Cloud-enabled hybrid structural equation modeling and artificial neural network framework for energy-efficient green...

Rapid urbanization and the growth in demand for sustainable infrastructure have made energy efficiency in the built environment a world priority. Nonetheless, the inherent gap between predictions and actual operational use is a fundamental challenge, as linear models, almost exclusively, often fail to model the complexity of non-linear relationships between climatic conditions, building physics, and dynamic occupancy. To overcome these shortcomings, this study presents the development of a novel approach in the form of a hybrid scheme that combines Structural Equation Modeling with an advanced approach using Artificial Neural Network and its reinforcement through a distributed cloud computing architecture. The proposed approach uses a multi-head attention mechanism to dynamically weight the importance of features and uses cloud-based load balancing to efficiently process high-dimensional datasets. Empirical results show that this model provides an excellent fit to the empirical data, yielding a coefficient of determination ([Formula: see text]) of 0.885 on the training set and 0.879 on the testing set, outperforming conventional forecasting benchmarks. While individual small-scale consumption outliers yield an arithmetic Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) of 112.4%, the volume-weighted MAPE (WMAPE) is kept at a highly stable 10.3%, confirming robust absolute precision. Additionally, distributed cloud simulations demonstrate an eight-fold increase in processing speed alongside an average computational energy saving of 12.16 kWh per processing cycle. These findings validate that merging artificial intelligence with scalable cloud architectures enables viable real-time energy optimization, providing stakeholders with a reliable blueprint to reduce carbon footprints and achieve long-term sustainability.