Building Energy Management is identified as a key part of the move towards localised energy generation and control. The significant discrepancy between building energy use as designed and during actual operation shows a need to evaluate the relationship between building occupants and energy requirements.
The need to better account for the influence of occupants on building energy use has been established through post-occupancy studies, highlighting the characteristics needed for more successful building control systems. This paper provides an overview of current building systems technology and discusses existing academic research into more advanced occupant-centric .
The potential for application of various methods is compared. It is found that study into occupant-centred  systems covers a wide array of approaches, ranging from simple presence-based switching of lighting systems to full model predictive control. Studies suggest an optimum point balancing the complexity of a system against its potential for saving energy.

Structural and geotechnical engineers regularly use response spectra to assess the response of civil infrastructure to earthquakes; however, the underlying concepts of response spectra are often difficult for civil engineering students to grasp. Hardware specifications for two low cost response spectrum devices (RSDs) facilitate an inductive approach for teaching response spectrum concepts to students. The RSDs, which consist of wooden masses, compression springs, and accelerometers, can be excited manually or on a portable shake table to show the effects of mass and stiffness on the dynamic response of structures subjected to earthquake ground motion. Auxiliary Python scripts record real time accelerometer data, enabling students to compare the observed RSD response to numerical computations.

Three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction techniques have been used to obtain the 3D representations of objects in civil engineering in the form of point cloud models, mesh models and geometric models more often than ever, among which, point cloud models are the basis. In order to clarify the status quo of the research and application of the techniques in civil engineering, literature retrieval is implemented by using major literature databases in the world and the result is summarized by analyzing the abstracts or the full papers when required. First, the research methodology is introduced, and the framework of 3D reconstruction techniques is established. Second, 3D reconstruction techniques for generating point clouds and processing point clouds along with the corresponding algorithms and methods are reviewed respectively. Third, their applications in reconstructing and managing construction sites and reconstructing pipelines of Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing (MEP) systems, are presented as typical examples, and the achievements are highlighted. Finally, the challenges are discussed and the key research directions to be addressed in the future are proposed. This paper contributes to the knowledge body of 3D reconstruction in two aspects, i.e. summarizing systematically the up-to-date achievements and challenges for the applications of 3D reconstruction techniques in civil engineering, and proposing key future research directions to be addressed in the field.