Modern building automation systems collect and store vast amounts of data in temporal scales ranging from seconds to multiple years and spatial scales ranging from rooms to communities. But tools that facilitate management and visualization of these data are in their infancy. It has become abundantly clear that data availability alone has not significantly improved the way buildings operate. Current visualization methods for buildings are a bar or line graphs, car dashboard displays (e.g., dials), and pie charts. These methods fail to communicate the complexities of building performance and equal opportunities to improve performance.
We will develop new methods and tools for integrating real-time sensor data with occupancy information based on the occupants’ devices (smartphones, tablets, laptops). And, integrate parametric data from the building to construct formal models that can be used for both simulation and control. The formal models will provide analytic results that will be then deployed in advanced 3D visualization environments (including a full campus map model). We will conduct real experimentation in the four test buildings at Carleton University, and at MaRS (Autodesk Research offices). The results will be used by Autodesk Research in their BIM tools to allow Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Operations(AECO) professionals to analyze real-time data and visualize the modeling results and the analysis results into their actual designs, improving the overall process. This research is funded by NSERC strategic grant and supported by Autodesk.
