Page 14 - REALCOMM EDGE-Fall 2017-FINAL

SPOTLIGHT: VIRTUAL SENSORING

Connecting People to Buildings:

Virtual Occupancy Metering

Stefan Storey, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Director & Co-Founder, Sensible Building Science
University of British Columbia

he key to realizing the potential of smart buildings is well air-conditioning (HVAC) control, by directly communicating
known. Solutions must connect people to the building occupancy changes to the building control system. When people
Tcontrol systems to meet their needs for comfort: supply arrive in a room with their cell phones, or other Wi-Fi enabled
fresh air, maintain optimum temperature and provide high qual- devices, the virtual solution tells the building controls to provide
ity lighting. The cornerstone fresh air along with heating
of any solution is the need or cooling to match the oc-
to accurately detect and cupancy need. With over 90%
locate building occupants in accuracy and a response time
real-time. of less than three minutes, it
Once you know where peo- is potentially faster and more
ple are located, the building precise than CO2 sensor re-
controls can target comfort, sponse. The solution has been
ventilation and lighting tested successfully at the
services. But why is occupancy University of British Columbia,
detection so hard to attain at where Cisco provided the
an affordable price? In part, location data with their CMX
this is due to the reliance on product and Sensible’s Bridge
physical sensors to detect provided the occupancy
the location and presence intelligence and integration
of occupants. Deploying a with HVAC. UBC’s one million
fleet of sensors such as CO2 “This solution finds energy savings and improves square meter campus sup-
detectors, Passive InfraRed comfort from optimized automation of heating, ports approximately 70,000
(PIR) sensors, or video analytics ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) control, concurrent clients using the
requires dedicated hardware network on 130,000 unique
and supporting infrastructure. by directly communicating occupancy changes to devices, supported by 5500
The good news is that virtual the building control system.” access points. UBC paved the
solutions have arrived, mean- way in digitizing their network
ing that occupancy sensing hardware is no longer the only option. to glean data analytics on traffic patterns to improve and adapt
Sensible Building Science (Sensible) has invented an entirely their campus buildings. With Cisco CMX, UBC is now able to dy-
new method of virtual occupancy metering (VOM). Through namically adapt to building occupancy rates (Source: Cisco Blogs).
partnership with Cisco Systems, existing Wi-Fi activity data The advantages of virtual solutions really come into their own
can be made available to provide feedback to building control when it comes to facility management. They are low mainte-
systems on occupancy as well as number of people in a space, nance, as they use existing Wi-Fi infrastructure—which means
without the need for physical sensors. This solution is called there is no sensor calibration or maintenance. The solution can
Bridge, and it uses existing Wi-Fi activity data to generate VOM also reduce facility ‘trouble-calls’ by detecting unscheduled
data and enable occupant-demand control of building HVAC occupancy. HVAC response is automated and responds wherever
systems, without the need to install new equipment such as mo- people gather, making sure people have optimal comfort, and
tion detectors, video cameras, or physical sensors. It’s like Google reducing the number of comfort complaints.
Traffic, but for indoor environments. Virtual solutions have a distinctive advantage for getting fast
This solution finds energy savings and improves com- returns on investment for organizations and institutions with
fort from optimized automation of heating, ventilation and sustainability mandates. Municipalities, universities and the

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