The technology of sentient buildings

Contemporary buildings are expected to meet an extensive set of requirements. They must be conceived, constructed, and operated in a manner that is functionally adequate, environmentally sustainable, occupationally desirable, and economically feasible. Moreover, buildings must increasingly accommodate different user groups, a varied set of activities, and multiple indoor environmental control systems. Accordingly, the optimization of the overall performance of buildings represents a non-trivial task and requires effective and well-tuned technologies. Specifically, the configuration and calibration of environmental control systems in buildings has been shown to be difficult and prone to failures, particularly in large-scale facilities. This paper explores the notion of sentient building technologies and its potential to address certain aspects of indoor environmental control problems in buildings. Specifically, it describes an approach to the integration of simulation-based predictive models in the decision-making repertoire of building control systems. 1. Motivation and Background Modern buildings are expected to provide optimal indoor conditions for the organizations and people they house. Moreover, they must achieve this in an environmentally sensitive and economically feasible manner. A large number of buildings do not meet such expectations. In fact, the configuration and tuning of the environmental control systems has been repeatedly shown to be a difficult task, particularly in large buildings. A number of reasons may be listed for this circumstance. Both building fabric and building systems can suffer from design flaws due to deficiencies in integration. Often, there is a lack of coordination between the architectural design of building mass, envelope, topology, and orientation on one side and the choice and configuration of building systems on the other side. Environmental and energy systems rarely represent the main concern of the primary designers of buildings. As a result, the detailed design of environmental systems for indoor climate control is frequently referred to experts at later stages of design. Asides from shortcomings in the design and engineering process, there are further problems inherent in the nature of buildings as artifacts. Buildings are complex, in the sense that they must encompass many domains, systems, functions, conditions, and activities. Ideally, multiple systems for heating, cooling, ventilation, air-conditioning, lighting, shading, ITU A|Z VOL: 3, NO: 1/2, 24-36, 2006-1/2 The technology of sentient buildings