Bi-Directional Interactions between Users and
Cognitive Buildings by means of Smartphone App
Franz Bittenbinder Che Liu
Dept. Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering (ABC)
Dept. Information Engineering (DII)
University of Brescia Brescia, Italy stefano.rinaldi@unibs.it
p.bellagente@unibs.it
Angelo Luigi Camillo Ciribini Lavinia Chiara Tagliabue Dept. Civil, Environmental, Architectural
Engineering and Mathematics
Abstract—The new relationship between users and assets through mobile service is changing the way to deliver services by smart devices. The research developed for the project SCUOLA – Smart Campus as Urban Open LAbs introduced the idea of creating an app to include the users’ feedback into the information chain of a pilot smart building. The paper describe the early-stage of implementation and evolution of this concept, which define a dialogue between building and users, by realizing a bi-directional interaction via a newly developed mobile application. The app – Smart Campus UNIBS - mediates, as part of a complex system, between the two entities using the connectivity of Smart Living and the process of Data Analytics. The Smart Campus Demonstrator building at the University of Brescia, Italy, is equipped with sensors to monitor and control comfort, indoor air quality and HVAC parameters, such as hygro-thermal parameters, illuminance, CO2 and
volatile organic compound (VOC), power of HVAC fans and environmental external factors. The sensors aim at providing data to develop adaptive, dynamic as well as predictive controls virtually incrementing the smartness of the building. The step further is to include the behavioral perspective linking the users to the previous framework. By exchanging different kinds of processed data, including BIM models, sensors and user feedbacks, it is possible to achieve an interaction between the built environment and the social landscape. The Smart Campus Demonstrator building integrates the smart concepts involved in the SCUOLA research project and beyond. It has been chosen to reveal the potential of such reciprocal interchange between humans and constructions towards the extended smart city. The overall purpose is ultimately that of creating a prototype for adaptive systems in architecture i.e. “Cognitive Buildings” which can learn by users’ behavior.
Keywords—bi-directional app; users-responsive building; behavioral servitization; cognitive building, smart cities
I. INTRODUCTION
There is no question that the indoor built environment plays a critical role in the users overall well-being. People spend about 90% of the time indoors, and buildings have a unique ability to influence the health positively or negatively at level
of cognitive performance. Nevertheless, the interaction between human and building is no more conceived as a single directed flux and the user can here and now interact with the building to improve the offered conditions and enhance the performance of the building and his perceived capabilities to act informed choices [1].
Smart buildings organized in smart district compose the smart city, which develops and live on a network of information, materials, energy and people moving between physical places and virtual inputs [2]. Nowadays, the built environment is enriched by information and services to address the user to marketing choices and task. Objects, mobile apps and devices are permeating the everyday life becoming the first source of information from which to get an opinion to support the decision process, preferably reinforced by a plump community of reviews. The track of users’ preferences is a market driver [3] and the advised opinion and the related outcome strategy constructed over the past decades a huge amount of data in need to be mined to extract knowledge.
The rise of big data [4] and analytics introduced the use of the cloud, mobile, social media and the Internet of Things (IoT) [5] also applied to the built environment which is on the other hand became a producer and a consumer of information through monitoring and sensing [6]. The building interaction with control systems and data collection evolved towards the progressive thresholds of efficiency [7] [8].
Smart technologies represented the most radical shift in architectural practice and a main driver is the huge potential energy savings, estimated in a range between 20% and 50% as a staggering amount of energy is wasted on heating empty offices, homes and partially occupied buildings [9]. The possibility to track the users can define customized operations in which the building measures the number of people inside and adjusts heating and lighting accordingly, with a view to turning an empty building "off", as a computer goes into standby mode. A further concept is the localized heating and cooling systems, which can provide a detailed, individual climate for each user by means of arrays of responsive infrared heating elements that are guided by sophisticated motion This research activity has been partially funded by regional founding provided
tracking providing thermal “clouds”, following people through space and ensuring pervasive comfort whereas improving overall energy efficiency [10].
