Enhancing Energy Resiliency of Residential Buildings in Post-Disasters: A Fair Share Approach with Building Energy Management System

Abstract

Residential buildings are major energy consumers, accounting for a significant share of global electricity use. With the increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters, ensuring the resilience of these buildings becomes critical, as energy interruptions directly impact occupants' well-being. In post-disaster scenarios, the limited availability of energy sources is often insufficient to meet all household needs. Moreover, equal sharing of resources among flats can be unfair due to diverse household needs. To address these issues, this paper proposes a fairness-oriented building energy management system (BEMS) framework that enhances community energy resilience for post-disaster residential units. Unlike previous studies focused on pricing-based or contribution-driven fairness models, this work introduces a hybrid, non-monetary fair sharing mechanism that accounts for occupants' post-disaster needs while acknowledging individual contributions within bounded inter-flat disparities during ethically constrained emergency scenarios. By integrating optimization techniques and demand-side management strategies, the BEMS effectively manages loads categorized into levels based on their importance in post-disasters. Quantitative analysis shows that the proposed BEMS significantly enhances resiliency, extending the energized period by 91.2% compared to the conventional approach. Additionally, the fair share of benefits among occupants is improved with 26.44% reduction in the standard deviation of benefit index, relative to equal share of energy.