Author: DigiConsult ltd

Smart cities, make you think of an ecosystem that is completely interconnected, seamlessly. Cities of the future will be truly smart when they are built on a unified platform – that can support smart lighting and every other device. It is what will make the city energy-efficient too. Cities need a smart sensor platform network. It is what provides the connection from a sensor or field device to a centralized IoT or data collection platform. Through it, the city’s infrastructure collects data and uses it for decision-making purposes.

Smart Sensors for cities:

The network and platform established for smart street light control, for example, will not only serve the primary application, but also other sensors and applications, forming a “smart sensor platform network” for other systems across domains such as environment, traffic, public safety, metering, and waste,

Having different applications connected to a shared smart sensor platform network provides the opportunity for data collection and analytics across different domains.

This also provides new insights that a single domain vertical cannot offer. For example, it helps gauge how rain can affect traffic flow and street light control.

Urban Sensing

Using CCTV cameras and video analytics to anonomously detect people (so the system knows a person walked down a street but doesn’t know who that person is) is one example of smart city sensors in action. The people, bicycle and vehicle counts are uploaded over the internet to “Brokers”. The Brokers process the data and makes it available to all end users – comprising an Internet of Things. Such a system is supplied by our sister company – Retail Sensing.

Sensing Pedestrians

In the high streets and city centres, VT Smart Counters are counting people. They provides both real-time and historical data for “Big Data” analytics.

They can also be used within individual retail units to discover vital analytics like sales conversion rate, average queuing time and the most popular area of a store. This demonstrates in a practical way the city’s commitment to retail on the high street.

The Smart Counters are attached to lampposts around the city.

Sensing Bicycles

The Smart Counter can also be used to count bicycles. This helps monitor and support the promotion of healthy travelling and gives a measure of how green or pollution-free areas are within a city centre.

Sensing Vehicles

Smart Counts accurately count cars down roads and at junctions. Councils can effectively manage the flow of traffic along the busiest routes across the city and monitor the days and times of the heaviest flow.

Combining the Counts and Scoring Effectiveness of Smart City Projects

The Internet-of-Things data provided helps quantify the use of footpaths and cycle ways. It shows the use of roads, including commuter routes around schools and major routes through the city centre. This can help score the effectiveness of Smart City projects , which aims to build and deliver a smarter, more connected Manchester. Creating a city that uses technology to meet the complex needs of its people.

From a health perspective Smart City data to monitor the effectiveness of sports activity, events and jogging routes within parks.

Counting on Public Transport

The Smart Counters are not just being used around the city streets. Buses, trains and trams can also benefit.

Sensing Passengers on Buses

Transport authorities can know the numbers of people arriving by bus at various points in the city, by time of day. The data helps revenue protection – reconciling tickets bought with passenger numbers. It also enables effective fleet bus management with services around the city centre. With real-time GPS location of buses, it gives a clear picture of what is going on.

Efficient, environmentally-friendly and exceedingly cost-effective, smart lighting has emerged as a crucial component for smart buildings and cities alike. Smart light bulbs and smart light sockets have abilities that go far beyond merely responding to lighting needs. They can also create a layer of sensors across an entire facility that will let collect data and ultimately drive better experiences for the building’s occupants. The traditional large office buildings in which light switches are “hidden” are probably a thing of the past. The current trend to individually controlled lights, with the ability for each individual user to select their preferred lighting levels, is potentially a significant power saver and the use of more modern lighting technologies also reduces the amount of heat generated by more efficient luminaires.

Energy efficiency and big savings

A combination of lower costs of entry and increased savings makes implementing a smart building as tempting as ever.

Commercial buildings could save up to $60 billion between 2014 and 2030 with a “comprehensive building labeling and benchmarking program. Intelligent efficiency measures applied to just 35% of eligible commercial floor area in buildings with 50,000 or more square feet could save upwards of 50 TWh by 2030, assuming a conservative savings estimate of 20% – more than 1% of U.S. projected energy use by that year.

Lighting controls have come a long way in the past decade, producing a range of solutions. The biggest drivers in development are energy codes, falling cost, miniaturization of sensors and network integration hardware, advances in wireless technology, and rapidly growing demand for highly controllable LED lighting. Here is a list of the top eight most important types of lighting controls.