It is possible to define four level of interaction in the path leading the evolution of the building sector until the 4.0:
1. First stage: It is aimed at improving energy efficiency using Building Automation Controls (BAC) in the building automated environment;
2. Second stage: It was oriented in enhancing operations and based on Building Management System (BMS) for smart building;
3. Third stage: It is the predictive building which anticipates the occupancy needs and set itself to face environmental and behavioral inputs using Information and communications technology (ICT) to support managers and operators;
4. Fourth stage: It is the cognitive building which learns from the users’ behavior and traduces the data coming from the outdoor, the indoor and the social environment using an Internet of things (IoT) approach to reset in time the responsiveness, making the building autonomous to react in some situation.
The IoT makes possible a bi-directional interaction, which is the core interest of the present research, giving the possibility to a user to have his behaviors and needs directly involved into the measure and control loop. The Smart Campus Demonstrator building of the University of Brescia becomes the core of an experimental bi-directional relation between the user and the building through the Building Information Modeling (BIM) [11] (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1. Scheme of the bidirectional intercation between Smart Campus users introduced in the IoT loop.
The BIM is the framework and repository of all information coming from both sides. The building is equipped with sensors [12] connected with the BIM and the users can provide their feedback through an app to enhance and customize the operations.
II. IOT VISION FOR SMART AND COGNITIVE CITY
In the initial stage of the Internet, millions of people got connected and an economic value of about trillions of dollars grew through various new services. In the next stage of the Internet, billions of Things will get connected and estimations give 212 billions of connected devices by 2020.
The IoT application domains include mostly all known ones and empower the vision of a built environment pervaded by sensors and actuators in which homes do not waste energy, where interactive walls display useful information, as well as pictures of art, videos of friends. The smart city is made by productive business environment where offices turn into smart and interactive assets; factories relay real-time production data; face-to-face meetings are established through holograms and documents are fully integrated in the workflow [13]. The Fig. 2 is a conceptual map that shows the strict relationships between Smart City and IoT concepts.
Fig. 2. IoT framework for the smart cities.
In this future city, the IoT technologies enhance the productive areas, retail, residential and green spaces which collaborate and efficient logistics environment embeds safety and environmental concerns all over the process. In the concept of cognitive city, the environment learns inputs from users and promotes smart health, nonintrusive monitoring system, preventing serious illness by adjusting the environment and selecting appropriate drugs and diet based on food information and user preferences and needs [14].
The Intelligent Transportation Systems integrates public and private transportation, choosing the best path to avoid delays and congestions, and promotes multimodal transport providing a tailored experience based on users’ tracked behaviors. As well as the ultimate retail environment supports consumers to have a healthy and suitable shopping experience, with a complete traceability of products.
III. COGNITIVE BUILDING AND INTERACTION DESIGN
advanced learning technologies. As the environment affects the human activity (e.g. in a school building, students’ learning performance diminishes if air quality degrade as CO2
concentration grows [15]), a cognitive building tries to implement rules for different scenarios and react respectively with outcome on energy consumption [16]. The data coming from sensors installed into the building define the building scenarios given by changing conditions. In the scenario of the school, when a sensor gives feedback that the air quality in the classroom is getting worse, ventilation will be triggered and the room will improve the users’ comfort and health and define the energy use of the building [17]. Cognitive buildings are a future implementation of smart building equipped with sensors through IoT paradigm and cognitive technologies. The bi-directional interaction is described by the input and output given by the building and the users and the interchange of command of actuation derived by users feedback. The feedback about indoor conditions (e.g. thermal, acoustic, visual comfort) and the behavioral data (localization and occupancy rate) are communicated by app to the management system. The BIM model and the sensors connected provide numerical information about the indoor conditions however the comfort can be tested by the users feedback. The feedback is thus the way to include the user as a sensor of perception to teach to the building a management routine that can be adjusted dynamically (Fig. 3, Fig. 4).
