Part II: Sunday Musings on Autonomous Buildings!
Link to Part I: What are we talking about?
Where to go from here?
As per IEA, building operations are responsible for more than a quarter of our global energy-related emissions footprint (IEA). Experience suggests that higher autonomy levels can be directly correlated with lesser energy waste. It’s estimated that incorrect operations lead to 30%-50% of the consumed energy being wasted (Gunay). Using this as a yardstick most of our prevalent building stock can be placed either at Level 0 or Level 1 of the proposed scale. Even worse there are more examples of buildings that can be classed as poor Level 2 integrated cases than otherwise.
On a positive note, piggybacking off a largely organic entrepreneurial dexterity and some isolated yet excellent research initiatives there are numerous examples of buildings that have achieved Level 3 autonomy. Their adaptive response though is of a limited nature. These buildings dynamically respond to system variables such as natural light, temperature, humidity, occupancy, grid capacity etc. (independently or in a combination). To overcome this challenge, deepening the use of AI to handle the myriad of variables seems to be a pragmatic choice.
Zooming into the latest developments in the penetration of AI, researchers are experimenting with alternatives such as reinforcement learning and Bayesian inference. Whilst, as with other industry sectors reinforcement learning has found its way into commercial deployments, and the Bayesian approach exhibits a lot of promise given its superiority in dealing with uncertainty.
Despite these possibilities, the maturity of these technologies for wider market adoption is critically lacking in comparison to other industries. This in my view can be attributed to three factors: a) lack of required investment for experimentation with new technologies; b) the real-estate market being fragmented and regionalized causing a lack of a larger dominant player with holdings spreading over two or three geographical regions; c) lack of our collective gaze. For instance, our preoccupation with autonomous vehicles far exceeds our interest in autonomous buildings, whereas a modern human ends up spending more than 90% of their lifetime inside of structures that we commonly refer to as ‘buildings’.
In this climate (pun intended), with increasing scarcity in public infrastructure grids and skilled professionals joining the buildings’ workforce, stepping up our progress towards Levels 4 and 5 autonomy seems imperative. Even though, it seems more like a minute has passed on the clock of the evolution of buildings transitioning between level 1 and level 3 autonomy, it’s less than a minute that we have left to prevent the 1.5℃ climate change ceiling.
I am sure you have a lot to contribute to the proposal here or perhaps would like to make one of your own. Excited to hear your thoughts and/or feedback! Do leave one in the comments.