1756 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 21, NO.
5, SEPTEMBER 2013
Optimal Partitioning for the Decentralized
Thermal Control of Buildings
Vikas Chandan, Student Member, IEEE, and Andrew Alleyne, Member, IEEE
Abstract— This paper studies the problem of thermal control of
buildings from the perspective of partitioning them into clusters
for decentralized control. A measure of deviation in performance
between centralized and decentralized control in the model
predictive control framework, referred to as the optimality loss
factor, is derived. Another quantity called the fault propagation
metric is introduced as an indicator of the robustness of any
decentralized architecture to sensing or communication faults.
A computationally tractable agglomerative clustering approach
is then proposed to determine the decentralized control archi-
tectures, which provide a satisfactory trade-off between the
underlying optimality and robustness objectives. The potential
use of the proposed partitioning methodology is demonstrated
using simulated examples.
Index Terms— Buildings, clustering, decentralized control,
model predictive control, optimal control.
N OMENCLATURE
Sz Set of all zones in the building.
Szi i th cluster in a p-partition.
Nw Number of walls in the building.
Nwi Number of walls in cluster Szi .
Nz
Nzi
Cz
Number of zones in the building.
Number of zones in cluster Szi .
Total thermal capacity of all zones in the building.
C zi Total thermal capacity of all zones in cluster Szi .
Tw (k) Vector of wall temperatures at time k.
Twi (k) Vector of wall temperatures within i th cluster at
time k.
Tz (k) Vector of zone temperatures at time k.
Tzi (k) Vector of zone temperatures within i th cluster at
time k.
u(k) Vector of control inputs at time k.
u i (k) Vector of control inputs for i th cluster at time k.
Ta (k) Ambient temperature at time k.
d(k) Vector of unmodeled thermal loads in zones at
time k.
di (k) Vector of unmodeled thermal loads in i th cluster
zones at time k.
Manuscript received December 12, 2011; revised May 21, 2012; accepted
August 9, 2012. Manuscript received in final form September 13, 2012. Date
of publication November 27, 2012; date of current version August 12, 2013.
Recommended by Associate Editor M. Guay.
The authors are with the Department of Mechanical Science and Engi-
neering, University of Illinois at Urbana, Urbana, IL 61801 USA (e-mail:
vchanda2@illinois.edu; alleyne@illinois.edu).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCST.2012.2219308
1063-6536 © 2012 IEEE
Tz,ref (k) Vector of zone temperature set-points at time k.
Tzi,ref (k) Vector of i th cluster zone temperature set-points
at time k.
α Vector of weights on cost objective.
αi Vector of weights on i th cluster’s cost objective.
β Vector of weights on performance objective.
βi Vector of weights on i th cluster’s performance
objective.
N Number of samples in the control and prediction
horizon.
Ts Sample time for discretization of thermal
dynamics.
x(k + l|k) Predicted value of quantity x, after l time steps
in future, given x(k).
λmax (.) Maximum eigenvalue operator.
σmax (.) Maximum singular value operator.
IN Identity matrix of dimension N × N.
0 N,N Zero matrix of dimension N × N.
en n × 1 vector of ones.
I. I NTRODUCTION
B UILDINGS account for more than 40% of the total
energy consumption and a similar share of greenhouse
gas emissions in the United States [1]. More than one-third of
the energy usage in buildings is attributed to space heating and
cooling [2], [3]. Therefore, improvements related to energy
efficiency in building air-conditioning can significantly impact
the utilization, costs, and environmental sustainability aspects
of the overall energy consumption. Hence, control of the
building heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC)
systems for energy efficient operation has received consider-
able attention [4]–[6].
From a systems engineering perspective, buildings are multi
time scale, complex systems with multiple states, inputs,
outputs, and disturbances. For such systems, the closed loop
performance is affected by the choice of the control archi-
tecture. In theory, a centralized controller, using complete
information of the system dynamics, and having access to
building-wide sensory data could control the building opti-
mally, i.e., satisfy the thermal comfort requirements in the
various zones of the building with the least energy consump-
tion. In this framework, control decisions for the entire plant
are made by a single controller.
However, a key limitation of centralized decision making
is potentially inferior robustness to sensor and communication
network failures. A faulty reading by one sensor can affect
the control decisions communicated to all actuators, thus
CHANDAN AND ALLEYNE: OPTIMAL PARTITIONING FOR THE DECENTRALIZED THERMAL CONTROL OF BUILDINGS
Temperature sensor fault
(Garbage reading)
ROOM 2
ROOM 3 ROOM 6
ROOM 1
RO
M4 OM
R OO 5 Room number
Fig. 1. Six zone building used in the case study. Return and supply water
lines for chilled water loop are also shown.
distributing the effect of a local failure plant-wide [7], [8]. In
the context of building thermal control, it implies that many of
the conditioned zones will be affected until the fault is detected
and diagnosed.
Due to these robustness concerns, decentralized decision
making may be preferable for such large scale systems [9],
[10]. It is more resilient to sensor and communication network
faults because of its ability to contain them locally. Other
benefits of decentralization include flexibility in operation, and
simplified design and tuning. A decentralized control archi-
tecture consists of multiple disjoint control clusters, where
each cluster determines only a subset of the plant-wide control
inputs. The clusters do not communicate, i.e., decisions for the
control inputs within a cluster are independent of any other
cluster. Thus, failures originating in one cluster are prevented
from affecting other clusters. It is clear that with smaller
clusters, the effect of such failures is more localized.
The demerits of centralized control are evident from a
comparative simulation case study performed on a 6 room
water-cooled building shown in Fig. 1. The underlying con-
trol objective is to achieve prescribed set-point temperatures
(25 °C) in all the rooms. A centralized control scheme based
on model predictive control (MPC) and a decentralized con-
trol scheme based on single-input-single-output proportional-
integral control were implemented. The desired objective of
temperature regulation was met by both these controllers under
normal circumstances. However, the performance when a fault
was introduced in one of the sensors is shown in Fig. 2. It was
observed that with centralized control, the effect of the sensor
failure in room 1 significantly affected the performance in the
other rooms of the building [Fig. 2(a)]. With decentralized
control, however, the effect was limited to room 1, where the
fault originated [Fig. 2(b)].
Although decentralization has merits from a robustness
perspective, control decisions in a centralized architecture are
better informed than in a decentralized architecture because
the latter disregards any inter-cluster interactions in the
1757
2.5
Regulation error (deg C)
2
1.5
0.5
0
1 2 3 4 5 6
(a)
2.5
Regulation error (deg C)
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
1 2 3 4 5 6
Room number
(b)
Fig. 2. Effect of sensor failure in room 1 of building shown in Fig. 1.
(a) Regulation errors under centralized control. (b) Regulation errors under
decentralized control.
decision-making process. Therefore, it is expected that a
decentralized control scheme yields suboptimal performance
with respect to a centralized scheme and furthermore, the
performance deterioration increases with the extent of decen-
tralization. Hence, the “degree of decentralization” results in
a tradeoff between optimality and robustness.
Decentralized control has been applied to a wide variety
of applications such as coordination of multirobot systems
[11], [12], control of satellite formations [13], and control
of automated manufacturing systems [14], [15]. However, the
decentralized control architecture is chosen in such a way that
each controller caters to an individual physical unit of the
overall system such as a robot, a satellite or a single machine.
Decentralization in the context of building thermal control has
also been studied in the literature [16]–[20]. However, similar
to the applications previously mentioned, the most common
architecture is a multiagent scheme where each control agent
is matched to a single zone in the building. This choice results
in the smallest possible cluster size, which is beneficial from
a robustness point of view. What is desired is a systematic
decentralization procedure that can quantify the specific trade-
offs under consideration that exist in a control design context.
We seek to address this need in the specific context of building
thermal control, by proposing a methodology to determine
1758 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 21, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2013
appropriate decentralized control architectures, which provide
a satisfactory trade-off between optimality and robustness
objectives. Based on a similar motivation, a concept called
architecture tradeoff analysis method is widely used in the field
of software life-cycle design to help choose a suitable software
system architecture by discovering tradeoffs and sensitivity
points [21]–[23].
We foresee two key challenges in the development of a
decentralization procedure that can be applied to buildings
irrespective of their size and layout: 1) absence of appro-
priate metrics by which any two decentralized architectures
can be compared and 2) the inherently high computational
complexity due to the combinatorial nature of the clustering
problem. Metrics were introduced in [24] for the determination
of control clusters for the decentralized thermal control of
buildings. These were heuristically chosen, and the partition-
ing procedure was found to have exponential computational
complexity. An agglomerative clustering based partitioning
procedure was proposed in [25] to address the computational
complexity concerns. This paper builds upon the work in
[25] by replacing the heuristic metrics and providing greater
insight into their effect on system representations. We establish
metrics which are analytically derived, and can be used
to build up control clusters in a computationally tractable,
agglomerative manner. The proposed approach is developed
based on the MPC framework, since MPC has been extensively
applied in the building systems control literature [6], [26],
[27] because of its proven effectiveness in handling large-scale
constrained optimal control problems. It should be noted that
the primary focus of this paper is to present a methodology for
control architecture selection. The design and implementation
of the controllers based on the architecture obtained using this
methodology is not included in the scope of this paper.
The organization of this paper is as follows. The com-
mon symbols are listed in nomenclature. Section II describes
centralized and decentralized MPC frameworks, and some
theoretical results based on their relationship are developed.
These results are used in Section III for the derivation of
appropriate metrics for quantifying the optimality and robust-
ness properties of any decentralized control architecture. An
agglomerative clustering procedure is proposed in Section IV
to partition a building, with low computational complexity, to
achieve a satisfactory balance of optimality and robustness.
Section V presents simulation examples to demonstrate the
application of the tools developed. Conclusions are summa-
rized in Section VI.
II. C ENTRALIZED AND D ECENTRALIZED MPC S
Centralized and decentralized MPC frameworks for the
problem of building thermal control are presented in this
section. This is followed by a comparative analysis of these
frameworks, which forms the basis for the development of an
optimality metric that is later used for partitioning the building.
We introduce an MPC framework for the development of
the partitioning methodology because, even though controller
design is out side the scope of this paper, MPC would be
useful for future design and implementation of controllers for
the class of systems under study [6], [28]. This is primarily
due to the presence of practical constraints such as saturation
and rate limits. Before explaining the control framework, a few
definitions are provided to establish the necessary background.
A. Zones and Partitions
Definition 1 (Zones): A zone in the building is defined as
a cluster of rooms for which the thermal demands are met
using a common actuator. In this paper, we assume that each
room in the building has its own heating and cooling actuator.
Therefore, the zones exactly correspond to the rooms. The set
of all zones is denoted by Sz , which has Nz elements.
Definition 2 (p-partition): A p-partition (or simply a parti-
tion) of the building is defined as any set of p nonempty and
nonoverlapping subsets of Sz that cover all of Sz , where p ∈
{1, 2, . . . , Nz }. The elements which constitute a p-partition are
called its clusters, denoted by Szi , where i = 1, 2, . . . , p.
The number of elements in Szi is denoted by Nzi . The above
properties can be formally stated as:
1) Szi = ∅ for all i ∈ {1, 2, . . . , p};
p
2) i=1 Szi = Sz ;
3) Szi ∩ Sz j = ∅ for all i, j ∈ {1, 2, . . . , p} and i = j .
B. Centralized MPC
The proposed centralized MPC architecture for the thermal
control of buildings consists of a single control agent which
determines the plant-wide control set-points (operating loads)
for the HVAC system based on the feedback of building-
wide sensory data (zone and wall temperatures). The control
decisions are arrived at using a discrete time MPC approach,
where an objective function is minimized using a centralized
system model that serves the purpose of constraints.
1) Objective Function: The primary objective in the ther-
mal control of buildings is to achieve desired temperature
set-points that are prescribed manually by the users or auto-
programmed by the building automation system for the various
zones [29]. Depending on the specific requirements of occu-
pants, activity levels, etc., the set-points can vary from one
zone to another at any given time, as well as for the same zone
at different times in the day. A secondary control objective is
to reduce the HVAC operating cost or energy consumption
associated with meeting the specified temperature set-points.
A weighted sum of these objectives is used to construct an
overall objective function, as shown in (1), for optimization
over a finite time-horizon in a discrete time setting. The size of
the time-horizon, measured in terms of the number of samples,
is defined as the prediction horizon N. The first term, J c,perf,
represents the temperature set-point regulation objective across
all zones whereas the second term, J c,cost , represents either
the HVAC operating cost or power consumption. It should
be noted that the power consumed by the HVAC system in
conditioning a zone depends upon the absolute value of the
energy transfer irrespective of its sign (heating or cooling).
Therefore, a quadratic function of these energy transfers was
used in J c,cost as a simple representation of the HVAC
operating cost or power consumption. Further, the choice
of quadratic functions to represent the constituent terms in
CHANDAN AND ALLEYNE: OPTIMAL PARTITIONING FOR THE DECENTRALIZED THERMAL CONTROL OF BUILDINGS 1759

