SIMGIS : GIS FOR THERMAL SIMULATIONS IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT AUTHORS
Building simulation programs perform thermal simulations in a stand-alone scenario and, therefore, the resulting building automation is unable to handle a broad scenario of environmental changes. Due to the time needed for a building to react properly to short-term sudden weather changes, standard building automation is not enough to control energy consumption and thermal comfort efficiently: the sensors placed on the external envelop of a building provide information about weather changes too short in advance about weather changes. A meteorological station can inform in advance a group of buildings in an area about weather changes, but is unable, unlike a GIS, to identify the buildings which are really interested in the phenomenon and to send the weather changes information only to those buildings. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) has developed a new methodology to optimize building thermal performances by utilizing GIS, simulation, on line meteorological data and building automation.
Sensors in Intelligent Buildings
We've all heard of `sick-building' syndrome and the misery this can inflict in the workplace in terms of poor health and lost production. The notion of the Intelligent Building is the modern civil engineer's Big Idea in tackling these and other such deficiencies. The intelligent building can adapt itself to maintain an optimized environment. This ability relies on sensors as a front-line technology - the subject of this volume. Gassmann and Meixner tackle the subject matter by using five categories of intelligent building technology: energy and HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), information and transportation, safety and security, maintenance, and facility management. These categories of home and building technology are intended to encompass domestic as well as workplace and public environments, but as the introduction states, the breakthrough into the domestic market is not quite here yet. They have targeted, successfully in this reviewer's opinion, the researcher and designer in the field who has his or her own specific interest in sensor issues. Each section of the book contains a number of articles contributed from predominantly European, particularly German and Swiss, research institutions. They cover subjects as diverse as inflatable buildings and a combination of a sensing chair and sensing floor that allows the exact interaction of a human user with his/her immediate surroundings to be integrated within an information system. A fascinating item on biometric access security systems brings to life the `spy-thriller' world of automatic iris and fingerprint scanners as a means of secure access to key-less buildings. The discussion extends to threats to such systems whereby `replay' attacks, for example presenting a face recognition system with a photograph of an individual, reveal the necessary further steps if the technology is to be considered safe. Inevitably though, it is the massive strides in communications and processing technology that are visible in the contributions to this volume that point to where most of the advances will come. The massive interconnection issue of numerous sensors, the `nervous system' of the building is approached in items covering the complexities of fieldbus systems and the use of `wireless' in-building networks. This well presented volume with good quality illustration ends in an investigation of system technologies for the automated home of the near future. Presence-controlled heating and air-conditioning, telemonitoring of the sick or elderly, gas and fire detection and of course a high data rate communication backbone to link everything: all these could feature in the future household. We shall see. Peter Foote
Environmental Control in Historic Buildings
AbstractThe decline of the country house as a fully-occupied family home can expose structure and contents to the high humidity and variations of the British climate. Sufficient experience has now been gained to show how damage and deterioration can be significantly reduced by understanding the effects of relative humidity (RH) control and stabilization, together with the use of carefully controlled conservation heating and minimal intrusion into the building.