A model personal energy meter

Every day each of us consumes a significant amount of energy, both directly through transport, heating and use of appliances, and indirectly from our needs for the production of food, manufacture of goods and provision of services. This dissertation investigates a personal energy meter which can record and apportion an individual's energy usage in order to supply baseline information and incentives for reducing our environmental impact. If the energy costs of large shared resources are split evenly without regard for individual consumption each person minimises his own losses by taking advantage of others. Context awareness offers the potential to change this balance and apportion energy costs to those who cause them to be incurred. This dissertation explores how sensor systems installed in many buildings today can be used to apportion energy consumption between users, including an evaluation of a range of strategies in a case study and elaboration of the overriding principles that are generally applicable. It also shows how second-order estimators combined with location data can provide a proxy for fine-grained sensing. A key ingredient for apportionment mechanisms is data on energy usage. This may come from metering devices or buildings directly, or from profiling devices and using secondary indicators to infer their power state. A mechanism for profiling devices to determine the energy costs of specific activities, particularly applicable to shared programmable devices is presented which can make this process simpler and more accurate. By combining crowdsourced building-inventory information and a simple building energy model it is possible to estimate an individual's energy use disaggregated by device class with very little direct sensing. Contextual information provides crucial cues for apportioning the use and energy costs of resources, and one of the most valuable sources from which to infer context is location. A key ingredient for a personal energy meter is a low cost, low infrastructure location system that can be deployed on a truly global scale. This dissertation presents a description and evaluation of the new concept of inquiry-free Bluetooth tracking that has the potential to offer indoor location information with significantly less infrastructure and calibration than other systems. Finally, a suitable architecture for a personal energy meter on a global scale is demonstrated using a mobile phone application to aggregate energy feeds based on the case studies and technologies developed

Developing a model for carbon neutral settlements: A mine site village case study

The built environment in Australia is responsible for around 40 percent of the nations’ greenhouse gases. Consequently carbon neutral buildings and precincts are areas of increasing interest to sustainability practitioners and researchers. This thesis focuses on mine site village development as a contribution to an Australian Research Council research project entitled “Decarbonising Cities and Regions.” It dissects the many areas of carbon emissions attributable to the construction and operation of a typical mine site village, how this carbon footprint can be reduced to a point of carbon neutrality, and how the process could be applied to other built formats. The scientific literature was found to be essentially silent on the issue of sustainability and carbon footprint of this type of built form. Several research questions were posited regarding the carbon footprint: what are its constituents for a typical mine site village, how can it be calculated and substantially reduced or become ‘carbon neutral’? After deducting the effects of energy efficiencies and behaviour change programs what effect does the introduction of renewable energy have in both standalone and grid connected configurations? After all aforementioned reductions what proportion remains to be offset by the introduction of accredited offset purchases? A conceptual model was designed to delineate the components of the village’s carbon footprint. These were the carbon emissions from: embodied energy of the built form; energy required to operate the village; transport of supplies to the village; fly-in/fly-out access by employees of the mine; water supply and waste water treatment; food production, and; solid waste disposal. The model was applied to a mine site village in Western Australia. A life cycle analysis tool, eTool™, was used to determine the embodied energy of the built form and services infrastructure for village life spans of 5, 10, 15 and 20 years. A comprehensive on-site energy monitoring system was set up to measure the village’s fossil fuelled operational energy; village deliveries were assessed on site; fly-in/fly-out emissions were calculated according to site visits and researched emissions from air travel; desalinated water and waste water treatment energy was monitored; and food consumption and solid waste were estimated. In addition a significant energy efficiency experiment was carried out to test a thermal ceramic coating applied to a typical mine site accommodation module (donga). Methods to reduce carbon emissions were made by applying energy efficiencies and behaviour change to camp infrastructure and occupants, followed by determining potential penetration into the power generation system of appropriate renewable energy systems, and finally the purchase of accredited carbon sequestrating offsets. Significant results can be summarized: total village carbon footprints for the life spans 5 to 20 years were calculated to be between 3233 and 2424 tonnes CO2-e per annum respectively, equating to 19 to 14.4 tonnes CO2-e per village worker annum, equivalent to the average Australian’s domestic carbon footprint to which they would contribute when they return home. In terms of net present costing converting the village energy system to a standalone type gave a clear financial advantage to the owners in averting the capital expenditure of connecting the village to mine site generation plant. With a maximum penetration of 71 percent into the village’s 1.09MWh energy consumption per annum the carbon reduction was small in terms of the village’s overall footprint. The donga coating experiment resulted in a 10 percent saving in air conditioning energy consumption. A generic model, LEVI (Low Energy Village Infrastructure) was developed in the form of an Excel workbook to provide a systematic method to calculate the carbon footprint of a built environment similar to that of a mine site village, such as caravan parks, remote tourism resorts, retirement villages, military camps, Aboriginal settlements and isolated research stations. LEVI was then applied specifically to the case study mine site village. Further research is required to evaluate the potential of alternative village design and operation, for example, by means of comprehensive cost-benefit analysis or multi-criteria assessment of options. Isolated examples exist in the literature and this thesis highlights areas where so much more could be achieved in the vein of carbon reduction in the built environment

