I-Corps: Personalized Water Conservation and Cost Savings Platform

这个I-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是使个人能够了解和管理他们对水、电和天然气等公用事业资源的消费。许多区域在提供这些资源（短期和长期）方面遇到短缺或制约，给个人消费者和整个社会带来可观的成本。实时为消费者提供高分辨率消费数据的技术使他们能够了解个人选择的价格和影响，以及减少、推迟和安排消费的决策所带来的好处。在消费者层面存在明确的经济激励机制，通过更有效的基础设施和资源利用，为整个社会带来“自下而上”的利益。I-Corps的Cyber Physical Systems项目探索商业化潜力，并进行客户发现，以获得分析和传达最终用户公用事业消费和对大规模公用事业基础设施系统影响的技术。该技术利用了先进计量基础设施的出现，该基础设施允许对水和其他公用事业的消耗和行为进行实时监控和通信。它由一套信息技术组件组成，用于通过多个渠道捕获、评估和呈现数据，分析使用模式的算法，以及用于转换系统操作和基础设施优化需求的消费模式的其他算法。在一家自来水公司实施这项技术的试点研究发现，用水量显著减少，从而降低了客户成本;与此同时，该公司报告了更高的客户满意度。先进的计量基础设施代表了一种无处不在的传感技术，这对“智能”基础设施和网络物理系统至关重要。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to empower individuals to understand and manage their consumption of utility provided resources such as water, electricity, and natural gas. Many regions experience shortages or constraints in delivery of these resources (short and long-term) with appreciable costs for individual consumers as well as society at large. Technology that brings high-resolution consumption data in real-time to consumers allows them to understand the price and effect of individual choices as well as the benefits to be gained by decisions to reduce, defer, and schedule consumption. Clear economic incentives exist at this consumer level that will generate 'bottom-up' benefits for society as a whole through more efficient infrastructure and resources use.This I-Corps Cyber Physical Systems project explores commercialization potential and conducts customer discovery for technology to analyze and communicate end-user utility consumption and effects on large-scale utility infrastructure systems. This technology capitalizes on the advent of Advanced Metering Infrastructure, which allows real-time monitoring and communication of water and other utility consumption and behavior. It is comprised of a suite of information technology components for capture, assessment, and presentation of data through multiple channels, algorithms to analyze usage patterns, and additional algorithms to translate consumption patterns for system operations and infrastructure optimization needs. A pilot study implementing this technology at a water utility has found significant reductions in water usage, leading to lower customer costs; at the same time, the utility reports higher customer satisfaction. Advanced metering infrastructure represents a ubiquitous sensing technology, a class crucial to 'smart' infrastructures and cyber-physical systems.