1. Traditional controls — Traditional lighting controls include standalone devices (e.g., switches) for control of local loads and centralized panels for control of large loads.

2. Luminaire- and room-based control systems — based systems embed or integrate sensors within luminaires, enabling them to respond individually for greater flexibility and energy savings. Room-based control systems package lighting controllers and input devices for autonomous, plug-and-play, preprogrammed room lighting control. In both cases, the lighting controllers may be networked, which allows programming.

3. Building- and enterprise-based control systems — In this system, lighting controllers are networked across a building or multiple buildings. Facility managers can then program all lighting control using operating software and potentially pull performance and other data to a central server or the cloud.

The most suitable choice depends on the application and the operator’s skill level. What is particularly interesting for facility managers is that the need for a premium dimming ballast no longer limits dimming used to increase energy savings in occupied spaces. LED lighting is highly controllable, and the majority of LED luminaires feature dimming standard or as a standard option. Introducing more-advanced lighting control options in existing buildings is similarly also no longer limited by running low-voltage wiring between devices, as wireless connectivity eliminates that need.

Trends shaping the future of control.

Embedded controls —  The lighting industry is increasingly offering luminaires packaged with embedded sensors and, in some cases, lighting controllers. This simplifies installation while increasing flexibility of control response.

Wireless control — Many manufacturers offer lighting and control solutions that enable control points to communicate wirelessly, such as using radio waves. This eliminates the need for dedicated low-voltage wiring, a major benefit for controls installation in existing buildings. This potentially reduces the installed cost of lighting controls in existing buildings while making the upgrade simpler and less disruptive. In some solutions, the control points may be networked within a programmable, scalable system that generates useful data.

 Networked control —  An increasing number of lighting control solutions network all control points, assigning them unique addresses for individual or group programming. The solution may operate autonomously or integrate with other building systems. This approach offers numerous advantages, including detailed control zoning, distributed intelligence, zoning using software, programmability, data generation, and more. Coupled with wireless communication, it can be suitable in many lighting upgrade projects.

Energy efficiency organizations and utilities are now looking to get behind networked lighting controls in a big way. Estimating that one-third of all LED-based energy savings may be derived from connected lighting and controls by 2035, the Department of Energy is promoting the technology and working with industry to enhance it. The DesignLights Consortium recently developed a specification and Qualified Products List for networked lighting controls, which utilities are now using to develop rebate programs promoting the technology.

Data generation — Some lighting control systems allow data collection from control points connected via a digital wired or wireless network. The system may directly measure or estimate energy consumption or monitor operating parameters. Additional sensors embedded in the luminaire may collect data such as occupancy and temperature. In some outdoor lighting control systems, other sensors may be added that collect data on everything from carbon monoxide to snowfall.

Data is fed to a server or to the cloud for retrieval and use via software. Energy consumption data may be analyzed and shared for a variety of purposes. Monitored conditions may prompt alarms for maintenance response.

Color tuning — With LEDs, it is relatively economical to provide users the ability to adjust lighting correlated color temperature (CCT), or shade of white light. With tunable-white LED lighting, users can adjust light source CCT with separately dimming arrays of warm- and cool-white LEDs. Other colors may be added to enhance the available color spectrum and ensure good color rendering. Two other approaches are dim-to-warm (LED products that dim to a very warm white similar to incandescent dimming) and full color tuning (separately dimmable red, green and blue LEDs plus amber or white and potentially other colors).

With the newest breakthroughs artificial intelligence (AI) has offered in the fields of robotics, self-driven cars, finance, and healthcare, energy companies are now exploring the possibilities of incorporating AI to increase the prospects of more efficient consumption of energy. Several artificial intelligence courses are already being developed to facilitate learning in the field of AI. The ability to compress and analyze large sets of data can help brands monitor and interpret the data produced by energy industries to optimize energy consumption.

