SDB Retreat Panel Session:Scalability Across the

Building Stock

Randy Katz, ModeratorArka Bhattacharya

Kaifei ChenStephen Dawson-Haggerty

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What is Scalability?

• “… ability of a system to handle a growing amount of work in a capable manner or its ability to be enlarged to accommodate that growth.”

• “An algorithm scales if it is suitably efficient and practical when applied to large situations.”

• If modeling the SECOND building is less work than modeling the first

2From wikipedia “Scalability”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalability

Smart Buildings: How to Achieve Scale?

• Individual building deployments are Herculean efforts– Floorplans– Embedded system descriptions (lighting, HVAC, etc.)– Access to digital representations?

• Scale to millions of structures and 100s million of people?

• Automate the exploitation of existing information sources!

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U.S. Building Stock

• Residential Buildings– 128 million residential housing units in U.S. (2007);

7.188 million new housing units built 2009 – 2009• Commercial Buildings

– 4.9 million office buildings in the U.S. (2003); 170,000 commercial buildings constructed and 44,000 commercial buildings demolished per year (1995)

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Residential EnergyConsumption Survey

• 113.6 million occupied housing units in USA in 2009

• About 19,000 were selected for interviews

• Only about 15,300 were occupied primary residences and eligible

• About 12,100 responded to the survey, a response rate of about 79%

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Alternative Idea: Google Earth

• Crowd sourcing: Harness volunteer efforts to create Google SketchUp 3D building models

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SketchUp 3DWarehouse

From Street Views to … Inside Views

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Google Floor Plans

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From Street Views to

… Inside Views

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Not Just Google …

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Conclusions

• The Challenge: Achieving Scale– Exploit crowd-sourcing

• User generated 3D models and floor plans• Exemplar buildings and automated model building

– Exploit alternative information sources• Satellite and street-view photos• Digitized floor plans• Real-estate databases

• Making the information actionable: energy and other analytics– Liveability, Walkability, Transport Scoring– Localization/Indoor Mapping– Other social analytics