Developing occupant-centric control sequences for thermostat control in buildings

Concordia大学的研究人员与总部位于蒙特利尔的建筑自动化领先者Brainbox AI之间拟议的合作伙伴关系旨在为智能建筑控制开发新的算法。这些新的以乘员为中心的控制算法的目标是通过使用机器学习技术来学习和预测乘员模式和乘员偏好，从而在能源效率和乘员舒适度之间取得平衡。它们将显著减少建筑物的能源消耗和二氧化碳排放，并补充合作伙伴组织现有的智能建筑控制解决方案和算法库。通过使用加拿大不同行业超过1800万平方英尺的建筑，合作伙伴组织将利用这项研究的结果，就学习和预测入住率和入住者偏好的方法获得洞察力和方法。这可以使他们在开发专门为建筑系统设计的人工智能(AI)技术方面处于全球领先地位。研究成果最终可以以最低的资本成本轻松部署在加拿大超过50万座商业建筑中的许多建筑中，这些建筑总共消耗了加拿大约40%的能源消耗。鉴于当前的新冠肺炎疫情，拟议中的研究还将使建筑物能够迅速自我适应商业建筑入住率下降的水平，并相应降低能耗，特别是在重新开放经济的计划可能会限制工作环境的入住率的情况下。此外，这一合作关系将为高素质人员(HQP)提供一个获得相关行业经验的独特机会，使他们能够充分了解与其研究相关的建筑系统和控制技术。他们将能够使用真实建筑的数据，了解他们的系统和部件，同时获得结合建筑工程和建筑科学的跨学科研究技能；这两者都是加拿大建筑业强烈而迫切需要的。

The proposed partnership between researchers at Concordia University and BrainBox AI, a Montreal-based leader in building automation, aims to develop novel algorithms for smart building controls. The goal of these new "occupant-centric control" algorithms is to balance between energy efficiency and occupant comfort by using machine learning techniques to learn and predict occupancy patterns and occupant preferences. They will provide significant tangible reductions in buildings' energy use and CO2 emissions, and complement the partner organization's existing libraries of solutions and algorithms for smart building controls. With access to more than 18 million building square feet of buildings across different sectors in Canada, the partner organization will leverage the outcomes of this research to gain insight and methodologies on approaches for learning and predicting occupancy and occupant preferences. This can position them as a global leader in developing artificial intelligence (AI) technology designed specifically for building systems. Research outcomes can ultimately be easily deployed at minimal capital cost in many of Canada's over half a million commercial buildings, which collectively consume approximately 40% of energy use in Canada. In light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, the proposed research would also allow buildings to quickly self-adapt to reduced occupancy levels in commercial buildings and reduce their energy consumption accordingly, especially as plans for re-opening the economy will likely limit occupancy in work environments. Furthermore, this partnership will provide Highly Qualified Personnel (HQP) with a unique opportunity to gain relevant industry experience that will allow them to fully understand building systems and controls technologies related to their research. They will be able to work with data from real buildings and learn about their systems and components, while gaining interdisciplinary research skills combining building engineering with building sciences; both of which are strongly and urgently needed in the Canadian building industry.