This grant provides funding to hold a workshop on Building Systems. This workshop will address basic science needs for the understanding the dynamic behavior and the effective control of these complex systems. Buildings are the largest energy draw within the U.S. yet little is done to actively mitigate the energy use of those that are currently being designed and built. The objectives of the workshop are (1) to assess the current state of research and educational activities in the area of systems engineering and design, (2) to identify strategic research directions that could have a transformative impact on building systems, (3)to outline appropriate research themes and potential collaborators for interdisciplinary research, and (4) to develop an action plan for cultivating, promoting, and facilitating research and activities in building systems.
This workshop's goals are in line with the grand challenge "restoring and improving urban infrastructure," outlined by the National Academy of Engineering for the 21st century. The workshop will stimulate and direct research that has high impact on areas of critical nationa need related to sustainability and energy efficiency.
This workshop brought together over 3 dozen research leaders from academia, government and industry to examine ways that more intelligence and ‘system smarts’ could be brought to bear on the general problem of Building Systems. The goal was to see whether information could be put to good use in making Building Systems, current and future, much more energy efficient. The motivation for this effort is the fact that Buildings consume 40% of energy in our country. They are also the major driver in the peak load on our electrical grid (>70%). It is very important that we examine ways to make them smarter, and hence more efficient. This type of increased performance has happened in other areas such as Transportation and Manufacturing but has not yet occurred in the Building Systems area. There were four primary areas in which technical gaps were identified that could benefit from the infusion of new research ideas. These four were (i) modeling, (ii) sensing and estimation, (iii) communication, and (iv) controls/optimization. Key issues identified from each area were: Modeling issues: (a) Existing analytical models do not adequately predict the real behavior across the relevant range of dynamics; (b) current numerical software is difficult for users to use; and (c) models created from integrating models of components, either analytical or numerical, are not easily simplified for control algorithm development, decision making, etc. Estimation/Diagnostics issues: (a) Estimation and diagnostics are essential to retrofit of existing buildings; (b) sensor networks in large buildings are extremely complex from which it is easy to get data, but hard to obtain useful knowledge for diagnostics/estimation; (c) systems and sensors change over time; (d) robustness to humans in the loop is essential. Communication issues: (a) Building network configuration and maintenance is a labor intensive endeavor; (b)design, specification and deployment of sensor networks are ad hoc, typically optimistic in cost and performance, and with no ability to reliably evaluate cost-performance trade-off in the early stage of the design; (c) understanding of human-machine interfaces to ensure persistent energy efficient building system operation is lacking; (d) integration and interoperability of building information sources (e.g. sensors, building usage schedule, weather data, power distribution, power generation and delivery, security, etc.) is insufficient; and (e) powering distributed sensors and communication networks may be challenging from an energy viewpoint. Controls and Optimization issues: Control technologies and optimization strategies are needed (a) for building retrofit; (b) for minimizing the number of required sensors and for robustness to sensor location/variability/faults; (c) for rapid technology deployment/adoption; and (d) for integration of buildings with the electricity grid. Additionally, (e) systems must account for human factors and psychology in their operation. By design, the workshop consisted of technical leaders who knew their area but were not all aware of the importance of the Building Systems challenges. Subsequent to this workshop, there has been a great deal of increased research activity within the general Controls/Optimization community working to address this issue. There has been increased visibility at major conferences and partnering between universities and companies all trying to address the problem with new technology while spawning business opportunities as well. It is felt that this workshop was certainly timely and impacted several individuals directly. Moreover, the report and presentations, available at http://arg.mechse.illinois.edu/index.php?id=1093|Publications, have been circulated throughout the research community. The workshop was certainly a success by all measures. The long term effects will be increased awareness among researchers of the problem which will drive higher efficiency solutions we will all benefit from.
