Chi Kit Declan Hui Undergraduate Dissertation 2016/17

Building Intelligence

Supervised by R.Taylor

Abstract

Building intelligence is an act to conserve energy, and is often achieved by building the building intelligently, or having an intelligent system to help in the conservation process.

The Diamond is an intelligent building that utilises sensors to assist in the automation of the building environment control. The most notable quality aspect in a building is the indoor air quality, where it can be controlled by temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide level.

Users of the building often overlook the importance to have a control system that can create and maintain a desirable environmental for users, as it is subtly maintained over thousands of sensors and drivers. However, it becomes a major issue if the system malfunctions or miscalculates, and discomfort or even life-threatening cases may follow. Therefore it is of paramount importance that the control system is optimised.

The aim of this project is to provide feedback on the current indoor air quality control system, by looking into the environment controlled by the system and study the system’s behavior. Data is collected from multiple sensors all around the building, and the primary sensors used for the reporting will be, the carbon dioxide meter, the humidity meter and the temperature sensor. External data from the general environment will also be gathered to form contrasts with the sensor readings.

The system, upon entering the sensor’s identification number and date, will be able to take and extract the sensor readings, convert the data into information that can be manipulated, with multiple data smoothing methods and calculations, and finally conclusively output possible relations on the different states of the system, so to evaluate the performance of the control system.