The Virtual Cybernetic Building Testbed (VCBT) is a whole building emulator located at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland. It is designed with enough flexibility to be capable of reproducibly simulating normal operation and a variety of faulty and hazardous conditions that might occur in a cybernetic building. It serves as a testbed for investigating the interactions between integrated building systems and a wide range of issues important to the development of cybernetic building technology.
The VCBT consists of a variety of simulation models that together emulate thecharacteristics and performance of a cybernetic building system. The simulation models areinterfaced to real state-of-the-art BACnet speaking control systems to provide a hybridsoftware/hardware testbed that can be used to develop and evaluate control strategies and controlproducts that use the BACnet communication protocol. The simulation models used are based onversions of HVACSIM+ and CFAST.