Evaluating Performance Through IoT Enabled Design: The “Building Behaviour Check”

By

K?re Stokholm Poulsgaard , Partner, Head of Innovation, 3XN/GXN

Shonn Mills , Director, Ramboll

Buildings are the world’s largest asset class, and yet we have few tools to measure how they perform for their owners and their users. This knowledge gap is driving those in the AEC industry to collect and analyse performance data on these physical spaces in order to realize valuable improvements. SMART technologies, like IoT-enabled sensors, are accelerating these capabilities and promise to have profound effects on building design, as well as the ways that buildings are adapted over their lifetimes.

Increased emphasis on sustainable design is another rapidly growing consideration within the industry. While the building sector represents some 40% of total CO2 emissions, new construction represents only about 3% of the overall building floorspace. This means most opportunities to reduce carbon footprint in structures come from improving the efficiency and performance of our existing building stock.??

Overall, this promising new building reassessment service developed in partnership between GXN and the Ramboll Group utilises the deployment of IoT devices in existing buildings to provide real-time feedback on factors like occupancy levels and wellness metrics in order to “check” the building’s behaviour. This data is used to inform low-cost efficient interventions that maximise value for the building owner and occupant. Using the UN City in Copenhagen as a testing ground, the key focus was to provide insights for improving spatial efficiency, reducing energy consumption, and improving the comfort and productivity of building users.???

Collecting Building Data

Whether building owners and users are striving to attain sustainability certification, or simply looking to extract more value from their assets, IoT devices show unparalleled low-cost potential for collecting the data needed to inform change. For the UN City trial project, the primary scope of interest covered improving sustainability, enhancing occupant wellness, and gaining insight into spatial utilization. The focus was initially limited to independent sensor deployment in a limited number of meeting rooms to correlate the data being captured by the Building Management System (BMS).

Data gathering relied on both the Building Management System (BMS) for extracting historical and utility data, and on a network of IoT-enabled sensors for obtaining new data. These IoT devices measured temperature, humidity, illuminance, noise levels, and CO2 concentration in the meeting rooms for comparison against accepted wellness standards. Additional devices collected occupancy data across all observed spaces for assessing spatial utilization. All of this data can be easily anonymized for compliance with applicable privacy regulations.

Depending on the interests of building owners and users, these building behaviour checks can be conducted on a one-time or ongoing basis.?

Identifying Inefficiencies and Providing Recommendations

As the UN City project was not intended for continual ongoing analysis, a review of the collected data was completed using simple tools, like spreadsheets, for identifying trends and areas of improvement.

In reviewing the room occupancy rates, the analysis showed poor utilization even before the implementation of COVID restrictions. Considering only the times that the meeting rooms were actively in use, the occupancy was below 20% of room capacity for at least 76% of the time. This evaluation indicates that the meeting rooms may not be an efficient use of floor space and that redesigning from a highly segmented, cell-based structure to a more flexible, multi-purpose floor plan would likely improve the way people utilize the space.

In terms of human wellness, the metrics gathered by the IoT sensor network generally indicated near-guidance levels in the tested spaces, though there was some room for improvement.

Finally, a review of heating and energy consumption data provided an opportunity to identify weak points that the building management team could then address to reduce the building’s carbon footprint and improve overall sustainability.

Overall, the UN City study pointed to several opportunities that could be targeted for improving sustainability, increasing profits, and enhancing occupant wellness. And it should be noted that an improvement in one area will most likely have a positive impact on the others, though the effect may be hard to quantify. For example, because of how they are intertwined, more efficient spatial utilization allows the United Nations to reduce the footprint of dedicated meeting spaces and to better tailor utility consumption to match the needs of occupants. This means both reduced utility costs and improved sustainability.

?While ongoing building behaviour checks could easily include a reassessment of the same spaces after adjustments are made to measure the impact of changes, the UN City trial did not provide an opportunity for a timely follow-up evaluation during the pandemic.

Using Technology to Generate Future Value

The UN City project generated key insights into how its building owners, tenants, and occupants could increase the value they extract from their facility. While this case study highlights that building behaviour checks are undoubtedly valuable, the narrow project scope hints that there is even more untapped potential that can be gained by using these kinds of studies, like user-reported insights or a feedback loop to evaluate changes.

Integrating SMART devices with the BMS can increase control over building operations and improve occupant comfort. Artificial intelligence (AI) can provide unprecedented opportunities for both continuous performance evaluations and the ability to identify hidden pain points that might be overlooked by human eyes.?

This also points toward an opportunity for using the building behaviour check to calibrate the BMS for ongoing use. As the needs of owners and occupants change, or as new operational concerns are identified, the BMS can be kept up to date to help spot performance and sustainability issues early for faster correction.

And finally, when it comes to innovation in the industry overall, the building behaviour check provides valuable feedback to architects whose involvement traditionally ended with completed construction of a new building. Providing AEC organizations with more data on the way buildings are being used allows them to introduce greater design flexibility and make meaningful changes that help buildings generate value for owners and occupants in the long run.

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