Energy Storage:

The number was only predicted to double, but grew at a much faster pace than even the most optimistic experts expected. A renewable solution to the energy storage problem was much sought after. With the increase in storage capacity and technological emergence, AI has emerged to boost efficiency and sustainability. P

Accident Management:
Accidents and instrument failures are a common occurrence in the energy industry. Time and again, human errors and failure to thoroughly check equipment for safety and maintenance issues can lead to massive equipment failures and irreversible losses. Artificial intelligence is now being used to detect faults by observing pieces of equipment. Timely detection of these failures can thus not only save money and time, but it can also save lives.

AI solutions for areas in manufacturing, energy, oil and gas, amongst others are use a combination of analytics, sensors, and operational data to forecast any possible failures of critical infrastructure. SparkCognition was also granted an award in December 2017 by the Department of Energy for using artificial intelligence to enhancing coal-fired power plants.

Grid Management:
Modern power grids gather energy from multiple energy sources, including wind, solar, and coal. Operating and managing massive power grids systems has become more complicated. Artificial intelligence increases efficiency and stability to these energy sources through its ability by analzying large datasets in a short frame of time. This has led to the development of smart grids, which are designed to handle multiple energy sources at the same time efficiently.

Energy Consumption:
Excessive energy consumption is a global problem that is being faced by developed and emerging countries alike. To achieve a more sustainable consumption of energy, artificial intelligence is being used to monitor the energy consumption behavior of individuals and businesses. Many AI-based startups are now offering practical solutions to optimize this energy usage.

Energy Forecasting:
Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power come with a constant challenge of unreliability. Though sustainable, these weather-dependent power sources often fluctuate in their energy, thus proving inefficient to power companies in the long run. Energy provider Xcel is using AI to solve these very challenges. Xcel uses National Center for Atmospheric Research’s new AI-based data mining method to access weather reports with precision and extensive detail. Xcel’s AI systems mine a combination of data from weather stations, local satellite reports, as well as wind farms. The algorithms driving these systems then identify patterns within the collected data sets to make relevant predictions.

The importance of developing and incorporating renewable sources of energy has been repeatedly stressed upon by government and environmentalists alike. Owing to the variable nature of renewable sources, suppliers earlier mostly relied on natural sources of energy. However, with the integration of artificial intelligence in renewable energy sources, an increase in energy efficiency does not seem far off.

The built environment affects our well-being and this, in turn, influences our effectiveness in the workplace. Poor environments contribute to absenteeism and to people not working as well as they might. This is an enormous cost to the nation. High-quality environmental design is an investment, as occupants are healthier, staff-retention rates are higher, productivity is higher and sustainability ideas are more likely to be met. Workplaces reflect the culture of
companies and are places that are not just functional and convenient but give the occupant a wholesome experience in terms of body and spirit.

Buildings Affect People’s Health
Over the past 20 years, it has been empirically assessed that most building environments have a direct effect on the occupants’ physical and psychological health, well-being and performance; however, it is only through more recent studies that a clearer understanding of the occupied environment has been discovered. There is a need to: create greater public awareness of the health impacts of buildings; increase the focus on better tools and methodologies to collect data and measure healthy, impacts; and encourage building codes to place increased emphasis on healthier
building practices. If we only concentrate on energy we are in danger of neglecting the real purpose of architecture which is to provide for people’s well-being. A balance between these requirements is necessary.

Intelligent sustainable buildings for smart sustainable cities

The concept of “intelligent buildings” has been around for a number of years and has relied on the ability of individual systems within the buildings to communicate, to integrate and to perform in a manner allowing for numerous, complex, controls to generate a much-enhanced response to many kinds of stimuli. Thus, the argument of intelligence can reasonably be associated with the ability of intelligent buildings to function in an enhanced manner yielding many benefits for the occupants, the operators, the owners and reducing the overall environment impact.

Benefits and opportunities which these intercommunications, or intelligence, can provide:

• Access control and security systems

The access control system should be integrated with the fire system, lighting system and the HVAC system. With these forms of integration, the system “intelligence” can allow a user to enter the building and the information that this user has presented in terms of his credentials will be signalled to a number of independent systems.

• Elevators and escalators

Through suitable programming, the number of elevators being used at any one time can be optimized to address schedules, loads and potentially, emergencies;e.g., if paramedics require an elevator, it can be automatically configured to provide exclusive use for such purposes under an emergency situation.

