The Uberization of Buildings
We are moving to a world known as the sharing economy, collaborative consumption or peer economy, a common academic definition of a hybrid market model (in between owning and gift giving) of peer-to-peer exchange. Such transactions are facilitated via community-based online services. Uberization is an alternative name for the phenomenon.
This trend is typical of how “software eats the world.” Uber creates transparency on your transportation needs from initial ride request all the way to payment, compare that with the unknowns of hailing a taxi.
My wife and I have just returned from a few days in San Francisco, and we have been “Uberized;” an amazing simplification of what was a frustrating experience into the personal driver on demand app. A fun, sustainable way to move around a city. The leap to autonomous electrical vehicles is not hard to imagine.
Not all references to Uber are positive, as it is a digital disruptive business at the front of the social wave of change. As an industry, it is our challenge to extract the easy and efficiency of the concept and apply it to improving buildings. So how can our industry use “Uber” thinking to delivery of Comfort, Satisfaction, and Wellbeing to be a major player in the productivity arena?
How are we positioning and exploring nontraditional partnerships in our industry to support an Uber think approach, to providing our services focused on satisfaction, care, documented well-being, and measured productivity improvement?
The following are interesting and relevant snippets from a recent edition of AutomatedBuildings.com newsletter, a site that I have the pleasure to curate.
In this article from productivity pioneer, Comfy comes this quote,
My Locations is just the first of more location-based capabilities we will be unveiling for Comfy. As today’s workforce becomes increasingly tech-savvy and mobile, we’re committed to helping each and every person be their best self at work — which includes making Comfy easier to use, everywhere.
In this interview with Stefan Storey, Ph.D. co-founder and CEO of Sensible Building Science (SBS)
Storey: Virtual occupancy metering (VOM) is a method of people-counting without the need for physical sensors. It’s like Google Traffic, but for indoor environments. Our solution, called Bridge, uses existing Wi-Fi activity data to generate VOM data and enable occupant-demand control of building heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, without the need to install new equipment such as motion detectors, video cameras, or physical sensors.
In this interview with George Hernandez, Principal Technical Advisor, Buildings to Grid Integration and Buildings Controls Research Program Manager, PNNL
VOLTTRON An agent based open-source distributed control and sensing platform for buildings, the power grid, and the integration of the two to support the deployment of energy efficiency and grid services to increase consumer benefits. A deployment platform from which commercial enterprises can develop and sell products without license constraints and an easily integrate solution into their product lines; A tool that can accelerate the industry adoption of transactive based controls, advanced building energy analytics, and new pioneering energy-related applications and algorithms; A Linux-based software solution that is the ‘engine’ for robust cyber secure solutions connecting devices, data, storage, transactions, decision, and control.
How is this actually being used? This from Nigel David BSc, MSc, Ph.D. Lead Researcher SES Consulting
Moving forward, we plan to continue prototyping a VOLTTRON-based energy audit and recommissioning service, making use of its core functionality. We want to get the tool in the hands of our engineers as soon as possible so that we can focus our development in the right areas, using an agile approach. I’m delighted to hear that PNNL is continuing to play a leadership role in the research community and that they are working hard to move towards an open source software foundation and community.
Other platforms are evolving as well like this EdgeX Foundry — Vendor-Neutral, Open-Source which will simplify IoT development and deployment for a wide variety of applications.
These articles talk about transformative change, Investing in Occupant Comfort. How thermal comfort enhances productivity, and how to achieve it , BuildPulse
Using Analytics to Make the Switch From Reactive to Proactive How Facility Teams are Driving Change
The Haystack initiative impacts all of this is by normalizing the naming requirement of a lot more things and services so these virtual services can be self-discovered and machine manipulated on demand.
From these observations, I summarize that the building automation industry is moving into the direction of Uberization. Industry players are researching, developing and implementing technologies, products, and services that facilitate not only the necessary business offerings but also the critical open dialog, in line with the vision and direction of the New Deal.
