Driving building efficiencies and occupant services through ubiquitous sensing
Optimising buildings and the performance of building systems, especially HVAC, is currently approached through computational fluid dynamics modelling, HVAC data-stream analysis and building system design. Keightley will describe an alternative model and real-world system implementation that uses high-resolution sensing and delivers the power of analytics for prediction and optimisation, as well as the capability for fine-grained real-time response to building and occupant needs. It achieves this by delivering deep knowledge of temperature patterns, heat flow and occupant behaviour.
A 3D mesh of wireless sensors is deployed to increase knowledge of functions in the building. In the system presented, the mesh is formed by three floors of 2D mesh networks collecting motion, temperature, noise properties and light. The sensor sensitivity and response are controlled by both pre-defined settings and context-sensitive real-time changes to those settings, so each sensor can adapt to rapid changes in the environment. The resolution is under one second, and the sample rate measured in seconds, not minutes.
Keightley will briefly cover the system architecture and explore the knowledge gained in temperature distribution and heat flow vs time of day, ambient light patterns and occupancy patterns using meshed spatio-temporal sensing coupled with analysis. This reveals poorly serviced areas in the building where the temperature is highly fluctuating or not distributed evenly. Building areas that are being under-utilised and over-serviced are also explored, effectively generating a high resolutions cost/occupant that can be calculated daily and ultimately in a real-time fashion. He will show graphic/video results and examples of using the calculations for improving building efficiency and occupant services. The implications for demand response and continual improvement in building efficiency are significant.
About Keightley
Keightley is the founder and CEO of Ecospectral Pty Ltd, an Australian company that developed and sells BRIM – an industrial internet of things (IoT) platform for sensing, control and analysis of human activity patterns, physical building properties, and optimisation through industry-standard protocols and open standard.
Keightley’s education is in signal processing, electrical engineering and applied mathematics. Before founding Ecospectral, Keightley was co-founder and director at Mediaware Solutions – a video analysis and processing company he spun out of his research at the CSIRO and sold to General Dynamics in 2007.
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