•  Lighting

The traditional large office buildings in which light switches are “hidden” are probably a thing of the past. The current trend to individually controlled lights, with the ability for each individual user to select their preferred lighting levels, is potentially a significant power saver and the use of more modern lighting technologies also reduces the amount of heat generated by more efficient luminaires.

•  Signage

There have been evident changes applicable to signage technology. Signage can readily be shown on screens, and include any required graphics thereby ensuring that language and situational variations are readily addressed. Thus standard signage can carry routine messages including hours of operation or the length of line-ups or delays.

• Building condition monitoring

Intelligent building technologies open the opportunity to facilitate the monitoring of a building’s condition. Transducers and sensors are available to measure most building related parameters and in any given situation, there may be particular needs driving their specific use. Under appropriate conditions some or all of the following may be appropriate and would then be communicated to a central monitoring facility.

Climate change adaptation

Climate Change related severe weather events are increasing in frequency and severity. These severe weather events include (but are not limited to):

• Urban floods;
• Extended heat waves;
• Ice storms;
• Extended cold spells;
• High winds / tornadoes / hurricanes.

These weather events have both a long term and short impact on the commercial building infrastructure in cities.

During short-term events, building infrastructure is impacted by major structural damage, damage to a building’s support and utility systems, closure and loss of revenue among other items.  In order to prevent damage from flooding events, major HVAC, electrical and communication equipment should not be located below or on grade locations or if it is not possible to move equipment above grade then equipment rooms should be sealed against water intrusion.

• Demand response capability means that the intelligent building is able to reduce the building’s electrical load for HVAC and/or lighting during periods of high system wide demand, typically at the request of, and perhaps with incentives from the utility. This is particularly needed during extended heat waves to ensure that power grids are not overly stressed.
• Proper design of external landscaping and storm water management facilities can reduce the potential effects of severe rainstorms and urban flooding.
• Intelligent buildings normally also have back up power systems that can automatically provide power for short or extended periods of time to allow for evacuation or maintain building operations.

Smart Cities yields many benefits for society, including enhanced opportunities for education, improved job prospects, better access to healthcare and cleaner water. Yet it is also associated with immense societal and environmental challenges. Inefficient planning and management practices lead to unsustainable settlements that do not enable people to advance personally, socially or economically. Smart and innovative technologies, including artificial intelligence, are revolutionising the way cities address the challenges associated with smart growth.

AI in Smart Cities

Such technologies help cities to utilise existing assets more effectively, allocate resources more efficiently and improve how data and information are managed and shared across systems. Increasingly, satellite data is becoming a fundamental component of smart cities and an essential tool for city management and governance. From understanding connectivity between cities to measuring economic growth, detecting power outages or identifying where resources should be allocated after disasters, the increasing availability of satellite data is transforming how cities are managed and helping to improve their functionality.

From the point of view of urban governance, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) provide near-real-time information on how cities change in practice, e.g. through the conversion of green spaces into built-up structures. By ‘teaching’ computers what to look for in satellite images, rapidly expanding sources of satellite data are leveraged in combination with machine learning algorithms to quickly reveal how actual city development aligns with planning and zoning or which communities are most prone to flooding. Machine learning techniques help to automatically detect and map different types of land cover and land use across space and time, and generate important insights, analytics and visualisations.

AI  a buzzword, a kind of magic formula

Today, AI is almost a buzzword, a kind of magic formula, based on some ‘intelligent agents’ and sophisticated algorithms that make decisions and take action for humans. But AI will never replace human validation or effective governance on the ground. ‘Smart’ technologies that collect data on the ground or from space must be leveraged to monitor and manage urban systems and to provide guidance and recommendations for better decision-making, which will in turn make cities more sustainable.

Planning for scalability and sustainability

Plan for both physical and digital scalability. If you want to upscale activities to other locations or cities by installing additional sensors or performing additional analytics – does the system allow for this?

Consider the longevity of the project and how the hardware may be used during and after it has completed. In some circumstances a Service Level Agreement (SLA) for maintenance or drift correction may be needed.