the objective function imparts convexity, which is a desired The resulting linear, discrete time, state space model for
property in static optimization problems [30]. To render the the building thermal dynamics using the afore-mentioned
framework less restrictive, the weights α and β, in J c,cost and assumptions is
J c,perf , respectively, are specified as vector quantities which     
Tw (k + 1) Aw,w Aw,z Tw (k)
allow the flexibility of assigning different weights for different =
Tz (k + 1) A z,w A z,z Tz (k)
zones. The notation used is defined in the nomenclature and  
is consistent with standard practice in MPC literature [31] A
⎡ ⎤
  u(k)
J c = J c,perf + J c,cost (1) 0 Ba 0 ⎣
+ Ta (k) ⎦. (4)
N Bz 0 Bz
d(k)
J c,perf = (e(k + j ))T diag(β) e(k + j ) (2)
j =1 Here, the state transition matrix, A is partitioned into sub-
where e(k + j ) = Tz (k + j |k) − Tz,ref (k) matrices Aw,w , Aw,z , A z,w , and A z,z . These sub-matrices,
together with the other matrices Ba and Bz appearing in

N−1
the model can be obtained for any general building from a
J c,cost = u(k + j |k)T diag(α) u(k + j |k). (3)
knowledge of the underlying resistance and capacitance values
j =0
in the RC network via Algorithm 1.
2) Model: An appropriate model is required to characterize In most modern buildings, the zone temperature measure-
the effect of the control variables on the feedback variables ments are available using thermostats. However, wall temper-
of interest at each time step in the optimization. The zone ature measurements may not be available. We consider the
temperatures are dynamically interconnected by heat flow estimation of wall temperatures as an open problem to be
occurring through internal walls. The ambient temperature Ta investigated when designing the centralized and decentralized
also affects the thermal behavior in the zones through the controllers. Since the focus of this paper is control architecture
external walls (building envelope), and can be treated as a selection, for simplicity we assume that full state measurement
disturbance in the context of the overall system dynamics. is available. This implies that at each time instant k, the wall
A simple approach for modeling these thermal interactions, temperatures Tw (k) and zone temperatures Tz (k) are known.
which is widely used in the literature [32]–[34], is to treat 3) Conversion to Quadratic Program: Over the selected
the building as a resistor-capacitor (RC) network consisting prediction horizon, the model given by (4) is used to predict
of lumped thermal resistors and capacitors. Other potentially the future states {Tw (k + l|k)}l=N
l=1 and {Tz (k + l|k)}l=1 in
l=N
more accurate characterizations, such as the use of partial terms of any chosen current and future control inputs {u(k +
differential equations to represent conductive and convective l|k)}l=N−1 , current state measurements Tw (k), Tz (k), and fore-
l=0
heat transfers, would require computationally intensive, finite- casted values of unmodeled thermal loads {d(k + l)}l=N−1 l=0
element solution methodologies, involving high dimensional and ambient temperatures {Ta (k + l)}l=N−1 . Substitution of
l=0
state vectors. This limits their suitability for use in a control the predicted states in the objective function (1) results in
design or analysis procedure for a complex, interconnected a re-statement (9) of the optimization problem, which is a
system such as a building. quadratic program (QP). For details on this procedure, the
The model used in this paper is based on [32], revisited in reader is directed to [35]
[33], where the walls and zones are represented by a capacitor
each, with capacitance equal to the corresponding thermal ū ∗c = arg min gc (ū) (9)
ū
mass. The system states are the (lumped) temperatures of the
walls and zones. The control inputs correspond to the energy where
transfer rates in kW (heating or cooling) that the HVAC system gc (ū) = ū T Hc ū + fcT ū. (10)
provides to the zones. The cooling provided, for example, The Hessian matrix Hc in (10) is a function of the matrices
can be modulated by adjusting dampers in the variable air Aw,w , Aw,z , A z,w , A z,z , and Bz . The vector f c has the form
volume boxes to set air flow rates or by manipulating the (11), where K lc , l ∈ {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}, are matrices of appropriate
supply air temperature provided by the air handling units. The dimensions
heat transfer between a wall and any of its adjacent zones
or the ambient (in case of external walls) is characterized by f c = K 1c Tw (k)+K 2c Tz (k)+K 3c d̄+K 4c T̄a + K 5c Tz,ref (k). (11)
current flowing through a resistor, with resistance set to the Here, ū, d̄, and T̄a appearing in (9) and (11) are vectors lifted
inverse of the corresponding heat transfer coefficient. Various in time. These are defined as
other factors also affect the thermal dynamics, such as heat  T
flows contributed by occupants, lights, appliances, direct or ū = ū 1 ū 2 . . . ū Nz (12)
indirect solar radiation, and thermal infiltration. In this paper,
these factors are not modeled separately and only their lumped where ū j = (u j (k|k) u j (k + 1|k) . . . u j (k + N − 1|k))
contribution to each zone is represented using a thermal  T
disturbance vector d, having units of kW. This is because these d̄ = d̄ 1 d̄ 2 . . . d̄ Nz (13)
disturbances, which we refer to later as unmodeled thermal  
where d̄ j = d j (k) d j (k + 1) . . . d j (k + N − 1)
loads, do not affect the partitioning procedure developed in
this paper. T̄a = (Ta (k) Ta (k + 1) . . . Ta (k + N − 1))T . (14)
1760 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 21, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2013
Algorithm 1 Generation of State Space Model for Building
Thermal Dynamics from a RC Network
Step 1: A weighted graph is created with nodes for each
of the walls, the zones, and the ambient. While
numbering the nodes, those representing walls are
numbered first, followed by the zones, and last the
ambient. Each wall node is connected by undirected
edges to the two nodes to which it is thermally
connected. This results in nodes representing exter-
nal walls being connected to a zone node and the
ambient temperature node. Similarly, the internal
walls are connected to a pair of zone nodes. The
weight of each edge is set to be the inverse of
the corresponding thermal resistance between the
two nodes it connects. The resulting weighted graph
is denoted by G = (V, E) along with the weight
function w : E → R+ . We also define capacitance
matrices Cw and C z which are diagonal matrices of
the thermal capacitances associated with the walls
and the zones, respectively. The diagonal entries
in these matrices are entered in the order of the
corresponding node numbers in G.
Step 2: The Laplacian matrix of G, denoted by L G , is then
obtained as
L G = DG − A G
where
 based on the feedback of temperature data from thermostats
w(i, j ), if (i, j ) ∈ E
A G (i, j ) =
0, otherwise
and  corresponding to a particular control agent.
DG (i, i ) = A G (i, j ).
j
We extract a square sub-matrix from L G which cor-
responds to its first Nw + Nz rows and columns, and
denote the result by L G x . Similarly, a column vector
denoted by L Ga is extracted which corresponds to
the first Nw rows and the last column of L G .
Step 3: The following matrices are now defined:
 −1  j =1
Cw 0
Acont = − LGx (5)
0 C z −1
Ba,cont = −Cw −1 L Ga
Bz,cont = C z −1
 
0 Ba,cont 0
Bcont = . (8)
Bz,cont 0 Bz,cont
Step 4: The discrete time model for the building thermal
dynamics, as shown in (4), is obtained by the dis-
cretization of the continuous time state space system
(Acont , Bcont ) using an appropriately chosen sample
time Ts . It should be noted that Aw,w , A z,z , and Bz
are diagonal matrices as a result of the construction
procedure described above.
As defined in the nomenclature, the notations u j (k + l|k) and
d j (k + l) used in the above definitions represent the value
of the j th component of the control input vector u and the
unmodeled thermal load vector d respectively, at the lth time-
step in the future.
4) Optimality Analysis: Assuming that α and β are
component-wise positive, the objective function J c in (1)
is strictly convex in the (2Nz + Nw )N dimensional space
of real variables consisting of components of {u(k +
l|k)}l=N−1
l=0 , {Tz (k +l|k)}l=N
l=1 , and {Tw (k +l|k)}l=1 . The linear
l=N
constraint (4) represents hyperplanes in this space. Therefore,
the optimization problem corresponding to centralized MPC
presented above is strictly convex with a unique global min-
imum. In terms of the unconstrained re-statement (9) this
implies that gc (.) is a strictly convex function of ū, with a
positive definite invertible Hessian matrix, Hc in (10). The
closed form expression for the unique minimizer, ū ∗c of gc (.),
is given by
−2Hc ū ∗c = K 1c Tw (k)+ K 2c Tz (k)+ K 3c d̄ + K 4c T̄a + K 5c Tz,ref (k).
(15)
C. Decentralized MPC
We consider any general p-partition of a building (Defini-
tion 2) with constitutive clusters Szi , where i ∈ 1, 2, . . . , p.
A multiagent MPC scheme is considered which is decen-
tralized with respect to these clusters. In this architecture
each agent determines the control set-points (HVAC operating
loads) for the zones constituting the corresponding cluster,
in these zones alone. The control decisions are still arrived at
using a discrete time MPC approach, but the objective function
and the model used for prediction are local to the cluster
1) Objective Function: The objective function for the i th
control agent, Jidc , is obtained in (16) by extracting the terms
in J c,perf and J c,cost which correspond to the zones in the
cluster Szi
dc,perf
Jidc = Ji + Jidc,cost (16)
dc,perf

N
Ji = (ei (k + j ))T diag(βi ) ei (k + j ) (17)
where ei (k + j ) = Tzi (k + j |k) − Tzi,ref (k)
(6) 
N−1
Jidc,cost = u i (k + j |k)T diag(αi ) u i (k + j |k). (18)
(7)
j =0
2) Model: Similar to the centralized MPC framework, an
appropriate model is required to characterize the effect of
the cluster level control variables, i.e., the thermal energy
transferred to each zone in a cluster by the HVAC system, on
the cluster-level state variables of interest. This relationship
is obtained by first recognizing the states (Twi and Tzi ), the
control inputs, u i and the disturbances, di that are associ-
ated with the zones contained within the cluster, and then
characterizing their interdependencies by extracting suitable
sub-matrices from the full-order state space matrices in (4).
Here, Twi is the vector of temperatures of all walls which are
adjacent, in terms of the graph G described in Algorithm 1,
to the zones constituting the i th cluster. The corresponding
CHANDAN AND ALLEYNE: OPTIMAL PARTITIONING FOR THE DECENTRALIZED THERMAL CONTROL OF BUILDINGS 1761

model for the i th cluster can be expressed in the form shown ¯

Here, ū i , d̄i , and T̂ z j appearing in (21) and (23) are vectors
in (19), which uses the fact that Aw,w , A z,z , and Bz in (4) are lifted in time. These are defined in (24) to (26) below. The
diagonal matrices. The last term in the right hand side of (19) vector T̄a was defined earlier in (14)
represents the influence that the zone temperatures in other  T
clusters have on the dynamics of the i th cluster N
ū i = ū 1i ū 2i . . . ū i zi (24)
    
Twi (k + 1) Awi,wi Awi,zi Twi (k)
= where ū ri = (u ri (k|k) u ri (k + 1|k) . . . u ri (k + N − 1|k))
Tzi (k + 1) A zi,wi A zi,zi Tzi (k)
      T
0 Bai 0 Ta (k) N
d̄i = d̄i1 d̄i2 . . . d̄i zi (25)
+ u i (k) +
Bzi 0 Bzi di (k)
  