Faculty of Engineering and Design. Research Review

STUDENTS AND ACADEMICS - This publication introduces you to the department or school and then each faculty member’s research areas, research applications, and their most recent activities. A comprehensive index can be found at the back of this publication to help guide you by specific areas of interest, as well as point out interdisciplinary topics and researchers. INDUSTRY LEADERS - This publication includes information regarding specific facilities, labs, and research areas of departments and schools as well as individual faculty members and researchers. A comprehensive index can be found at the back of this publication to help guide you by specific areas of interest, as well as point out interdisciplinary topics and researchers

Emerging approaches for data-driven innovation in Europe: Sandbox experiments on the governance of data and technology

Europe’s digital transformation of the economy and society is one of the priorities of the current Commission and is framed by the European strategy for data. This strategy aims at creating a single market for data through the establishment of a common European data space, based in turn on domain-specific data spaces in strategic sectors such as environment, agriculture, industry, health and transportation. Acknowledging the key role that emerging technologies and innovative approaches for data sharing and use can play to make European data spaces a reality, this document presents a set of experiments that explore emerging technologies and tools for data-driven innovation, and also deepen in the socio-technical factors and forces that occur in data-driven innovation. Experimental results shed some light in terms of lessons learned and practical recommendations towards the establishment of European data spaces

Monitoring and Evaluation of Air Pollution in Residential and Commercial Buildings: Development and Implementation of Indoor Air Quality and Environmental Justice Frameworks for Communities and Energy Conservation Districts

The over-arching theme of this work is to explore indoor air quality in two communities and two building types: an energy conservation district (ECD) focusing on commercial buildings and Environmental Justice (EJ) communities focusing on residential buildings. In the first part of this research, a framework was developed for monitoring and addressing indoor air pollution in the context of an ECD in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, comprised of 518 buildings. Indoor air quality (IAQ) assessments were performed in eight representative buildings, ranging from green certified to historic buildings, comparing exposure events at diurnal and seasonal time scales. Both the sampling data and feedback from building stakeholders, informed the development of an IAQ survey, which was used to establish a performance baseline and guide the future operation and maintenance (O&M) of buildings in the district. While several national and international organizations offer standards for pollution levels and techniques to measure ambient air, there are no consistent metrics or methods for assessing and monitoring IAQ for an entire community. The second part of this research uses a community-based approach and developed a framework to address environmental justice issues in underserved communities. Resident-led trainings and workshops, and citizen science campaigns were used to increase environmental consciousness at the grassroots. As distrust in outside institutions has limited the reach of environmental justice research in underserved communities, this research highlights the importance of bottom-up principles that involve residents in the process of goal-setting and execution of academic research. The third and final component of this research focuses on residential structures; seasonal IAQ assessments were conducted in thirteen homes situated in low-income neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, PA. Indoor and ambient air quality data, and quality of life (QOL) survey results were then combined with outcomes from a local citizen science initiative to explore the relationship between air pollution and QOL. Although the effects were less profound than expected, the analysis marks the beginning of needed research on IAQ and QOL that will serve as the basis of future work and supplement a larger field campaign led by the research team

Emerging approaches for data-driven innovation in Europe

Europe’s digital transformation of the economy and society is one of the priorities of the current Commission and is framed by the European strategy for data. This strategy aims at creating a single market for data through the establishment of a common European data space, based in turn on domain-specific data spaces in strategic sectors such as environment, agriculture, industry, health and transportation. Acknowledging the key role that emerging technologies and innovative approaches for data sharing and use can play to make European data spaces a reality, this document presents a set of experiments that explore emerging technologies and tools for data-driven innovation, and also deepen in the socio-technical factors and forces that occur in data-driven innovation. Experimental results shed some light in terms of lessons learned and practical recommendations towards the establishment of European data spaces