Software Defined Buildings
• What are building applications?
• Reconfigurable and responsive buildings
• How do software-defined and reconfigurable
homes differ from commercial buildings?
• Do the benefits of reconfigurable physical
spaces outweigh the drawbacks?
• What is the API for occupants to program the
building?
Possible applications
• Consumer-centric, mobile applications
– Mute tv when the phone rings
– Wire HVAC system to the windows
• Drive efficiency and reliability
– Fault detection – disconnected valves, broken
economizers
– Baseline deviations
– Model-predictive
Isolation and failure as metrics
• Failure and sub-optimality are already very
prevalent
– What would it mean to fail in a meaningful way?
– Hard to drive the building into a truly “unsafe”
state
– Exceptions are life-safety systems: fire, other
alarms, doors (in a fire)
Information plane: mobile data
• Push from mobile sensors and data
• Integrate into models, geosystem, how to find
things?
Modeling
additional layer of complexity not in a computer OS
Nguyen Thi Hoang Lan, http://cnx.org/content/m29708/1.1/
6
Mapping Layer?
• Computer OS doesn’t deal with differing bus
architecture
• Proposal for mapping layer:
– Derive standardized higher-level features from sensor data
• occupancy?
• temperature map?
– Standardized representations of floors, zones?
– Need for reliability, accuracy estimate?
– Perform control and arbitration at a higher level of
abstraction
• Scenarios for building control modes
– “emergency,” “night”
• Customization of lights, energy, user interface