Awi,z j where d̄ir = (dir (k) dir (k + 1) . . . dir (k + N − 1))
+ Tz j (k). (19)
0  T
j ∈{1,2,..., p}, j  =i
T̂¯ z j = T̂¯z1j T̂¯z2j . . . T̂¯z j zj
N
(26)
Imposition of a control architecture that is decentralized
with respect to the clusters implies that the i th control agent where T̂¯zrj = (T̂zrj (k) T̂zrj (k + 1) . . . T̂zrj (k + N − 1)). Similar
does not have access to the sensory data from the other p − 1 to the centralized case, the notations u ri (k + l|k), dir (k + l),
clusters. Therefore, Tz j (k), for each j ∈ {1, 2, . . . , p}, j = i and T̂zrj (k + l) used in the above definitions represent the
appearing in (19) should be replaced with an appropriate guess value of the r th component of the control input vector u i , the
or estimate, T̂z j (k). For example, if the operating temperature unmodeled thermal load vector di , and the vector of temper-
range of the building zones is known, say Tz j (k) ∈ [15 °C, ature estimates T̂z j , respectively, at the lth future time-step.
25 °C], the estimates can be heuristically chosen values which 4) Extraction Matrices: Let x ∈ R Nz be a vector, the
lie in this range. The choice of estimates does not affect lth component, x l of which is the value of an appropri-
the partitioning procedure developed later in this paper. The ate physical quantity associated with the lth zone in the
appropriate model for use by the i th control agent is given by building, where l ∈ {1, 2, . . . , Nz }. In this context, x could
     represent a vector of temperatures, HVAC control efforts, or
Twi (k + 1) Awi,wi Awi,zi Twi (k)
= unmodeled thermal loads for the various zones. Next, consider
Tzi (k + 1) A zi,wi A zi,zi Tzi (k)
     a general p-partition of the building consisting of clusters
0 Bai 0 Ta (k)
+ u i (k) + Szi , where i ∈ {1, 2, . . . , p}. For each i ∈ {1, 2, . . . , p},
Bzi 0 Bzi di (k)
  let x i ∈ R Nzi be a vector such that its r th component,
 Awi,z j
+ T̂z j (k). (20) x ir , where r ∈ {1, 2, . . . , Nzi } is the value of the afore-
0 mentioned physical quantity for the r th zone in the cluster
j ∈{1,2,..., p}, j  =i
Szi . Therefore, the set of elements of x i is a subset of the
3) Conversion to QP: The optimization of the cost function elements of x. However, a sequential stack of x i given by
Jidc for the i th control agent can be converted to a QP by pro- (x 1 T x 2 T · · · x p T )T does not necessarily produce x. This is
ceeding similarly as in the case of centralized MPC. Over the also true in the context of vectors y ∈ R Nw and yi ∈ R Nwi ,
selected prediction horizon, the model given by (20) is used to which are analogs of x and x i respectively, but are defined
predict the future states {Tzi (k+l|k)}l=Nl=1 and {Twi (k+l|k)}l=1
l=N
for walls instead of zones. Here, we introduce the concept
in terms of any chosen current and future control inputs of extraction matrices to enable an accurate representation of
{u i (k +l|k)}l=N−1
l=0 , current state measurements Tzi (k), Twi (k), the mathematical relationship between the cluster-level vectors
state estimates from other clusters {T̂z j (k + l)}l=N−1
l=0 (where and the overall system level vector, and extend it to include
j ∈ {1, 2, . . . , p}, j = i ), forecasted values of unmodeled the case when these vectors are lifted in time. This concept is
thermal loads {di (k + l)}l=N−1 l=0 , and ambient temperatures required for the optimality analysis of decentralized MPC that
{Ta (k + l)}l=N−1
l=0 . Substitution of the predicted outputs in follows.
the objective function (16) results in a re-statement of the Definition 3 (Cluster Extraction Matrix): Let sz ∈ N Nz and
optimization problem as a QP szi ∈ N Nzi be vector representations of the elements of the sets
Sz and Szi respectively, where i ∈ {1, 2, . . . , p}. The cluster
ū ∗dc,i = arg min gdc,i (ū i ) (21)
ū i extraction matrix, Pi ∈ Z Nzi ×Nz for the i th cluster, Szi in the
p-partition is defined as the boolean matrix with exactly only
where
a single one in each row which satisfies
gdc,i (ū i ) = ū iT Hdc,i ū i + f dc,i
T
ū i . (22)
szi = Pi sz . (27)
The Hessian matrix, Hdc,i , in (22) is a function of the
matrices Awi,wi , Awi,zi , A zi,wi , A zi,zi , and Bzi . The vector Definition 4 (Lifted Cluster Extraction Matrix): The lifted
f dc,i has the form (23), where K ldc,i , l ∈ {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}, and cluster extraction matrix, P̄i ∈ Z N.Nzi ×N.Nz for the i th cluster,
Q i, j are matrices of appropriate dimensions Szi in the p-partition is defined as the boolean matrix which
is obtained from Pi by replacing all scalar ones with I N and
f dc,i = K 1dc,i Twi (k) + K 2dc,i Tzi (k) + K 3dc,i d̄i + K 4dc,i T̄a all scalar zeros with 0 N,N .
 ¯
+K 5dc,i Tzi,ref (k) + Q i, j T̂ z j . (23) Definition 5 (Overall Extraction Matrix): The overall ext-
j  =i raction matrix, P ∈ Z Nz ×Nz is defined in (28) by stacking the
1762 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 21, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2013

matrices Pi , i ∈ {1, 2, . . . , p} along their columns D. Comparison of Centralized and Decentralized MPC
 T We now present a quantitative comparison of the central-
P = P1T P2T . . . PpT . (28) ized and decentralized MPC control methodologies presented
Definition 6 (Overall Lifted Extraction Matrix): The over- above. Let T̂¯zr be a vector of temperature estimates for zone r ,
all lifted extraction matrix, P̄ ∈ Z N.Nz ×N.Nz is defined in lifted in time and constructed using the general formula used
(29) by stacking the matrices P̄i , i ∈ {1, 2, . . . , p} along their in defining x̄ ir in (33). The overall lifted vector of estimates
columns T̂¯ is defined as the sequential stack of T̂¯ r given by
z z
 T  T  T  T T
P̄ = P̄1T P̄2T . . . P̄pT . (29) ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯N
T̂z = T̂z1 T̂z2 . . . T̂z z . (35)
Definition 7 (Wall Extraction Matrix): Let sw ∈ be a N Nw
vector representing the set of walls in the building. Similarly, The vector T̂¯ z j appearing in (34) can be generated by selecting
let swi ∈ N Nwi be a vector representing the set of walls in appropriate components of T̂¯z and is used to compute ū ∗dc,i .
the cluster Szi . The wall extraction matrix, Ri ∈ Z Nwi ×Nw , In this way, repeating this procedure for each cluster Szi ,
for the i th cluster, Szi in the p-partition is defined as the where i ∈ {1, 2, . . . , p}, we can obtain the lifted optimal
boolean matrix with exactly only a single one in each row decentralized control inputs ū ∗r r
dc,i (defined similar to x̄ i in
which satisfies the following: (33)) for each zone r in the building. The overall lifted
swi = Ri sw . (30) vector of control inputs, ū ∗dc , in the decentralized case is then
constructed by the sequential stack of ū ∗r dc,i given by
Definition 8 (Overall Wall Extraction Matrix): The overall  T  T   T
wall extraction matrix, R ∈ Z Nw ×Nw , is defined in (31) by ∗ ∗1 ∗2 ∗Nz T
ū dc = ū dc,i ū dc,i . . . ū dc,i . (36)
stacking the matrices Ri , i ∈ {1, 2, . . . , p} along their columns
 T Theorem 1 (Centralized-Decentralized Equivalence): Let
R = R1T R2T . . . R Tp . (31) ¯ ∗
T̂z ∈ R N.Nz be a solution of the linear equation (37) in
We state some easily verifiable properties of the extraction ¯
y. If the overall lifted vector of zone temperature estimates T̂z
¯
matrices in terms of x and x i defined earlier, their time-lifted [defined in (34)] is set to T̂z∗ , then the overall lifted vector of
analogs1 x̄ and x̄ i defined in (32) and (33), and vectors y ∗
control inputs, ū dc , computed by the decentralized multiagent
and yi
 T MPC control architecture satisfies ū ∗dc = ū ∗c
x̄ = x̄ 1 x̄ 2 . . . x̄ Nz (32)  
Q dc P̄ y = K 1 Tw (k) + K 2 Tz (k) + K 3 d̄ + K 4 T̄a + K 5 Tz,ref (k)
(37)
where x̄ l = (x l (k|k) x l (k + 1|k) . . . x l (k + N − 1|k))
with
Nzi T
x̄ i = (x̄ i1 x̄ i2 . . . x̄ i ) (33)
K 1 = Hdc P̄ Hc−1 K 1c − K 1dc R (38)
where =
x̄ ir (x ir (k|k) x ir (k + 1|k) . . . x ir (k
+ N − 1|k)). K2 = Hdc P̄ Hc−1 K 2c − K 2dc P (39)
Properties of Extraction Matrices: K3 = Hdc P̄ Hc−1 K 3c − K 3dc P̄ (40)
a) x i = Pi x; K4 = Hdc P̄ Hc−1 K 4c − K 4dc (41)
b) x̄ i = P̄i x̄;
c) (x 1 T x 2 T . . . x p T )T = Px; K5 = H P̄ Hc−1 K 5c − K 5dc P (42)
⎛dc ⎞
d) (x̄ 1T x̄ 2T . . . x̄ Tp )T = P̄ x̄; 0 Q 1,2 . . Q 1, p
⎜ Q 2,1 0 . . Q 2, p ⎟
e) both P and P̄ are invertible permutation matrices; ⎜ ⎟
f) yi = Ri y; Q dc =⎜
⎜ . . .. . ⎟ ⎟ (43)
g) (y1 T y2 T . . . y p T )T = Ry. ⎝ . . .. . ⎠
Q p,1 Q p,2 .. 0
5) Optimality Analysis: The components of the vectors ⎛ ⎞
αi and βi are positive if α and β in (1) are component- Hdc,1
⎜ Hdc,2 ⎟
wise positive. Therefore, as observed for the centralized MPC ⎜ ⎟
optimization problem, the optimization problem for the i th Hdc =⎜
⎜ . ⎟
⎟ (44)
control agent in the decentralized control framework (21) is ⎝ . ⎠
also strictly convex. The closed form expression for the unique Hdc, p
minimizer ū ∗dc,i of gdc,i (.) in (22) is given by ⎛ ⎞
K ldc,1
⎜ K ldc,2 ⎟
−2Hdc,i ū ∗dc,i = K 1dc,i Twi (k) + K 2dc,i Tzi (k) + K 3dc,i d̄i ⎜ ⎟
 K ldc =⎜
⎜ . ⎟
⎟ for l = 1, 2, 3, 5
+ K 4dc,i T̄a + K 5dc,i Tzi,ref (k) + Q i, j T̂¯ z j . (34) ⎝ . ⎠
dc, p
j  =i Kl
(45)
1 If x is used to represent the zone temperatures, x̄ l in (32) should instead
 T
be defined as (x l (k|k + 1) x l (k|k + 2) . . . x l (k|k + N )). The definition of x̄ir
T T dc, p T
K 4dc = K 4dc,1 K 4dc,2 . . .K 4 . (46)
in (33) should be similarly modified.
CHANDAN AND ALLEYNE: OPTIMAL PARTITIONING FOR THE DECENTRALIZED THERMAL CONTROL OF BUILDINGS
Proof: Using properties a, b, and f of the extraction
matrices, (34) can equivalently be restated in the following
form:
−2Hdc.i P̄i ū ∗dc = K 1dc,i Ri Tw (k) + K 2dc,i Pi Tz (k) + K 3dc,i P̄i d̄
 sensory data Tz (k) and Tw (k), as expressed by (37).
+K dc,i T̄ + K dc,i P T
4 a 5 (k) +
i z,ref Q P̄ T̂¯ . (47)
i, j j z
j  =i
Using the definitions of P, P̄, and R from (28), (29), and (31)
respectively, the combined form of (47), resulting from the
concatenation over all clusters (i = 1, 2, . . . , p), is expressed
as (48), where Q dc , Hdc, K 1dc , K 2dc , K 3dc , K 4dc , and K 5dc are as
defined in (43) to (46)
−2Hdc P̄ ū ∗dc = K 1dc RTw (k) + K 2dc PTz (k) + K 3dc P̄ d̄
+K 4dc T̄a + K 5dc PTz,ref (k) + Q dc P̄ T̂¯ z .
¯ {1, 2, . . . , Nz }, we define appropriate scalar metrics to quantify
Comparing (15) and (48), ū ∗dc = ū ∗c provided T̂ z is such that
  ¯
Q dc P̄ T̂ z = K 1 Tw (k)+ K 2 Tz (k)+ K 3 d̄ + K 4 T̄a + K 5 Tz,ref (k),
with K m , m ∈ {1, 2, 3, 4, 5} defined in (38)–(42). This com-
pletes the proof of Theorem 1.
Remark 1: It should be noted that the centralized-
decentralized equivalence condition stated above was derived
based on the assumption that, apart from the underlying
dynamical models, no other constraints are imposed on the
centralized and decentralized optimization problems.
Corollary 1: If the overall lifted vector of zone temperature
¯ ¯
estimates, T̂z , is chosen to be different from T̂z∗ , the overall
lifted vector of optimal control inputs for the corresponding
decentralized controller differs from that for centralized con-
trol by an amount that is linearly dependent on the deviation
¯ ¯
of T̂z from T̂z∗ . More precisely
 