If you are building AI feedback into the system, it is good to make it as adaptive as possible. This allows systems to be able to take advantage of suggested optimisation by ensuring capacity to extend the functionality of the hardware and software, should it be identified as desirable by the AI.

A smart city is an innovative urban strategy, using high technologies to reduce the city environmental footprint and to improve the citizens’ quality of life. Smart cities use ICT to implement their smart strategies and to collect and deliver information at different users. For this reason, a smart city is somewhat joining different aspects of living in the urban area and link several concepts such as wired city, virtual city, intelligent city, information city, digital city, knowledge city, and so on. A smart sustainable city is an innovative city that uses information and communication technologies (ICTs) and other means to improve quality of life, the efficiency of urban operation and services, and competitiveness, while ensuring that it meets the needs of present and future generations with respect to economic, social and environmental aspects.

The role of ICT practices in smart sustainable cities
As aforementioned, the definition of ‘sustainable’ provides a  cognitive frame for the understanding of which smart solutions are relevant. If, on the one hand, a sustainable city is defined as an urban area in which the built environment is resource efficient, then ‘smart’ will comprise ICT solutions for automation. If, on the other hand, a sustainable city is defined as an urban area in which the footprint of consumption does not exceed a certain level, then ‘smart’ will imply ICT solutions addressing also consumption habits, by way of information, persuasion and gamification. The contemporary smart sustainable city discourse aspires to address both infrasystems and lifestyles but is strongly techno-biased. While there are well-elaborated proposals for technological solutions, and to some extent how these are intended to be used, the heterogeneity and complexity of everyday life is remarkably often neglected. Moreover, the solutions are typically aimed at an ideal type of human being, emerging from the male-biased technocratic dreaming of engineers and policy-makers. The idea of this individual and rational “resource man” [43] is however not unique for the smart sustainable city discourse but is a recurring character in many sustainable development agendas addressing consumption, behaviour or lifestyles [45, 46]. While “resource
man” might be an appealing understanding of how people function, this simplification is a problematic shortcut.
Numerous studies have shown that to understand patterns of consumption (and how to change them), it does not suffice to focus the logic of (bounded) economic rationality. Social, cultural and institutional dimensions also need to be taken into consideration. Additional criticism against contemporary smart city agendas is lifted by , who argues that the smart city agenda is underpinned with ideas of authoritarianism instead of harnessing the reality of urban life.

Smart Sustainable Cities
ICTs can play a significant role to improve the carbon footprint of cities by moving to more intelligent use of energy.

ICTs can enable better use of energy in buildings, transport, street lighting etc. It can also facilitate the integration of locally generated renewable energy into the electricity grid. The report “Impacts of Information and communication Technologies on Energy Efficiency” which was commissioned by the European Commission identifies areas in a city in which ICT can have a positive impact.

Because of the positive role ICTs can play in helping cities reduce their carbon emissions the European Commission co-finances initiatives and research in this area through the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development and the Competitiveness and Innovation Programme.

Greening ICT products, applications, services, and practices in buildings are both economic and environmental imperative, as well as our social responsibility. Therefore, a growing number of ICT vendors and users are moving towards green ICT and thereby assisting in building a green society and economy. With this in mind, consumers can achieve green savings on top of the efficiency gains resulting from automated systems.

Green ICT concept
Green ICT is drawing a lot of attention and it originates from its source “Green Computing”. However, “Green Computing” in the earlier stage was based on the idea that ICT is deeply related to high energy consumption as well as production of harmful materials and non-recyclable waste that do not decompose, and aimed at production of energy efficient, eco-friendly and recyclable ICT goods. Meanwhile, as environmental problems aggravate
recently, ICT is being expanded beyond the mere production of eco-friendly products, to becoming actively applied in dealing with environmental problems. Green ICT is also concerned now with developing and applying production processes or sharing in them with adequate attention being given to the environmental impacts.

Smart Buildings
‘Smart buildings’ is a term employed for a suite of technologies that use ICT applications to make the design, construction and, in particular, the use of buildings more efficient and convenient. Global emissions from buildings, including the energy used to run buildings, are estimated to be 11.7 GtCO2e by 2020 . It has also been estimated that ICT has the potential to reduce these emissions by 15%, i.e. by 1.68 GtCO2e.

