Development of a hierarchical system for the teletransmission of environmental and energy data K. Karatzas * , A. Papadopoulos, N. Moussiopoulos, E.A. Kalognomou, A. Bassoukos Laboratory of Heat Transfer and Environmental Engineering, Aristotle University, Box 483, 54006 Thessaloniki, Greece Abstract Environmental and energy management in contemporary urban environments and at a household level, requires for the design of systems that will be able to integrate remote and spatially distributed monitoring data, while being open, modular, ¯exible and low cost. In ad- dition, technological and industrial deregulation result in shifting from services that are heavily dependent on existing information infrastructure to services that depend on the satisfaction of instant information needs at a customer level. This paper presents methods suitable for the design and development of a hierarchical system for communicating and archiving environ- mental and energy data, towards serving applications that require easy and instant access to these data. The aim is to provide services at a household level for consumers ready to adopt the features of e-services to their home. Ó 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Environmental and energy management; Hierarchical systems; Wireless communications 1. Introduction In the new information society era, the e-services market has already started to grow. One of the ®rst service categories which are likely to emerge is that of the services in the residential and tertiary sector, with emphasis being placed on the user- orientation. This category of services, developing in the contemporary urban www.elsevier.com/locate/tele Telematics and Informatics 17 (2000) 239±249 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +30-31-996011; fax: +30-31-996012. E-mail address: kostas@aix.meng.auth.gr (K. Karatzas). 0736-5853/00/$ - see front matter Ó 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII:S0736-5853(00)00013-7