Q dc P̄ T̂¯z∗ − T̂¯z .
1 −1
ū ∗dc − ū ∗c = P̄ −1 Hdc (49)
2 into a deviation of the centralized objective function from
Proof: The application of Theorem 1 to (48) provides the
following alternative expression for ū ∗c , which was originally
given by (15):
−2Hdc P̄ ū ∗c = K 1dc RTw (k) + K 2dc PTz (k) + K 3dc P̄ d̄ + K 4dc T̄a
(k) + Q P̄ T̂¯ ∗ .
+K dc PT5 z,ref dc z (50)
Subtraction of (48) from (50) leads to (49).
Remark 2:
1) The family of solutions to (37) can be described by
the set {y0 + P̄ −1 v : v ∈ Ker (Q dc )}, where y0 is any
particular solution of (37). To satisfy the conditions of
Theorem 1, T̂¯z∗ can be chosen as any element from this
set. In the particular case where Q dc is invertible, T̂¯z∗
has a unique closed form expression given by
T̂¯z∗ = P̄ −1 Q dc −1 [K 1 Tw (k) + K 2 Tz (k) + K 3 d̄
+K 4 T̄a + K 5 Tz,ref (k)].
2) Since each Hdc,i , i ∈ {1, 2, . . . , p} is full rank due to
strict convexity of the decentralized MPC optimization
problem (21), the matrix Hdc defined in (44) is also full
rank. Hence, Hdc−1 exists for use in (49).
3) The centralized-decentralized equivalence (Theorem 1)
provides a sufficient condition for which the solutions of
1763
the centralized and decentralized (corresponding to any
p-partition) MPC problems match. The temperature esti-
mates T̂¯z∗ , that the multiagent decentralized controllers
would require in such a situation, depend on system wide
Since each decentralized controller has access to only
certain temperature measurements Tzi (k) and Twi (k),
the centralized-decentralized equivalence of Theorem 1,
cannot be achieved in practice. However, this condi-
tion can be used to quantify the difference between
the centralized and decentralized solutions as stated
in Corollary 1.
III. O PTIMALITY AND ROBUSTNESS M ETRICS
(48)
For any p-partition of the building, where p ∈
the optimality and robustness attributes of the multiagent MPC
controllers that are decentralized with respect to the clusters
constituting the partition.
A. Optimality Metric
The overall lifted vector of temperature estimates T̂¯z
explained in Section II-D, which is required for implementing
the decentralized MPC controller described in Section II-C
is, at best, chosen heuristically. The centralized-decentralized
equivalence (Theorem 1) establishes a theoretical best value
¯
of this estimate, T̂z∗ , which if used, results in matching of
the centralized and decentralized control inputs. However, an
arbitrary choice of this estimate results in a deviation of the
decentralized control inputs ū ∗dc from the centralized control
inputs ū ∗c which is quantified by (49). This deviation translates
its optimal value. To quantify this deviation we proceed as
follows. The centralized objective function gc (ū) given by
(10) can be re-expressed in the form shown in
   T  
gc (ū) = gc ū ∗c + ū − ū ∗c Hc ū − ū ∗c .
(51)
Using Corollary 1, we obtain
     T  
gc ū ∗dc − gc ū ∗c = ū ∗dc − ū ∗c Hc ū ∗dc − ū ∗c
1¯ 
¯ T −1
= T̂z − T̂z∗ P̄ T Q dc T
Hdc P̄ Hc P̄ T
4  
×Hdc −1
Q dc P̄ T̂¯z − T̂¯z∗ . (52)
Here, we have used the fact that Hdc is a symmetric matrix
and P̄ is a permutation matrix. It is desired that the above devi-
ation be small, so that the decentralized controller can provide
performance which is close to that provided by centralized
control. Using the inequality shown in (53), it can be con-
T H 1− P̄ H P̄ T H −1 Q P̄)
cluded that the quantity λmax ( P̄ T Q dc
dc c dc dc
characterizes an upper bound on the above deviation in the
objective function which is independent of the deviation of
¯ ¯
the temperature estimate T̂z from T̂z∗ . Therefore, it represents
the “loss” in optimality in going from a centralized control
architecture to a decentralized one. In the remainder of this
1764 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 21, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2013
paper, we will denote this quantity using the term optimality
loss factor (OLF) as shown in (54)
 T  
T̂¯z − T̂¯z∗ P̄ T Q dc
T −1
Hdc −1
P̄ Hc P̄ T Hdc Q dc P̄ T̂¯z − T̂¯z∗
  

