on a wide variety of topics in the areas of building energy efficiency, the electricity grid and how it relates to buildings and much more.
- Presentations
News
Tools & Guides +
Explore our tools, guidebooks and software and download for free.

We offer a variety of technologies designed to simulate and model real-world circumstances to assist in energy-saving programs and help building owners build better buildings. These tools can help calculate performance of building systems like windows and shades, help consumers and builders pick the best windows for a variety of applications and much more.

Publications

Publications By Research Area

2023

Méndez, Juana Isabel, Pedro Ponce, Alan K. Meier, Therese Peffer, Omar Mata, and Arturo Molina."Empower saving energy into smart communities using social products with a gamification structure for tailored Human–Machine Interfaces within smart homes."International Journal on Interactive Design and Manufacturing (IJIDeM) 17.3 (2023) 1363 - 1387. DOI

Roa, Carlos Duarte, Paul Raftery, Anand Prakash, and Therese Peffer."Field Demonstration of the Brick Ontology to Scale up the Deployment of ASHRAE Guideline 36 Control Sequences."ASHRAE Annual Conference 2023 (2023). DOI

Mata, Omar, Juana Isabel Méndez, Pedro Ponce, Therese Peffer, Alan K. Meier, and Arturo Molina."Energy Savings in Buildings Based on Image Depth Sensors for Human Activity Recognition."Energies 16.3 (2023) 1078. DOI

2022

Roa, Carlos Duarte, Paul Raftery, Rupam Singla, Marco Pritoni, and Therese Peffer."Detecting Passing Valves at Scale Across Different Buildings and Systems: A Brick Enabled and Mortar Tested Application."2022 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings (2022). DOI

Roa, Carlos Duarte, Paul Raftery, Ruiji Sun, Lazlo Paul, Anand Krishnan Prakash, Marco Pritoni, Gabe Fierro, and Therese Peffer."Towards a Stronger Foundation: Digitizing Commercial Buildings with Brick to Enable Portable Advanced Applications."2022 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings (2022). DOI

2020

Fierro, Gabe, Marco Pritoni, Moustafa Abdelbaky, Daniel Lengyel, John Leyden, Anand Prakash, Pranav Gupta, Paul Raftery, Therese Peffer, Greg Thomson, and David Culler."Mortar: An Open Testbed for Portable Building Analytics."ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks 16.1 (2020) 1 - 31. DOI

Méndez, Juana Isabel, Pedro Ponce, Omar Mata, Alan K. Meier, Therese Peffer, Arturo Molina, and Marlene Aguilar."Empower saving energy into smart homes using a gamification structure by social products."2020 IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE)2020 IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE) (2020). DOI

Méndez, Juana Isabel, Omar Mata, Pedro Ponce, Alan K. Meier, Therese Peffer, and Arturo Molina."Studies in Systems, Decision and ControlChallenges and Trends in Multimodal Fall Detection for HealthcareMulti-sensor System, Gamification, and Artificial Intelligence for Benefit Elderly People." 273 (2020) 207 - 235. DOI

2018

Panagopoulos, Athanasios Aris, Michail Katsigiannis, Marco Pritoni, Gabe Fierro, Daniel Lengyel, Therese Peffer, Georgios Chalkiadakis, and David Culler."Dealing with Expected Thermal Discomfort."ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings (2018).

2015

Pritoni, Marco, Alan K. Meier, Cecilia Aragon, Daniel Perry, and Therese Peffer."Energy efficiency and the misuse of programmable thermostats: The effectiveness of crowdsourcing for understanding household behavior."Energy Research & Social Science 8 (2015). DOI

2012

Peffer, Therese, Daniel Perry, Marco Pritoni, Cecilia Aragon, and Alan K. Meier."Facilitating energy savings with programmable thermostats: evaluation and guidelines for the thermostat user interface."Ergonomics 56.Issue 3: Ergonomics and Sustainability (2012). DOI

Pritoni, Marco, Therese Peffer, Jessica Granderson, Margarita Kloss, Alan K. Meier, and Cecilia Aragon."Folk Labeling: Insights on Improving Usability and Saving Energy Gleaned from After-Market Graffiti on Common Appliances."2012 ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings (2012).

2011

Peffer, Therese, Marco Pritoni, Alan K. Meier, Cecilia Aragon, and Daniel Perry."How people use thermostats in homes: A review."Building and Environment 46.12 (2011). DOI

Meier, Alan K., Cecilia Aragon, Therese Peffer, Daniel Perry, and Marco Pritoni."Usability of Residential Thermostats: Preliminary Investigations."Building and Environment 46.10 (2011) 1891-1898. DOI

Perry, Daniel, Cecilia Aragon, Alan K. Meier, Therese Peffer, and Marco Pritoni."Making Energy Savings Easier: Usability Metrics for Thermostats."Journal of Usability Studies 6.4 (2011) 226-244.

Meier, Alan K., Cecilia Aragon, Daniel Perry, Therese Peffer, Marco Pritoni, and Jessica Granderson."Measuring the Usability of Appliance Controls."Energy Efficiency in Domestic Appliances and Lighting Conference (2011).

Meier, Alan K., Therese Peffer, Marco Pritoni, Cecilia Aragon, and Daniel Perry."Facilitating energy savings through enhanced usability of thermostats."ECEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency (2011).