Bi-directional interactions between users and cognitive buildings by means of smartphone app

Abstract

The new relationship between users and assets through mobile service is changing the way to deliver services by smart devices. The research developed for the project SCUOLA - Smart Campus as Urban Open LAbs introduced the idea of creating an app to include the users' feedback into the information chain of a pilot smart building. The paper describes the early-stage of implementation and evolution of this concept, which define a dialogue between building and users, by realizing a bi-directional interaction via a newly developed mobile application. The app - Smart Campus UNIBS - mediates, as part of a complex system, between the two entities using the connectivity of Smart Living and the process of Data Analytics. The Smart Campus Demonstrator building at the University of Brescia, Italy, is equipped with sensors to monitor and control comfort, indoor air quality and HVAC parameters, such as hygro-thermal parameters, illuminance, CO2 and volatile organic compound (VOC), power of HVAC fans and environmental external factors. The sensors aim at providing data to develop adaptive, dynamic as well as predictive controls virtually incrementing the smartness of the building. The step further is to include the behavioral perspective linking the users to the previous framework. By exchanging different kinds of processed data, including BIM models, sensors and user feedbacks, it is possible to achieve an interaction between the built environment and the social landscape. The Smart Campus Demonstrator building integrates the smart concepts involved in the SCUOLA research project and beyond. It has been chosen to reveal the potential of such reciprocal interchange between humans and constructions towards the extended smart city. The overall purpose is ultimately that of creating a prototype for adaptive systems in architecture i.e. “Cognitive Buildings” which can learn by users' behavior.