Pervasive sensing for collaborative facilities management

A major bottleneck in the UK Government's drive to reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions in the non-domestic sector has been the lack of involvement of building users in implementing the required measures. This project will equip facilities managers, who are in the forefront of tackling the problem, with the localised data and analysis tools they can use to increase engagement with building users. These users, in turn, will gain opportunities to influence their preferred working environment - a major advance on the usual situation where they have no influence. There is increasing evidence of the economic impact associated with increased productivity derived from energy efficiency and improved working conditions.

The project will develop a radically different, data-centred and negotiated approach to facilities management as a means to resolve the conflicting demands of occupant comfort and energy use. It will establish continuous, personalised information on environmental conditions and energy use in support of occupant engagement and negotiation between co-workers and with facilities management. The research will investigate the potential of personalised information in social and digitally-mediated negotiations to meet common energy and comfort needs, and develop the tools and procedures that facilities managers can utilise to improve user engagement and decide fairly between potentially conflicting demands between users and between users and efficient building operation.

The project will deploy a previously developed pervasive sensing system, BuildAx, to capture data on environmental conditions, occupant behaviour (movement and activity) and personalised energy use at high spatial and temporal resolution, and map these data to continuous information in support of digitally-mediated negotiation between occupants and facilities managers. Approaches to staff-centred facilities management, including occupant-activated alerts, collective and individual action in working practices adaptation and reward-driven negotiation will be investigated.

The proposed research offers a spectrum of benefits ranging from new opportunities for cross-discipline collaboration through a potential for new businesses and business services. The principal beneficiaries are the academic community, building occupants, building facilities managers and ICT technology developers. If successful, the research signposts a different means of operating and managing buildings, where pervasive sensing and eServices facilitate detailed feedback on human comfort and energy use, and facilitates the participation of building occupants in the operation and management of the building's energy systems.

Academic impact
The work promises significant academic impact across a range of disciplines. A varied project team comprising psychologists, engineers, architects and IT specialists will deliver mass data collection and processing in support of new software services that facilitate and digitally-assisted negotiation between building occupants and facilities managers. The innovative nature of the concept means that there are further avenues for research exploitation by the investigators and other groups. For example, the work paves the way for a radical re-thinking of automated control of the indoor environment based on pervasive sensing and digitally-elicited feedback from users on environmental preferences. To this end, a work package has been dedicated to identifying and developing strategies for further research exploitation of project outcomes.

Impact for end-users
The wider end-user benefits of the research are numerous. First, the research offers the building occupant the means to participate through feedback and negotiation in the operation of the environmental systems that directly affect their comfort and wellbeing. Second, the research offers building facilities managers the means to cheaply and quickly gain a richer picture of the performance of their building and occupant satisfaction; moreover, the proposed eServices will give facilities managers new means to interact more widely with their co-workers towards the common goals of improving comfort and reducing energy use.

Industry impact
The envisaged research outputs offer the potential for business growth: the use of wireless, distributed sensors in buildings offer the potential for new businesses in areas such as building performance monitoring and new services offered by facilities management companies. Additionally, the project offers some of the project industry partners the opportunity to refine, test and evaluate the efficacy of the distributed sensors to be deployed in the project. This offers the prospect of new product development and device sales post project. Additionally, pervasive sensing offers the building design and construction industry new opportunities to close the gap between building energy performance production and post-occupancy performance; in this project this will be delivered through the provision of accessible and high-resolution performance datasets, which can be used in design tool validation.