From RIBA to Reality - Deep Digital Twin to enable Human - Centric Buildings for a Carbon Neutral Future

Start Date 01/04/20 - Finish Date 31/06/22

Funding. Innovate UK - Transforming Construction Call $1.1M

Developing novel AI methods to track human usage of a building using mobile to WiFi connections. This will enable adaptive control of energy consumption in the building uniquely tailored to it's use.

We'd like to encourage all Exeter staff and students to take part in the project by clicking the above Google Play button to download the Exeter Locate app to help drive this innovative research forward. 

"RIBA to Reality" is a transformative industrial research project to support the RIBA design process right through to delivery and operations of the next generation of Carbon Neutral Buildings. Using digital twinning technology the programme will deliver a holistic approach to proactive energy control, by elevating Building Information Models (BIM) so it is capable of tracking live or simulating both human building usage and energy demands.

The project is developing new technology to track human building useage using mobile-to-wi connections. Bayesian calibration techniques will the use this discrete data to build a live `heat map' of building useage. This will use the latest techniques in Deep Gaussian Process and Model order reduction techniques. The human heat map will be embedded into active energy control models for the building (building on top of BIM), with the aim of building a carbon neutral building of the future.

'RIBA to Reality' is uniquely centred around two university buildings as real world test-bed.

The Living Systems Institute which is built and in operation will provide real world data to trial and test the new technology and methods proposed, showing how digital planning assets can be aggregated to create an operational digital twin. 

Project North Park a 70M visionary capital investment, with the ambition to be carbon neutral over its life time, is in early stages of design. This programme will explore how the new technology can then be used to support design decisions at critical stages, in particular looking at how the building could exceed its already ambitious energy targets by taking into account its wider footprint.

Recent Updates

• An Android app is ready to download. It can currently record phone sensor measurements, including GPS location, WiFi signal strengths, magnetometer readings and acceleration data.
• Data is being collected using the app along a stretch of road at the University.
• Large methodological studies are being carried out with the collected data using state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms to predict a user's GPS location from only their recorded WiFi signal strengths.
• The development of an interface between the LSI building's management system and the heat map of live building usage is underway. 

Collaborators

• Professor Tim Dodwell, Academic Principle Investigator, https://emps.exeter.ac.uk/engineering/staff/td336
• Professor Richard Everson, Co-Investigator, http://emps.exeter.ac.uk/computer-science/staff/reverson
• Professor Jonathan Fieldsend, Co-Investigator, http://emps.exeter.ac.uk/computer-science/staff/jefields
• Dr Matt Eames, Co-Investigator, https://emps.exeter.ac.uk/engineering/staff/py99mee
• Mr Laurence Oakes-Ash, Industrial Principle Investigator, City Science, https://www.cityscience.com/team/

Partners