≤ λmax P̄ T Q dcT
Hdc−1 −1
P̄ Hc P̄ T Hdc Q dc P̄ T̂¯z − T̂¯z∗ 
 
−1 −1
OLF = λmax P̄ T Q dc
T
Hdc P̄ Hc P̄ T Hdc Q dc P̄
 
2 1/2 −1
= σmax Hc P̄ T Hdc Q dc P̄ .
The OLF is used as the appropriate optimality metric which
must be minimized in the choice of partitions for decentralized
control.
B. Robustness Metric
In a control architecture that is decentralized with respect
to the clusters, the effect of a sensor or communication related
fault on the resulting control inputs, ū ∗dc , will be confined to the
cluster where the fault originates because the control agents do
not communicate. Therefore, the average number of affected
zones in the event of a failure is an indicator of robustness in
the sense that a small value ensures that the effect of failures
is less widespread. To quantify this concept, we consider the
event that a failure has occurred in one of the zones in the
building. For simplicity, we assume that the probability of
failure occurring in any particular zone of the building is
uniform across all zones and therefore equals 1/Nz . We define
the fault propagation metric (FPM) ∈ (0, 1] as the expected
value of the aggregated thermal capacity of all affected zones
in case of above failure event, normalized with respect to the
total thermal capacity of zones in the building. An expression
for the FPM is derived as shown
FPM
Expected value of aggregated thermal capacity of affected zones
=
Total thermal capacity of all zones in the building
 Nz
r=1 (Probability of failure in zone r
× Net thermal capacity of zones in cluster containing zone r )
=
Total thermal capacity of all zones in the building
1 
p data-mining and bio-informatics [38], [39] to form clusters of
= Nzi C zi .
Nz C z
i=1
It should be noted that in the case of a building, which
exhibits heterogeneity in the sense that its thermal zones are
sized differently, the total volume of space affected is a more
appropriate characterization of the effect of the failure event
than just the number of affected thermal zones. Since the
thermal capacity of a zone is closely related to its volume,
the FPM defined above is an indicator of the effect of failure
in terms of the volume of affected space. Therefore, the FPM
is used as an appropriate robustness metric which must be
minimized in the choice of partitions for decentralized control.
IV. PARTITIONING FOR D ECENTRALIZED MPC
This section presents a formal definition of the partitioning
problem for the decentralized thermal control of a building,
analyzes the underlying complexity, and introduces a hierar-
chical partitioning methodology of low complexity. It uses the
optimality and robustness metrics, the OLF and the FPM, that
were developed in Section III.
2

2 A. Optimal Partitioning
(53)
Definition 9 (Optimal p-partition): An optimal p-partition
is defined as one with the smallest OLF among all possible
p-partitions of Sz , for a fixed p ∈ {1, 2, . . . , Nz }.
(54) Definition 10 (Optimal Partitioning Problem): The optimal
partitioning problem is to determine a family of optimal
p-partitions, one for each p ∈ {1, 2, . . . , Nz }.
B. Complexity of Partitioning
For a given p, the number of p-partitions of the set Sz is
given by the Stirling number of the second kind, S(Nz , p)
[36], as expressed in (56). Therefore, the total number of
partitions to be considered to solve the optimal partitioning
problem is given by the sum of the Stirling numbers over
p, which is also defined as the Bell number [36], denoted
by B Nz (57)
1 
p
j p
S(Nz , p) = (−1) ( p − j ) Nz (56)
Nz ! j
j =1
Nz
B Nz = S(Nz , p). (57)
p=1
The Bell number grows exponentially2 with Nz . This
implies that if all possible partitions were to be considered,
the optimal partitioning problem becomes intractable as the
number of zones in the building increases. This motivates the
development of a less computationally complex methodology
for optimal partitioning using only a small subset of all
partitions of Sz .
C. Agglomerative Clustering
Agglomerative or “bottom-up” clustering [37] is a hierar-
chical methodology used in a variety of applications such as
(55) objects. It starts with individual objects that are progressively
grouped together into larger clusters until the root cluster
containing all the objects is reached. This is typically done
using a greedy approach which groups the two “closest”
clusters together at each step, based on a suitable distance
function metric between clusters.
We adopt the agglomerative clustering approach using the
OLF as a distance function in Algorithm 2, to address the
optimal partitioning problem in the context of decentralized
building thermal control.
Remark 3:
1) The parent partition has Nz clusters initially. At the
end of each iteration, the number of clusters decreases
exactly by 1. Therefore the parent partition obtained
2 The first few Bell numbers are given by 1, 1, 2, 5, 15, 52, 203, 877, 4140,
21 147, 115 975, …
CHANDAN AND ALLEYNE: OPTIMAL PARTITIONING FOR THE DECENTRALIZED THERMAL CONTROL OF BUILDINGS
Algorithm 2 Agglomerative Clustering for Partitioning a
Building (See Fig. 3 for Illustration)
Step 1: Define the initial parent partition as the unique
Nz -partition of Sz , which consists of Nz clusters,
each having exactly one zone.
Step 2: Agglomerate any two clusters in the parent partition
to create a child partition. In this way, find all child
partitions of the parent partition. Compute the OLF
for each such child partition.
Step 3: Among all child partitions found above, determine
which one has the smallest OLF. Set the new parent
partition to be this child partition. In case of multiple
child partitions having the smallest OLF, select any
one of them.
Step 4: Repeat steps 2 and 3, until the parent partition
becomes the unique 1-partition of Sz , which consists
of exactly one cluster that contains all zones.
1 2 3 4
1, 3 2 4
1, 3 2 4, 5
1, 2, 3 4, 5
1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Fig. 3. Illustration of agglomerative clustering.
at the end of the i th iteration is a p-partition, with
p = Nz − i + 1.
2) The p-partitions generated via these iterations are not
necessarily optimal p-partitions (definition 9). They rep-
resent a guess for an optimal p-partition, obtained from
the previous iteration in a greedy manner.
3) The total number of partitions that is considered during
the entire run of the algorithm is O(Nz 3 ) (Appendix A).
Hence a significant computational benefit is achieved
when compared to the complexity associated with con-
sidering all possible partitions.
The results of Algorithm 2 can be presented on an
optimality-robustness tradeoff curve, where the OLF and the
FPM values of the resulting parent-partitions from each itera-
tion are plotted. This represents a multiobjective optimization
framework, where the goal is to simultaneously minimize
both the OLF and the FPM. The rightmost and leftmost
1765
Internal
walls
Ambient
External
walls
Fig. 4. Example 9-zone building layout (side view).
points on this curve correspond to the two extremes of a
completely centralized architecture (a single cluster) and a
completely decentralized architecture (Nz clusters) respec-
tively. This curve serves as a useful design tool. It can be
used to compare various partitions and make a decision on
5
the appropriate intermediate architecture between these two
extremes that results in a satisfactory tradeoff between opti-
mality and robustness objectives. Some heuristic guidelines
are presented below based on visual inspection.
5 Starting from the rightmost point, and proceeding left on
the optimality-robustness tradeoff curve, the partitions which
correspond to a “knee point” on this curve should be explored.
At such points, a navigation in either direction would result
in a large increase in one metric but only a relatively small
decrease in the other metric. Therefore, these points reflect the
attainment of a satisfactory balance between the optimality and
robustness objectives, and the corresponding partition of the
building should preferably be used for decentralized control.
In the event of multiple knee points in the curve, the sharpest
among them may be considered. Also, those knee points which
are more centrally located should be preferred over others. The
next section provides some examples to further explain this
process.
V. E XAMPLES
In this section, we provide two examples to demonstrate
the use of the agglomerative clustering approach and the
subsequent analysis of optimality versus robustness needed
to determine the most appropriate partition. The first exam-
ple compares the partitions obtained using the agglomerative
approach with optimal p-partitions and verifies that the best
partition resulting from the optimality versus robustness analy-
sis is consistent with physical intuition. The second example
illustrates the advantage of using the proposed approach in the
presence of limited physical intuition.
A. 9-Zone, 3 Story Building
The layout of the building used in this example is shown
in Fig. 4. It consists of 3 floors, with a total of 9 zones
of equal dimensions (5 × 5 × 5 m each), numbered as
shown in the figure. For the purposes of modeling, each
zone is assumed to have four vertical walls (side walls)
and two horizontal walls (ceiling and floor). Construction
1766 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 21, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2013

