Energies, Vol. 18, Pages 5089: Energy and Water Management in Smart Buildings Using Spiking Neural Networks: A Low-Power, Event-Driven Approach for Adaptive Control and Anomaly Detection
Energies doi: 10.3390/en18195089
Authors:
Malek Alrashidi
Sami Mnasri
Maha Alqabli
Mansoor Alghamdi
Michael Short
Sean Williams
Nashwan Dawood
Ibrahim S. Alkhazi
Majed Abdullah Alrowaily
The growing demand for energy efficiency and sustainability in smart buildings necessitates advanced AI-driven methods for adaptive control and predictive maintenance. This study explores the application of Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) to event-driven processing, real-time anomaly detection, and edge computing-based optimization in building automation. In contrast to conventional deep learning models, SNNs provide low-power, high-efficiency computation by mimicking biological neural processes, making them particularly suitable for real-time, edge-deployed decision-making. The proposed SNN based on Reward-Modulated Spike-Timing-Dependent Plasticity (STDP) and Bayesian Optimization (BO) integrates occupancy and ambient condition monitoring to dynamically manage assets such as appliances while simultaneously identifying anomalies for predictive maintenance. Experimental evaluations show that our BO-STDP-SNN framework achieves notable reductions in both energy consumption by 27.8% and power requirements by 70%, while delivering superior accuracy in anomaly detection compared with CNN, RNN, and LSTM based baselines. These results demonstrate the potential of SNNs to enhance the efficiency and resilience of smart building systems, reduce operational costs, and support long-term sustainability through low-latency, event-driven intelligence.