PIRE: Building Decarbonization via AI-empowered District Heat Pump Systems

对气候变化、清洁能源和能源安全的日益关注，要求我们的社会过渡到净零碳经济，以服务于地球健康、社会福祉和经济繁荣的三重底线。该PERE项目致力于在理解人类需求和行为的基础上创新人工智能(AI)技术，使地区和社区规模的热泵系统能够高效、以人为本、弹性和社会合理地运行，从而促进建筑脱碳在区域范围内的采用。在日益城市化的世界中，迫切需要通过建筑环境来应对气候变化的关键挑战，因为建筑行业占美国一次能源使用量的近40%，以及相关的温室气体和二氧化碳排放，其中约50%的能源专门用于供暖、制冷、通风和照明。此外，人们90%以上的时间是在室内度过的，这意味着以可持续的方式满足他们的需求和舒适度对于气候适应性规划至关重要。供暖和制冷系统的电气化被广泛认为是脱碳的核心和不可商量的战略。美国许多主要大都市已经将采用电动热泵技术列入路线图，在未来十年实现建筑脱碳。利用北欧国家广泛采用区域供暖/制冷热泵系统的优势，该项目寻求利用我们来自瑞典和丹麦的核心国际合作伙伴提供的数据和试验台，以及美国团队提供的人工智能创新，以支持在区域和全球范围内扩大和采用以人为中心和以公平为重点的人工智能区域系统运营战略。该项目的调查结果将通过国际能源署的两个附属小组(81个和84个)传播，这些小组将提供给来自20多个国家的研究人员。通过他们的外展活动，包括焦点小组讨论和研讨会，该小组将与来自政府和社区利益攸关方的合作伙伴密切合作，促进以社区为中心的公平区域热泵的采用、实施和运行。两个新的跨机构教育计划旨在促进以人为中心的可持续建筑环境方面的国际教育融合：a)暑期国际研究生训练营和交流计划；b)智能建筑环境认证计划。利用合作机构现有的其他旗舰项目，从K-12、本科和劳动力培训，该项目将培训一支精通科学、技术、工程、艺术和数学(STEAM)、人工智能和社会经济学的多样化、汇聚的劳动力队伍，以应对气候变化的全球挑战。该项目有助于：1)数据科学-开发新的人机交互人工智能工具，帮助设施经理和建筑物所有者(即用户)做出及时的决策，并帮助激励更快、更广泛地采用建筑脱碳；2)建筑科学-开发新颖且可扩展的模型和算法，以实现以居住者为中心的、由居住者、环境和社区需求驱动的社会公平控制；以及3)社会科学-让社区和决策者参与人工智能系统的设计，以将他们的环境、社会、经济和公平需求纳入模型。具体的预期工程/科学贡献包括：1)新的因果信息贝叶斯网络，具有动态因果发现和基于热图的大数据分析，用于可扩展的区域热泵系统的性能监测、能源诊断和预测；2)基于人工智能学习的全面人员需求和行为建模框架，以弥合人-建筑-社区互动之间的差距，并促进整个地区的能源公平；3)新的物理和数据信息学习模型，用于不确定情况下的预测和优化；4)从瑞典/丹麦和美国的试点站点收集的整体数据集，使用能源公平的镜头并通过社区知情的方法开发。项目团队的国际行业合作伙伴，包括一家热泵制造商和地区能源系统管理公司，将指导该项目简化潜在的技术转让流程。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Increasing concerns about climate change, clean energy, and energy security demand that our society transition to a net-zero carbon economy that serves the triple bottom line of planetary health, societal well-being, and economic prosperity. This PIRE project is focused on innovating Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques with an understanding of human need and behaviors to enable an efficient, human-centered, resilient, and socially justifiable operation of district- and community-scale heat pumps systems that promote a regional scale adoption of building decarbonization. In an increasingly urbanized world, there is a pressing need to address the critical challenges of climate change through the built environment because the building sector accounts for nearly 40% of the primary energy use in the U.S. and associated greenhouse gas and CO2 emissions, with about 50% of that energy dedicated to heating, cooling, ventilation, and lighting. In addition, people spend more than 90% of their time indoors which means that addressing their needs and comfort in a sustainable way is critical for climate resilience planning. Electrification of heating and cooling systems is widely acknowledged as a core and non-negotiable strategy for decarbonization. Many major U.S. metropolitan areas have put the adoption of electric heat pump technologies on the roadmap reaching building decarbonization in the next decade. Taking advantage of the wide adoption of district heating/cooling heat pump systems in Nordic countries, this project seeks to leverage the data and testbeds provided by our core international partners from Sweden and Denmark and the AI innovations provided by the U.S. team to catalyze the readiness to support the scaling up and adoption of human-centered and equity focused AI empowered district system operation strategies at a regional and global scale. Findings from this project will be disseminated through two International Energy Agency’s Annex teams (81 and 84) which will reach to researchers from more than 20 countries. Through their outreach activities, including focus group discussions and workshops, the team will work closely with partners from government and community stakeholders to promote community-focused and equitable district heat pump adoption, implementation, and operation. Two new cross-institutional education programs are designed to promote convergent international education in human centered sustainable built environment: a) Summer International Graduate Bootcamp and Exchange Program; and b) Smart Built Environment Certification Program. Leveraging partner institutions’ other existing flagship programs ranging from K-12, undergraduate, and workforce training, the project will train a diverse, convergent workforce well-versed in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM), AI, and socioeconomics to tackle global challenges of climate change.This project contributes to: 1) data science – the development of new human-interactive AI tools to help facility managers and building owners (i.e., users) to make timely decisions and to help incentivize a faster and wider adoption of building decarbonization; 2) building science – the development of novel and scalable models and algorithms for occupant-centric and socially equitable controls driven by occupant, environmental, and community needs; and 3) social science – engaging communities and decision-makers in the design of AI systems to incorporate their environmental, social, economic, and equity needs in the models. Specific anticipated engineering/science contributions include: 1) novel causally-informed Bayesian network with dynamic causal discovery and thermography-based big data analysis for a scalable performance monitoring, energy diagnosis, and prognosis of district heat pump systems, 2) a comprehensive AI learning based occupant needs and behavior modeling framework to bridge the gaps within human-building-community interactions and promote energy equity across the district, 3) new physics- and data-informed learning models for forecasting and optimization under uncertainty, and 4) holistic data sets collected from pilot sites in Sweden/Denmark and the U.S. that use an energy justice lens and are developed through a community-informed approach. The project team's international industry partners, including a heat pump manufacturer and district energy system management companies, will guide the project to streamline the potential technology transfer process.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.