People and planet friendly home

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Smart home projects have evolved over the past 30 years from initially employing technology to offer convenience and lifestyle enhancement to more current endeavors addressing environmental sustainability, which are mostly based on behavioral modification. This proposed research aims at developing a home solution that is both environmentally friendly and maintains/enhances occupant lifestyles: the People & Planet-Friendly Home. It is focused on changing technology to achieve sustainability goals, not changing behaviour. We believe that the key to realizing this ambitious goal lies in developing enabling hybrid technologies through a multidisciplinary approach. The initial thrust of this research will focus on four areas in which UBC has considerable expertise through its trans-faculty Institute for Computing, Information, and Cognitive Systems (ICICS). These areas have been identified in consultation with our industrial consortium and include communications, energy management, health and wellness, and home operations. The goal is to develop a home that will be characterized by user-friendly, affordable, no-manual-required, novel technologies. A requirement for seamless transition as new technologies evolve (grandmother-friendly) will be part of the specifications for these technologies. They will also be transferable to different types of dwelling (houses and apartments) and business environments (offices and retail). The proposed research complements UBC's "Campus As A Living Lab" sustainability initiative. It will lay the groundwork for future investigations involving additional disciplines, such as architecture/landscape architecture, civil engineering, sociology, gerontology, etc., to expand the scope of the project.