Smart Grids
A ‘smart grid’ is a solution with both software and hardware tools that can route electricity more efficiently. The smart grid allows the electricity to go in a two-way direction, which allows real-time two-way information exchange with customers for real-time demand-side management. In contrast, the energy distribution networks of today are relatively inefficient. These networks only allow one-way communication of the energy distribution from the energy provider to the user of energy. Furthermore, they have over-capacity in order to cope with unexpected surges in energy use.

Integration Technologies

Integration Technologies are used to enable different actors to collaborate and share knowledge, to enable different systems and tools to communicate with each other and to make it easy for the user of the system to install new tools and systems. The main concepts of ‘Integration Technologies’ are:
• Process integration
• System integration
• Inter-operability and standards
• Knowledge sharing

Process Integration – Process Integration as discussed in this section means the business relations between different actors and how that process can be made more effective, with less resource and energy usage as a result. Through it,
residents and building owners collaborate and share information about the building and its operating conditions to achieve high energy efficiency. The actors use ICT tools for the support of group work to collaborate in an efficient way. Current technologies are based on the assumption that all collaborating parties use the same platform.

System Integration – System Integration is a way of describing the communication between hardware and software in different systems and how the different parts fit together and communicate. The vision is that each new component in a building should be recognised automatically, which means that each new component can be easily connected and unnecessary components removed from the network (plug-and-play). Another, similar concept for easy system integration is Service Orientated Architecture (SOA), which makes it easier to integrate or remove different services from time to time. A common platform for the ‘building operation system’ rather than separate hardware as a host for the different software systems is preferable. Open information platforms and gateways can be
used to support external value-added software services to run on the platform and use information from the different subsystems.
Interoperability & Standards – In the building and construction sector there are many actors involved, each with many different ICT tools and systems for a variety of applications that need to share information. There is still a mismatch between the users’ need for interoperability and the ICT providers’ incentives to support it. If all information that is managed during a building’s usage phase were to be supported by an open BIM (Building Information Model) standard, stored in a single place and always updated and accessible to all actors, it would be easier to get proper data and to identify where energy savings could be made.

Knowledge sharing – Knowledge about energy-efficient solutions and practices is important for lower energy usage in buildings. If knowledge could be shared between actors in an easy way, it might open the way for more energy savings.  Tools for access to knowledge such as e&m learning (electronically and mobile phone-supported learning and teaching), RSS feeds that push relevant information to users of buildings and community forums where sharing of experiences from different energy efficiency solutions and practices can become a breeding environment for new ideas. Other tools that are relevant in this field are knowledge management tools that are used to identify, collect, organise, share, adapt, use and create energy-efficient solutions and practices. Examples of such tools are: Model-based knowledge management, ambient access technologies, knowledge platforms and standards.

The infrastructure and construction industry is undergoing a lot of seismic transformations that will change its essential character and redefine the industry – which has conventionally traversed at a snail’s pace in incorporating innovative technology – to maximize utility, boost productivity and streamline delivery. AI would assist the construction industry in combatting some of the biggest recurring challenges that it has to face, including project schedule delay, accuracy margin, and safety considerations.

The immense potential of AI in the construction industry

Opportunity areas to be seen
Identification of key opportunity areas within the construction industry where AI has the potential to be a decisive game-changer would be helpful in its evolution, as mass adoption of AI in construction becomes a reality.

Among other uses, project schedule optimizers can consider permutations and combinations of literally innumerable alternative ways for project delivery and concurrently enhancing project planning.

In the domain of site surveying, image recognition and classification can identify unsafe worker behavior pattern and collate this data for future reference.

Deployment of customized real-time solutions at a reduced cost and prioritization of preventative maintenance would also be a plus point.

Other AI-based applications can assist site managers in the inspection of remote sites by updating any changes they witness in real time.

In the future, there would be autonomous quality-control systems that would combine new technologies and artificial intelligence with other tools, including GPS and building-information modeling (BIM). Few construction start-ups have also developed products to assist with many other on-site activities, including supply-chain logistics.

