Smart indoor Spaces (SiS): Towards an Integrated Framework for the Internet of Things in the Built Environment

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The advancement of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies promises to revolutionize all aspects of our life, and key among them are the spaces where we live and work. Sensors embedded in the built environment enable the systematic observation and quantification of our activities. The proposed research program views buildings as cyberphysical systems and integrates two lines of research that, up until now, have been treated separately: (a) Smart Buildings research, aiming to improve the energy consumption of large buildings, and (b) Smart Homes research, aiming to provide personalized support to frail individuals in their activities of daily living, increasing their safety and comfort. This artificial separation between these two lines of research, even when both aim to extract information about the activities of the buildings' occupants albeit at different granularity levels, fundamentally limits the generality of their algorithmic contributions and the adoption of their tools. Grounded on our recent work on the Smart Condo and BIM modeling projects, the proposed research program will formulate a coherent framework for modeling Smart indoor Spaces (their physical structure, the sensors, actuators and devices they contain and their behaviors, and the activities of their occupants) in order to improve the management of buildings and the comfort of their occupants. The proposed research is organized around three high-level themes. The "Models and Core Algorithms" theme will deliver a rich and coherent model of indoor spaces to enable reasoning about the properties of the space (aesthetics, ergonomics, accessibility, etc.), realistic simulations of alternative sensor deployments in these spaces, and fine-tuned sensor-based applications with consistent synchronization of their multimodal data streams. The "User Interaction" theme will develop and evaluate methods to help users understand the sensor data and the information inferred through sensor fusion, and to control the systems in their environment. It will also produce a user-interaction framework for occupants to convey their preferences and accordingly control the SiS platform. The "Access Control" theme will produce usable, auditable and safe model for managing access to the SiS components, i.e., the physical spaces and hardware, as well as the sensor-emitted data and information. The methods and tools developed through these activities will be integrated in a configurable service-oriented platform, which we will evaluate in the context of two important real-world use cases: at-home frailty assessment and reduction of energy-consumption in commercial buildings. This evaluative work will be conducted in collaboration with partner organizations who stand to benefit from the deployment of SiS applications, namely the Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital and Covenant Health (for frailty assessment) and the City of Edmonton through our recently established MetroLab partnership (for energy management).