SEP: Creating An Energy Literate Society Of Humans, Buildings, And Agents For Sustainable Energy Management

在NSF科学、工程和教育促进可持续发展(SEES)倡议的框架下，NSF可持续能源路径(SEP)计划将支持教授的研究计划。土木工程与环境工程系的Burcin Becerik-Gerber，心理学系的Wendy Wood，建筑系的David Gerber，以及南加州大学(USC)计算机科学系的Milind Tambe。多学科调查团队将开发一个由建筑物、人类和智能软件代理组成的能源感知、网络物理多代理框架，以实现可持续能源管理，采取集体的能源素养方法来影响建筑物居住者、操作员、设计师和工程师。调查人员将首先评估建筑物居住者的行为和偏好，评估建筑物设计/系统规范，并确定建筑物运营政策。然后，他们将建立一个多代理模型来集成这些不同的系统。多智能体框架建立在对智能体自主性和团队合作的基础研究基础上，将促进居住者和建筑设备之间的谈判。这些代理将向居住者提供反馈，并控制建筑设备以节约能源。基于此集成模型，将向建筑设计师提供关于居住者能源使用的反馈，以形成对建筑生命周期足迹具有最持久影响的早期设计决策。中心重点是设计办公楼能源消耗的多组件模型，以确定和测试能源系统的最佳变化点。具体地说，研究预测，通过基于代理的系统，通过改变乘员行为、设计/系统规范和建筑运营商的政策，可以优化能源使用，并以综合方式最大化乘员舒适度。这项研究将在写字楼中得到验证，写字楼的居住者缺乏个人对能源消耗的经济激励。该系统将在专业设计师工作室和学生设计师工作室进行测试，以验证该模型在节能设计决策中的影响。这项研究的独特之处在于，它不仅将乘员的偏好和行为视为输入数据，还将其视为更广泛的能源系统中的可控变量；然后，它利用一个复杂的多智能体系统来控制这些变量，以节省能源。它还通过在早期设计阶段提供人类行为输入，将能源素养扩展到设计和工程领域，以及通过根据人类行为和偏好动态控制建筑运行领域。鉴于我国和世界日益增长的能源需求，这项研究对环境保护、污染和经济具有深远的影响。这项研究的主要影响是确定为建筑创造显著节能的关键因素，从而节省资金和保护环境。这些成果将通过多个会议讲座和出版物传播，并为之作出贡献。将开发一种游戏，让学生们竞争以节省最多的能量，目的是教授如何在日常生活中节约能源。将开发以能源为重点的研讨会课程，并将其提供给南加州大学附近少数族裔占多数的K-12学校以及其他儿童及其家庭。此外，研究小组将与加州州立大学多明格斯山庄的计算机科学系合作进行研究。多明格斯山是一所少数族裔占多数的机构。拟议的跨学科研究挑战了建筑工程师和设计师、计算机科学家和行为科学家看待节能建筑紧迫挑战的方式。这项研究将把设计与外部数据源相结合，并将行为科学引入设计，这反过来将引发可持续建筑的设计方法演变。通过动态数据收集、关于能源使用的时空信息和关于人体舒适度的数据，研究将通过使用智能软件代理来提高系统的优化和适应性。该项目将教育建筑物居住者关于他们的能源消耗，以及他们如何通过具体的行为改变来实现更高的能源效率。这项研究带来了能源素养的问题，这是一种跨学科的方法，其中网络工具体现在物理空间中。

The NSF Sustainable Energy pathways (SEP) Program, under the umbrella of the NSF Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability (SEES) initiative, will support the research program of Profs. Burcin Becerik-Gerber of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Wendy Wood of the Department of Psychology, David Gerber of the Department of Architecture, and Milind Tambe of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California (USC). The multi-disciplinary team of investigators will develop an energy-aware, cyber-physical multi agent framework of buildings, humans, and intelligent software agents for sustainable energy management, taking a collective, energy literacy approach to influencing building occupants, operators, designers, and engineers. The investigators will first assess behavior and preferences of building occupants, evaluate building design/system specifications, and identify building operational policies. They will then build a multi-agent model to integrate these different systems. Building on fundamental research in agents' autonomy and teamwork, the multi-agent framework will facilitate negotiations between occupants and building devices. The agents will provide feedback to the occupants and control building devices to conserve energy. Based on this integrated model, feedback about occupant energy use to building designers will be provided to shape early-stage design decisions that have the longest lasting impact on building's lifecycle footprint. The central focus is designing a multi-component model of energy consumption in office buildings in order to identify and test the optimal points of change in energy systems. Specifically, the research predicts that energy use could be optimized and occupant comfort could be maximized in an integrated way by changing occupant behavior, design/system specifications, and building operators' policies via an agent-based system. The research will be validated in an office building, where occupants lack the individual financial incentives for energy consumption. The system will be tested both in professional and student designer studios to validate the impact of the model in energy aware design decisions. The research differentiates itself by treating occupant preferences and behavior not only as input data but also as controllable variables in a broader energy system; it then harnesses a complex multiagent system to control these variables for energy savings. It also extends energy literacy into the arena of design and engineering by providing human behavior input in early design stages, as well as into the arena of building operations by dynamically controlling buildings based on human behavior and preferences.With respect to the increasing energy needs of our country and world, this research has far-reaching impact on environmental conservation, pollution, and the economy. The primary impact of this research is identifying the key factors that create significant energy savings for buildings, resulting in monetary savings and environmental protection. The results will be disseminated through and contribute to multiple conference talks and publications. A game, in which students will compete to save the most energy, will be developed with the aim of teaching how to conserve energy in daily life. Energy-focused workshop lessons will be developed and delivered to minority-majority K-12 schools in USC's neighborhood and other children and their families. In addition, the research team will partner in research with the computer science department of California State University, Dominguez Hills, a minority majority institution.The proposed interdisciplinary research challenges the ways that building engineers and designers, computer scientists, and behavioral scientists look at the pressing challenges of energy-efficient buildings. The research will integrate design with outside data sources and bring behavioral science to design, which in turn will trigger a design-method evolution for sustainable buildings. Through dynamic data collection, spatiotemporal information about energy use, and data on human comfort, the research will improve system optimization and adaptation through the use of intelligent software agents. The project will educate building occupants about their energy consumption and the ways that they can make concrete behavioral changes to achieve greater energy efficiency. The research brings to the problem of energy literacy an interdisciplinary approach in which cyber tools are manifested in physical space.