An emerging AI technique called reinforcement learning permits algorithms to learn based on trial and error and would provide effective optimization as well as solve for objective functions (e.g. duration or cost of fuel).

Similar technologies would be directly applicable to project planning and scheduling, as it has the potential to assess endless combinations and alternatives based on similar projects, optimizing the best path and correcting them in due course of time, if and when needed.

leveraging Artificial Intelligence in construction

The adoption of technology in the construction jobsite it happening. Sure, its happening slowly. However the good news is that the adoption is catching on. Thanks to cloud-based applications and mobile devices, the amount of data that is captured (jobsite photos, materials used, labor hours, equipment utilization etc) on a jobsite has grown exponentially over the past 10 years. The value of this information is to do deeper analysis, trending, what-if scenarios to make projects and companies more profitable.

Artificial intelligence provides hidden insights into data that humans cannot process or will take too long. Activities that hamper construction can now use artificial intelligence to make improvements in productivity, safety, quality, and scheduling.

Emerging Trends of Artificial Intelligence in Construction
Safety sensors
The internet of things has automated our home to make our home more energy efficient. Similarly, the internet of things is automating our jobsites to make them safer. Wearable sensors such as Spot-r identify the location of your workers and provide any alerts if a worker slips or falls.

Drones
Deploying drones and drone mapping software such as DroneDeploy drastically cuts down the time to gather accurate surveys maps and aerial images of a jobsite. This can be used to track progress without having to be on the jobsite. Additionally the aerial images provide project managers with an additional perspective to identify issues and conflicts they may not view from the ground.

Autonomous vehicles
Major tech companies and car manufacturers are developing self-driving vehicles. While Uber and Google conduct pilot projects of self-driving cars, Caterpillar has released a line of autonomous mining equipment used for dozing, drilling and hauling.

Robots
Following autonomous vehicles, robots have started to infiltrate our home (hello Roomba) and the construction site. While robots have not quite made it on the jobsite, Fastbrick Robotics has developed Hadrian X, a bricklaying robot that can build a residential house in 2 days.

Artificial Intelligence in the Future of Construction
Artificial intelligence provides tremendous benefits to improving the productivity in construction. While the construction industry grapples with a labor shortage and declining productivity, artificial intelligence helps to fill in the gaps. However, artificial intelligence is not an exact science and model of natural human intelligence. So artificial intelligence serves to assist humans and not replace them especially in construction where every project is unique and subject to many external factors and moving parts (weather, other trades, etc).

An additional limiting factor to adoption of artificial intelligence will be the cost. Using autonomous vehicles and robotics may increase the output that individual workers can provide, but it will do so at a large cost. The capital investment of the equipment along with the additional expertise to manage the equipment will represent a large upfront investment on companies. Something that may not be viable for many companies in an industry that spends only 1% of revenue on technology.

Artificial intelligence in construction is on the rise. Similar to other technology advances, those that are ready to take the leap will have an edge over their competition.

There is already a saying going around that your next real estate project won’t be built – it will be manufactured. Does it mean that the future of construction is going to be modular, Waste can be significantly reduced with an off-site process – as much as 50% of waste on traditional building sites could be prevented by a switch to off-site construction, with all the attendant financial and environmental benefits.

About modular construction

Modular construction is a form of off-site construction in which a building’s components, or modules, are constructed in a factory setting before being transported to site for assembly. People are most familiar with this type of construction in the use of bathroom pods, which is a common method of construction in many residential and hospitality projects.

In recent years, we have seen a rise in the use of volumetric construction, which involves the off-site construction of as much of a building as possible before being brought to site. Typically, a volumetric project would construct a complete room, with a bathroom inside that room, as well as part of the corridor and, perhaps, some external finishes.

What are the types of modular construction?

If you imagine a scale from traditional on-site construction to full-scale off-site construction, bathroom pod construction is much nearer the former, with most of the building still constructed on site in a traditional manner. Unitised façade systems and external envelopes are further towards the middle of the scale, and these have been produced partly off-site for decades. Further along are “flat-pack” solutions, involving the use of cross-laminated timber or concrete cross-wall construction. Typically, these structures would be constructed in panelised pieces off-site, then delivered flat on a vehicle to be assembled on site.