−3 TABLE I
x 10
4.5 O PTIMAL PARTITIONS V ERSUS PARTITIONS U SING A GGLOMERATION FOR

4 9-Z ONE B UILDING

3.5 OLF of Optimal

p Optimal p-partition p-partition
3 9 {1}{2}{3}{4}{5}{6}{7}{8}{9} 4.273 × 10−3
2.5 8 {1}{2}{3}{4,5}{6}{7}{8}{9} 4.053 × 10−3
3.873 × 10−3
OLF

7 {1,2}{3}{4}{5}{6}{7}{8,9}
2 6 {1}{2,3}{4,5}{6}{7}{8,9} 2.088 × 10−3
5 {1}{2,3}{4,5,6}{7,8}{9} 2.006 × 10−3
1.5 4 {1,2,3}{4}{5,6}{7,8,9} 1.936 × 10−3
3 {1,2,3}{4,5,6}{7,8,9} 5.118 × 10−5
1
2 {1,2,3,4,5,6}{7,8,9} 2.559 × 10−5
0.5 1 {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9} 0
OLF of p-partition from
0 p p-partition from Agglomeration Agglomeration
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Number of clusters (p) 9 {1}{2}{3}{4}{5}{6}{7}{8}{9} 4.273 × 10−3
8 {1}{2}{3}{4,5}{6}{7}{8}{9} 4.053 × 10−3
Fig. 5. OLF comparison of all p-partitions (solid circles) of the 9-zone 7 {1}{2,3}{4,5}{6}{7}{8}{9} 3.977 × 10−3
building with agglomerative partitions (empty circles). The agglomerative
clustering progresses from left to right, starting with the most decentralized 6 {1}{2,3}{4,5}{6}{7}{8,9} 2.088 × 10−3
partition ( p = 9). 5 {1}{2,3}{4,5}{6}{7,8,9} 2.023 × 10−3
4 {1,2,3}{4,5}{6}{7,8,9} 1.936 × 10−3
3 {1,2,3}{4,5,6}{7,8,9} 5.118 × 10−5
details for the walls are presented in [24], from which the 2 {1,2,3,4,5,6}{7,8,9} 2.559 × 10−5
resistances and wall capacitances were obtained using the 1 {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9} 0
accessibility factor method described in [33]. The capacitance
for each zone was assumed to be 250 kJ/kg, calculated x 10
-3

for dry air occupying the zone volume at standard room- 4.5
temperature conditions of 25 °C and 100 kPa. The contribution 4
Trade-off curve using true optimal partitions
of occupants and objects to the zone capacitances was ignored Trade-off curve using agglomerative partitions
for simplicity. The ambient temperature, Ta , was assumed to 3.5
be constant at 30 °C and disturbance loads, d, in all the 3
rooms were set to zero. Since Ta and d do not appear in the
OLF, such assumptions do not affect the proposed clustering 2.5
OLF