Fig. 3. Workflow of the user interaction by means of a Smartphone Application.
The real competitive value comes by taking advantage of digital capabilities with the power of cognitive computing. Cognitive systems, such as IBM Watson™, the Q&A system available from International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation of Armonk, N.Y., which analyzes unstructured textual content of electronic documents to answer questions and derive conclusions from the textual content [18]. These systems are an application of advanced natural language processing (NLP), information harvesting, knowledge representation and reasoning, and machine learning technologies to the field of open domain question answering. Cognitive systems understand the world by interaction, reason by generating recommendations and hypotheses, and learn from experts and from data and enriching by users’ interaction and data ingestion. Cognitive systems never stop learning as they interact with humans better than other machines because do not rely solely on data, which is structured, such as a user’s transaction history or geolocation, to mine deeper insights from
vast amounts of data. Accordingly, Uncover patterns and opportunities can be exploited as would be virtually impossible through traditional research methods.
Fig. 4 Cognitive Building Concept.
IV. SCUOLA PROJECT: SMART CAMPUS AS URBAN OPEN LAB
The SCUOLA project aims to test an integrated control and monitoring system of the electricity flows into the university campus, starting from renewable sources generation and accumulation plants to various types of electrical loads [19]. The experimentation has involved several plants, both into the University of Brescia and the Politecnico di Milano campuses in Italy, ranging from photovoltaic fields with accumulation to electrical vehicles recharging stations. All this plants are coordinated, in conjunction with the energy distribution system operator, by a distributed energy management system that make use of advance models, both for production and load prediction. The task is to identify the optimum point of work of the overall system in terms of costs, occupants’ comfort or energy savings according to both the system status and the operational plan. Also focusing only on the University of Brescia demonstrator, the SCUOLA projects makes available a spread set of sensors making the building a step ahead towards the concept of a cognitive building.
Fig. 5. Building systems as static IoT oriented system.
As shown in Fig. 5, sensors, actuators and new plants have been added to the building: new photovoltaic plant (equipped with a solar lab, used for testing PV panels) and a weather station on the roof; smart plugs, environmental sensors (CO2, VOC, temperature, humidity); a people counting system, webcams suitable for human detection and flow recording algorithms; electrical meters into the rooms; electrical vehicles recharging station into the car park and informational totems into the lobbies to share the systems’ status. The overall system has been developed as an IoT ready system and its adherence to an IoT framework has been already asserted in a previous work [12], using the weather station as example of integration.
V. THE DEVELOPED APP: PUTTING PEOPLE INTO THE IOT LOOP
The Smart Campus Demonstrator building represents the first attempt and pilot project of University of Brescia, Italy, to implement a cognitive system in one of its main buildings located in the Campus [20]. To fulfill the objective on a series of different typologies of sensors, which monitor the status of the building related to indoor comfort and aiming at energy saving are collecting data. The first phase of the users’ interaction in the SCUOLA project has been developed by the setting of an app for the feedback of the students on comfort level in the classrooms of the pilot building that is ongoing. University of Brescia aims now at the creation of a mobile application to give users the possibility not only to view the data from the sensors but also to interact with the building itself via feedback. The goal is mainly to promote the vision of the cognitive building, which adapts its behavior and setting to the users’ needs learned from their behaviors communicated via the app Fig. 6. The data collected by the sensors are included into the Building Information Model (BIM) of the building providing a data mapping able to introduce thresholds of comfort or indoor air quality on which to manage the building setting (e.g. temperature set-points, ventilation rate, illuminance, etc.). This data can also be used to create real-time synoptic charts to allow an easy access to the building status or to be used to tune the control of the building automation system (e.g. lighting systems, heating ventilation and air conditioning system, etc.).
Fig. 6. The App allowes the users and visitors to- check of real-time data on the building and to provide the feedback on indoor conditions.
