Human-Aware Environments for Distributed Building Systems Operations

城市基础设施运营的创新管理在提高其可服务性、可持续性和整合动态能源的灵活性方面发挥着关键作用。建筑物是城市基础设施的重要组成部分，占能源消耗的大部分。该项目研究了以人为中心的分布式量化建筑物热需求的新方法，以实现有效的热能管理。建筑物中的传统监测和控制方法受到来自环境的有限反馈以及不反映其用户动态的保守假设的约束。为了解决这些局限性，本项目研究了人体热响应和建筑系统控制机制之间更紧密的系统集成。因此，该项目研究了非侵入式传感和推理方法，使智能环境能够通过考虑仪器，可行性和性能之间的权衡来推断其占用者的需求。该研究的实现将为确定建筑物层面的适应潜力和在网格层面构建网络以提高建筑基础设施的可服务性提供基础。通过利用研究的跨学科性质，该项目整合了本科和研究生课程的研究结果。它还有助于鼓励K-12和来自工程学代表性不足的群体的本科学习者与弗吉尼亚理工大学CEED中心合作攻读STEM领域学位的计划。人体对环境条件的反应，反映在心肺调节中，充当环境中的发射器。该项目利用这一特性，通过多普勒雷达系统作为唯一收发器的新应用，从以人为中心的个性化热舒适性评估仪器转向以空间为中心的仪器。系统集成的可行性和性能的基本要求将通过实验和现场验证研究，数学建模和替代控制框架的设计进行研究。统计推断技术，再加上专门的信号处理框架将开发，使人类的生理反应的应用程序作为传感器代理分布式反馈控制的建筑系统？操作为此，将进行生物信号特征工程和灵敏度分析，以开发考虑环境噪声干扰的热响应反馈的有效概率模型。参数和非参数技术模拟人体的热响应也将被用来研究新的维度，以标准的热感觉指标。将评估将联合收割机实时个性化反馈与建筑系统中现有控制逻辑相结合的替代控制方案，以（1）评估生理反应的控制反馈的功效，（2）确定建筑物中潜在的能源效率改进作为主要研究假设。

Innovative management of urban infrastructure operations has a critical role in enhancing their serviceability, sustainability, and flexibility in integration of dynamic sources of energy. Buildings, a major component of the urban infrastructure, account for majority of energy consumption. This project investigates novel approaches for human-centered and distributed quantification of thermal demand in buildings for efficient thermal energy management. Conventional monitoring and control approaches in buildings are constrained with limited feedback from an environment as well as conservative assumptions that do not reflect the dynamics of their users. To address these limitations, this project investigates a closer system integration between human body thermal response and control mechanisms of building systems. Accordingly, the project investigates non-intrusive sensing and inference methodologies that enable a smart environment to infer the need of its occupants by considering the trade-off between instrumentation, feasibility, and performance. Realization of the research will provide the ground in identifying adaptation potentials at building level and building networks at grid level to improve serviceability of building infrastructure. By leveraging the cross-disciplinary nature of the research, this project integrates findings in undergraduate and graduate courses. It also contributes to the programs that encourage K-12 and undergraduate learners from groups underrepresented in engineering to pursue degrees in STEM fields in collaboration with Virginia Tech CEED center. Human body responses to ambient conditions, which are reflected in cardiopulmonary adjustments, act as a transmitter in an environment. This characteristic is leveraged in this project to shift from human-centric instrumentation for personalized thermal comfort assessment to space-centric by a novel application of Doppler radar systems that act as the sole transceivers. The fundamental requirements of feasibility and performance for a system integration will be investigated through experimental and field validation studies, mathematical modeling, and design of an alternative control framework. Statistical inference techniques, coupled with specialized signal processing frameworks will be developed to enable the application of human physiological response as sensor proxies for distributed feedback in control of building systems? operation. To this end, bio-signal feature engineering and sensitivity analyses will be carried out to develop efficient probabilistic models of thermal response feedback that account for environmental noise interference. Parametric and non-parametric techniques for modeling thermal response of human body will be also utilized to investigate new dimensions to standard thermal sensation metrics. Alternative control scenarios that combine real-time personalized feedback with existing control logic in building systems will be evaluated to (1) assess the efficacy of the control feedback from physiological responses and (2) identify potential energy efficiency improvements in buildings as the main research hypotheses.