approach.
2
With the above modeling assumptions, the building is
rendered thermally symmetric, meaning that the resistances 1.5
offered by all internal walls are the same. To introduce
1
anisotropy, we decrease the thermal resistances associated with
the vertical (side) walls by a factor of 3 from their originally 0.5
computed values. Using the modeling procedure described
0
in Algorithm 1, an overall system model was obtained by 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
constructing a RC network from the computed values of the FPM
resistances and capacitances. This was followed by discretiza-
Fig. 6. Optimality-robustness tradeoff curves for 9-zone building using true
tion using the zero-order hold method. The sample time Ts was optimal partitions and agglomerative partitions.
selected as 10 min. This was significantly less than the fastest
time constant in the system dynamics which is the inverse of
the magnitude of the smallest eigenvalue of the matrix Acont curves are shown in Fig. 6. The following observations can be
defined in (5). The MPC parameters were chosen as N = 5 made from these results.
samples, α = 0.1e9 , and β = e9 (see nomenclature). 1) As seen in Fig. 5, the p-partitions obtained using the
To partition the building, the exact solution to the optimal agglomerative approach have OLF values close (in many
partitioning problem was obtained for this example by con- cases identical) to optimal p-partitions, for all p ∈
sidering all possible p-partitions, for each p ∈ {1, 2, . . . , 9} as {1, 2, . . . , 9}.
described in section IV-A. Next, the agglomerative clustering 2) Visual inspection of Fig. 6 for knee-points suggests that
algorithm was applied, which provided suitable guesses for the partition which offers the “best” tradeoff between the
optimal p-partitions. This was done using the OLF metric OLF (optimality) and FPM (robustness) objectives is an
defined in (54). The resulting partitions from the agglomerative optimal 3-partition, which from Table I corresponds to
approach are compared with true optimal partitions in Fig. 5 {{1, 2, 3} , {4, 5, 6} , {7, 8, 9}}. This would partition the
and Table I. The corresponding optimality-robustness tradeoff building along its floors and is physically consistent
CHANDAN AND ALLEYNE: OPTIMAL PARTITIONING FOR THE DECENTRALIZED THERMAL CONTROL OF BUILDINGS
9 LEGEND
Ambient
Hallway (5 ft)
r = 20 ft
4 11
10 5 3 8
1 9
r 8
6 2
r
7 5
11
r
Fig. 7. Layout of 11-zone circular building, with building height = 15 ft.
Figure is not to scale.
with the thermal anisotropy that was introduced by
causing horizontal walls (floors and ceilings) to be more
insulated than vertical walls.
3) Another knee-point is observed in Fig. 6 which corre-
sponds to p = 6. This can possibly be explained on
the basis of the partitions obtained in Table I for the
agglomerative approach. Navigation from p = 7 to p =
6 results in fusion of the zones 8 and 9 from separate
clusters into a single cluster. However, these zones have
a potentially significant dynamical coupling through the
relatively less insulated common vertical wall between
them. This is likely to cause a large decrease in OLF
for a small increase in FPM while going from p = 7 to
p = 6 resulting in the knee point seen in Fig. 6.
4) Finding the exact solution to the optimal partitioning
problem required the consideration of 4140 partitions,
whereas only 240 partitions were analyzed by the
agglomerative approach.
From the above observations, it can be concluded that
agglomeration is able to provide sufficiently accurate results
with significantly less computational effort when compared
to the exact solution approach involving the analysis of all
partitions.
B. 11-Zone Circular Building
We now consider a single-story circular building with 11
zones including a central atrium (zone 1), as shown in Fig. 7,
which can be thought of as a small office building. Hallways,
shown shaded, are provided to facilitate the movement of
people inside the building. For the purposes of modeling,
the building has a total of 27 external walls and an equal
number of internal walls. The walls are assumed to have same
construction properties as the 9-zone building. The R and C
parameters were computed in a manner similar to the 9-zone
building, with the hallways modeled as resistors with a high
value of resistance calculated using the thermal conduction
and convection properties of air. The model was discretized
with Ts = 10 min, and the parameters used to construct the
MPC objective function are N = 5, α = 0.1e11 , and β = e11
(see nomenclature).
1767
TABLE II
PARTITIONS U SING A GGLOMERATION FOR 11-Z ONE B UILDING
p p-partition from Agglomeration
{1}{2}{3}{4}{5}{6}{7}{8}{9}{10}{11}
10 {1,4}{2}{3}{5}{6}{7}{8}{9}{10}{11}
{1,3,4}{2}{5}{6}{7}{8}{9}{10}{11}
{1,3,4,5}{2}{6}{7}{8}{9}{10}{11}
7 {1,2,3,4,5}{6}{7}{8}{9}{10}{11}
6 {1,2,3,4,5,6}{7}{8}{9}{10}{11}
{1,2,3,4,5,6}{7}{8}{9,10}{11}
4 {1,2,3,4,5,6}{7,8}{9,10}{11}
3 {1,2,3,4,5,6}{7,8}{9,10,11}
2 {1,2,3,4,5,6}{7,8,9,10,11}
1 {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11}
-3
x 10
1.5
1
OLF
0.5
Knee 2
Knee 1
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
FPM
Fig. 8. Optimality robustness tradeoff curve for 11-zone building.
An intuitive method to partition the building is to split
it along the thermally insulating circular ring of hallway,
resulting in two clusters: {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6} and {7, 8, 9, 10, 11}.
However, it is not obvious how to further partition these
clusters into smaller clusters. The partitions resulting from
the application of the agglomerative clustering algorithm are
shown in Table II. The corresponding optimality-robustness
tradeoff curve is shown in Fig. 8. A visual inspection of this
curve indicates the presence of two knee points, as labeled in
the figure. The following observations are made.
1) Knee 1 corresponds to the intuitive partition
{{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}, {7, 8, 9, 10, 11}} which was noted
above. However, the unacceptably high FPM associated
with this partition indicates inferior robustness to faults,
motivating further partitioning of these clusters.
2) The OLF values for both knees 1 and 2 are close to zero.
However, the FPM associated with knee 2 is only about
60% of the FPM for knee 1. Therefore, knee 2 provides
a better tradeoff between optimality and robustness than
knee 1.
3) Strong dynamic coupling is expected to exist among
zones 1 to 6, primarily due to the atrium (zone 1) which
1768
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
Jpartition
0.5
0.4
0.3 global minimum
0.2
0.1
0
11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4
Number of clusters (p)
Fig. 9. Jpartition for the partitions from agglomeration for 11-zone building.
is connected to each of the zones 2 to 6. Therefore
to ensure small deviation from optimality, the building
should be partitioned such that these zones are contained
in the same cluster. This is verified from the clusters
constituting the partition for knee 2 ( p = 4 in Table II).
The above observations can also be explained by con-
sidering a scalarized framework, which is a widely used
approach for multiobjective optimization [40]. For the multi-
objective problem of minimizing OLF and FPM, we define
a single scalar objective function as shown in (58), where
λ is a parameter ∈ [0, 1] which can be adjusted to influ-
ence the relative weights on the optimality and robustness
objectives
OLF( p) FPM( p)
Jpartition( p) = λ + (1 − λ)
OLFmax FPMmax
Fig. 9 is a plot of Jpartition for the various p-partitions
produced in Table II by the application of the agglomerative
clustering approach. For λ = 0.5, it is observed that of all the
partitions, the 4-partition (knee 2 in Fig. 8) corresponds to the
