Wireless sensors for smart buildings
NRC (National Research Council Canada) has launched an ambitious multidisciplinary project to develop and link arrays of indoor environment sensors in order to help improve a building’s environmental health, energy efficiency and maintenance, as well as the general comfort of its occupants.
Today, building sensors can be used to detect a wide variety of environmental conditions such as carbon dioxide, temperature, light levels, noise levels and occupancy rates. Such data could then be collated centrally where “some intelligence is applied” to decide whether it’s necessary to change operational settings, says Dr. Guy Newsham, who leads the lighting group at the NRC Institute for Research in Construction (NRC-IRC) in Ottawa. “Signals would then be sent to actuators within the building systems to adjust an airflow rate, temperature or light level in ways that are better for office workers and management, and increase energy efficiency,” he explains.
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