The IEECB&SC’26 and ESCO Europe 2026 Conference brings together leading researchers, technology providers, ESCOs, policymakers, and energy practitioners to explore advances in energy efficiency, smart building systems, and the development of resilient and intelligent smart communities. The conference focuses on practical and research-driven solutions for accelerating decarbonisation in the built environment, including building automation, energy management systems, flexibility services, and new business models supporting the energy transition.
As part of the conference programme, a scientific paper titled “Towards Autonomous Buildings, Communities and Positive Energy Districts: Multi-Layer Modeling and Edge-Enabled Islanding for the Energy Transition” will be presented by our partners from University College Cork. The paper introduces a multi-layer modelling framework integrating deterministic, stochastic, AI-based, and reinforcement learning approaches to support autonomous building and community energy operation. A key innovation is the concept of edge-enabled fragmented islanding, enabling buildings, energy communities, and Positive Energy Districts to dynamically isolate and self-balance during grid instability, while supporting peer-to-peer energy coordination and improved resilience. The work also introduces the Response Derivative (RD) metric to quantify flexibility and responsiveness under uncertainty, and proposes a distributed TinyML–Edge–Cloud architecture for scalable real-time implementation.
This dissemination activity strengthens the visibility of the O-CEI’s research outcomes, supports knowledge transfer to European stakeholders, and contributes to accelerating the adoption of intelligent, flexible, and resilient energy systems across commercial buildings and smart communities.