global minimum, resulting in the smallest value of Jpartition.
However, increasing the weight on optimality by changing λ
to 0.85 causes the 2-partition (knee 1 in Fig. 8) to provide the
global minimum. This is consistent with the analysis presented
above. However since a suitable value of λ is not obvious
to decide, we prefer to use the optimality-robustness tradeoff
curve instead as the appropriate tool for the analysis of the
partitions provided by agglomerative clustering.
A validation of the above findings is provided by obser-
vations from open loop simulations of the building thermal
model. The building was partitioned into clusters correspond-
ing to knee 2 in Fig. 8. Cluster-level models, as discussed in
Section II-C2, were obtained from the centralized model by
decoupling the system along the boundaries (physical walls)
of each cluster. An estimate of 20 °C was used to represent
the temperature of the zones outside any cluster. Simulation
results obtained for a period of ten days are shown in Fig. 10,
where the capacity weighted mean temperature of the zones,
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 21, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2013
34
λ = 0.5
λ = 0.85 33
32
31
Tc,mean (deg C)
30
Centralized model response
29
Decentralized model response for knee 2
28 Fully decentralized model response
27
global minimum
26
25
3 2 1 24
0 2 4 6 8 10
Day
Fig. 10. Open loop response analysis for knee 2 partition.
Tc,mean , is defined in
1 
Nz
Tc,mean (t) = C z,i Tzi (t). (59)
Cz
i=1
Here, C z,i denotes the i th element of C z . In defining Tc,mean ,
the contribution of each zone’s temperature is weighted by
its thermal capacity. Since the thermal capacity of a zone is
closely related to its volume, Tc,mean indicates an effective
temperature for the building as a whole.
The response corresponding to the fully decentralized par-
tition, i.e., {{1},{2},{3},{4},{5},{6},{7},{8},{9},{10},{11}}
is also plotted. In these simulations, the ambient temperature
Ta and the unmodeled thermal disturbances d are assumed to
be half-sinusoids with a 24 h time-period such that Ta (t) =
. (58) 20 + 10 sin(πt/(3600 × 24)) °C and each component of d(t)
equals sin(πt/(3600 × 24)) kW. The initial Tc,mean is 26 °C.
While the loads, initial conditions, and ambient could be made
specific to particular measured data, the overall conclusion
would be the same. From the results in Fig. 10, it is observed
that the error in predicting Tc,mean is less than 5% for the
knee 2 partition, whereas, the fully decentralized partition
results in a maximum error of about 20% over the simulation
time window. This verifies that by partitioning the system
using knee 2, the corresponding cluster-level decentralized
models do not result in significant loss in inter-cluster thermal
coupling, when compared to the centralized system model.
The 11-zone building example considered above demon-
strates the benefit of using the partitioning approach presented
in this paper, as opposed to physical intuition, which may
be absent or can only provide limited insight. For example,
the partition {{1,2,3,4,5,6},{7,8,9,10,11}} arrived at using the
intuition of separation along the thermally insulating hallways
generates a knee in Fig. 8. However, as the analysis presented
above demonstrates, it is not the most appropriate choice.
VI. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, a methodology to partition a building into
clusters for its decentralized control was developed. OLF
CHANDAN AND ALLEYNE: OPTIMAL PARTITIONING FOR THE DECENTRALIZED THERMAL CONTROL OF BUILDINGS
was introduced as a measure of deviation in performance
(or optimality) between centralized and decentralized control.
Similarly, FPM was proposed as a measure of robustness of a
decentralized architecture to potential failures. The problem of
optimal partitioning, for minimizing the OLF, was then con-
sidered. An agglomerative clustering approach, which trades
accuracy for computational benefits was proposed to deter-
mine optimal partitions. The application of this approach was
demonstrated using two simulated case studies on medium-
scale buildings to determine partitions which satisfactorily
balance underlying optimality and robustness requirements.
Although the proposed methodology is developed specif-
ically in the context of thermal control of buildings, it can
potentially be applied to other large scale energy management
applications such as data center cooling, district heating and
cooling for campuses, and distributed refrigeration systems
for supermarkets. Moreover, the modularity of the multiagent
framework allows for extensions to other energy efficiency
domains apart from thermal. This includes electrical grid
based systems with generation, distribution, consumption, and
recovery.
A PPENDIX
N UMERICAL C OMPLEXITY OF AGGLOMERATIVE
C LUSTERING (A LGORITHM 2)
If the size of the parent partition in any iteration of Algo-
rithm 2 is N parent , the number of child partitions N child that
are created using the agglomeration described in step 2 of the
algorithm is given by
 parent  ATAM to an architecture for decentralized control of a transportation
N
N child = . (60)
2 [22] M. Barbacci, P. C. Clements, A. Lattanze, L. Northrop, and W. Wood,
Noting that N parent starts from Nz and decreases by 1 in
each iteration, the total number of child partitions, child ,
Ntotal
3
 CMU/SEI-2003-TN-012, Jul. 2003.
considered in one run of the algorithm is O Nz as computed
in
Nz  parent    Conf. IEEE Softw. Eng., May 1999, pp. 54–63.
 N 
Nz
N parent N parent − 1
Ntotal =
child
= thermal control of buildings,” in Proc. Amer. Control Conf., 2011, pp.
2 2
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Nz (Nz + 1) (Nz − 1)
= . (61)
6 [26] Y. Ma, F. Borrelli, B. Hencey, B. Coffey, S. Bengea, and P. Haves,
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Vikas Chandan (S’08) received the B.Tech. degree
from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur,
Kharagpur, India, and the M.S degree from the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana,
in 2006 and 2010, respectively, both in mechanical
engineering. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D.
degree in mechanical engineering with the Univer-
sity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
His current research interests include modeling
and control of large-scale energy management sys-
tems, particularly with applications in buildings,
with a goal to accomplish underlying efficiency, performance, robustness, and
computational requirements.
Andrew Alleyne (M’95) received the B.S. degree in
mechanical and aerospace engineering from Prince-
ton University, Princeton, NJ, in 1989, and the M.S.
and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from
the University of California, Berkeley, in 1992 and
1994, respectively.
He joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign, Urbana, in 1994, where he currently
holds the Ralph M. and Catherine V. Fisher Pro-
fessorship with the College of Engineering. He was
a Fulbright Fellow to the Netherlands where he held
a Visiting Professorship of vehicle mechatronics with the Delft University of
Technology, Delft, The Netherlands. His current research interests include a
mix of theory and implementation with a broad application focus.
Prof. Alleyne was the recipient of the ASME Dynamics Systems and
Control Division’s Outstanding Young Investigator Award, the ASME Gustus
L. Larson Memorial Award in 2008, the College of Engineering’s Teaching
Excellence Award, and the UIUC Campus Award for Excellence in Under-
graduate Education. He is a fellow of the ASME. He is active in the ASME,
the IEEE, and several other societies. He is on several boards, including the
Scientific Advisory Board for the U. S. Air Force.