Prediction of government-owned building energy consumption based on an RReliefF and support vector machine model

Abstract

Accurate prediction of the energy consumption of government-owned buildings in the design phase is vital for government agencies, as it enables formulation of the early phases of development of such buildings with a view to reducing their environmental impact. The aim of this study was to identify the variables that are associated with energy consumption in government-owned buildings and to propose a predictive model based on those variables. The proposed approach selects relevant variables using the RReliefF variable selection algorithm. The support vector machine (SVM) method is used to develop a model of energy consumption based on the identified variables. The proposed approach was analyzed and validated on data for 175 government-owned buildings derived from the 2003 Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS) database. The experimental results revealed that the proposed model is able to predict the energy consumption of government-owned buildings in the design phase with a reasonable level of accuracy. The proposed model could be beneficial in guiding government agencies in developing early strategies and proactively reducing the environmental impact of a building, thereby achieving a high degree of sustainability of buildings constructed for government agencies.