The bi-directional interaction through the app embodies the introduction of the human factor in the IoT structure to enable the cognitive building to learn from behaviors providing data in real-time with the capability to process them into adaptive and predictive strategies for improved comfort and servitization. With the app the users become heterogeneous mobile sensors that reveals perceptions and gives input defining a dynamic “learnscape” for the cognitive building. The integration of “human sensors” into the system illustrated in section IV changes the scenario from a static IoT ready system to a true dynamic IoT application, in which the building is continuously reconfiguring itself (or a single sub-system) following the users’ behaviors.
The BIM is the heart of the system: all the physical object of the building can be digitally represented and correlated with the operational data to improve the performance of the building, by means of cognitive computing as the one offered by the IBM Watson™ suite.
The developed application is an interface between the Smart Campus Demonstrator building and its users, it has an interaction design that follows distinctive rules and creates explicit responses to determined scenarios, identified as the following.
A. Inform
Before a user goes to the building, he can get information about the building via the mobile app looking up for instance the energy performance and the energy production of the photovoltaic panels on the roof. In this part, the user will be able to get moreover information related to the idea of a sustainable smart campus growing his awareness and consciousness in the energy and environmental topics related to the campus (i.e. education and dissemination purposes).
B. Check
C. Report
During the visit to the building, users will be provided with chance to send via the app their feedback regarding the usability but foremost their perception of comfort. These data will be collected and enriched with metadata to promote a data mining process in order to optimize the building performance. Data could also be used to adapt the building behavior, by developing a suitable control logic for the building automation system.
VI. BENEFITS OF THE INTERACTIVE APP
Being a system based on bi-directional interaction, the developed app will offer benefits to both the users as well as optimize issues related to the building management. Users will primary benefit from improved comfort, which is defined by thermal, visual, olfactory and acoustic aspects. By controlling and monitoring temperature, illumination, air quality, and acoustics it will be ultimately possible to create a more healthy and productive environment. The application will simplify moreover the accessibility to occupancy related information and help users to get real-time update about indoor conditions and the will improve the building energy efficiency (Fig. 7).
Fig. 7.The App allows check the indoor condition and occupancy data in the
buidling spaces.
Concerning the building, it will be possible to monitor constantly the energy demand and supply as well as the occupancy level and systems operating activities or the need of maintenance processes. In the first phase, this information will be used to optimize the performance of the technical equipment, in the future the sensors would be directly transferring the data to actuators [21] that adjust the building in and out fluxes automatically for energy efficiency. The data collection will be also crucial to tune the BEM to manage the life cycle energy enhancement of the building by the University of Brescia.
A supplementary benefit is thus moreover in the improved transparency by means of the BIM, which will connect the feedback to failure detection procedures. This will enable the maintenance staff to experience actually the augmented reality improving the process of problems finding and eases to solve them in a more efficient way. By improving the continuous maintenance the aim is even to extend the building lifecycle, enhancing management for the client, reducing the costs due to emergency interventions.
VII. CONCLUSION
The IoT applied to the buildings gives the opportunity to increase the responsiveness of smart buildings and to move towards the cognitive building concept, which promote a built environment able to connect the data to the users’ need and requirements changing during the lifespan of the smart city. The environmental and social networks created by the buildings and the users are overlapped and the behaviors revealing and tracking could promote the optimization and interconnection of resources in a vision of the circular economy. The research project led by University of Brescia aims at define a new relationship between built environment and community by designing a bi-directional interaction. The design of the Smart Campus UNIBS Bi-Directional App applied to the Smart Campus Demonstrator building establishes in the center of an out most contemporary discourse of smart city. It is an excellent field for experimenting and a great opportunity to promote innovative ways of redesign the way of thinking about the user. The human behavior becomes a node introduced as active and dynamic actuator of building operation through the IoT loop and the potential of outcome are growing by cognitive computing technologies.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to mention and acknowledge the Smart Campus School Project Team Leader Prof. Alessandra Flammini for the kind availability of the design material and useful discussion about the strategies. Special thanks go Eng. Daniela Pasini and Silvia Mastrolembo Ventura for their valuable collaboration.
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