Occupancy monitoring using environmental & context sensors and a hierarchical analysis framework

Aftab Khan, James Nicholson, Sebastian Mellor, Daniel Jackson, Karim Ladha, Cassim Ladha, Jon Hand, Joseph Clarke, Patrick Olivier, Thomas Plötz

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference PaperResearchpeer-review

Abstract

Saving energy in residential and commercial buildings is of great interest due to diminishing resources. Heating ventilation
and air conditioning systems, and electric lighting are responsible for a significant share of energy usage, which makes it desirable
to optimise their operations while maintaining user comfort. Such optimisation requires accurate occupancy estimations. In contrast
to current, often invasive or unreliable methods we present an approach for accurate occupancy estimation using a wireless sensor network (WSN) that only collects non-sensitive data and a novel, hierarchical analysis method. We integrate potentially uncertain
contextual information to produce occupancy estimates at different levels of granularity and provide confidence measures for effective building management. We evaluate our framework in real-world deployments and demonstrate its effectiveness and accuracy for occupancy monitoring in both low- and high-traffic area scenarios. Furthermore, we show how the system is used for analysing historical data and identify effective room misuse and thus a potential for energy saving.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationBuildSys’14 - Proceedings of the 1st ACM Conference on Embedded Systems for Energy-Efficient Buildings
EditorsDane Christensen, Xiaofan Jiang
Place of PublicationNew York NY USA
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Pages90-99
Number of pages10
ISBN (Electronic)9781450331449
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2014
Externally publishedYes
EventACM Conference on Embedded Systems for Energy-Efficient Buildings 2014 - Memphis, United States of America
Duration: 3 Nov 20146 Nov 2014
Conference number: 1st
http://www.buildsys.org/2014/

Conference

ConferenceACM Conference on Embedded Systems for Energy-Efficient Buildings 2014
Abbreviated titleBuildSys’14
Country/TerritoryUnited States of America
CityMemphis
Period3/11/146/11/14
Internet address

Keywords

  • Algorithms
  • Experimentation
  • Occupancy estimation
  • Hierarchical modeling
  • Environmental sensing
  • Energy

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