Finally, there is volumetric construction, where the majority of the building components are fabricated off-site in factory-controlled conditions before delivery to site. With volumetric, all the internal finishes arrive completed, which is very useful for developments in areas such as student housing or hospitality because there are no ‘wet trades’ coming onto site after delivery. This greatly reduces the number of people on site and the length of the programme, as well as providing programme certainty.

Benefits of off-site construction in general, and volumetric in particular

Off-site construction has a number of benefits in terms of programme, waste, cost and, of particular interest to us, quality. The building’s elements can be constructed a lot more quickly in controlled conditions – if necessary, the process can continue 24/7 and involve finished products continuously rolling off the factory floor. The process is not governed by some external factors present in traditional builds, such as adverse weather, challenging site logistics, the industry’s skills shortage, etc. The factory process will often involve people specialising in one specific area to a very high standard, leading to a better quality of product. The speed of the programme leads to earlier project completion.

Waste can be significantly reduced with an off-site process – as much as 50% of waste on traditional building sites could be prevented by a switch to off-site construction, with all the attendant financial and environmental benefits. Meanwhile, there are attractive economic advantages for the developer– in today’s market, it isn’t necessarily always cheaper to build off-site in the first instance, but the benefits to the client then accrue in a number of ways.

As the world’s urban population expands, architects and planners are mapping out ways to make cities more sustainable. Cities produce a vast amount of emissions and waste, putting a strain on both human and ecological health. But our buildings themselves may hold a solution. High-density urban areas—especially those built using green methods in design and construction—can be more energy efficient and pollute lessThe environmentally-conscious construction (and operation) of buildings. For many good reasons, green construction is becoming more common. Several of these reasons are outlined in a recent article from Smart Cities Dive.

Green building practices
Whether you’re building new or retrofitting an existing structure, there are many ways to implement eco-friendly building practices. Minimizing (or eliminating) the negative impact a proposed (or existing) building has on the environment and surrounding community is the common goal of these green technology approaches.

Green building benefits
The environmental benefits of eco-friendly construction are obvious, but there are other compelling reasons to implement green building practices that may not immediately come to mind. Examples include:

• Healthier and happier workers—employees that work in green buildings report fewer headaches, as well as improvements in asthma and allergy symptoms.
• Reduced energy costs.
• The ability to attract and retain top talent.
• The greater likelihood a green building will sell for more money than a standard building.
• Additional business opportunities that come from appealing to an ever-growing pool of conscious consumers.

Green Building – from the idea through to operation

Design

The appropriate building design is the first step on the road to achieving a green building; this means specifying the right solutions for effective control of the building’s energy requirements.

Execution

Products installed must meet demanding environmental requirements. Evidenced by standards conformity marks, this compliance ensures that projects’ environmental impact is kept to a minimum, in line with sustainability principles.

Operation

75% of a building’s total cost arises during its operation, a phase in its life cycle which therefore requires specially careful attention. Users need to be equipped with the means to analyse and control how the building works, so as to reduce its environmental impact.

Controlling Energy Demand

Occupant Behaviour

There is a general consensus about the fact that controlling the demand for energy requires focusing on the behaviour of building occupants. They need to be made aware of the impact they can have on their own consumption, and to be given tools to command their environment in an eco-responsible way.

System management and equipment efficiency

Measuring and control devices enable effective measurement, analysis and command of a building’s energy efficiency, both locally and remotely, thereby allowing facility managers to steer consumption patterns. As lighting is the second biggest factor causing energy consumption in buildings, one advisable move is to set up a lighting management system ranging from simple presence detection through to smart dimming.

Intrinsic building quality

A building’s energy requirement will be shaped by construction factors such as the materials used (e.g. wood vs. concrete), the amount of glazed surface, its orientation facing South or North, etc. The electrical infrastructure must not be installed to the detriment of the building’s intrinsic quality; to avoid such impact on the structure itself, cold bridges need to be avoided.

Building a share of renewable energies

As we consume steadily rising amounts of energy, this consumption will need to be increasingly offset by the fitting of renewable energy sources directly in buildings.