Making Buildings Safer
Another potentially life-saving gadget has been added to the assortment of products and projects that make up the Calit2@UCI “living lab” concept.
Chris Davison, ResponSphere technology manager, installed multifunction sensor motes throughout the Irvine building as part of the project’s ongoing effort to improve crisis communication and response.
“The Calit2 Building is certainly one of the most intelligent of the smart buildings,” Davison comments. “Ellis Stanley (City of Los Angeles emergency manager and Project ResCUE Community Advisory Board president) likes to say that we have more instrumentation in our coffee room than (is in) most cities.”
The motes contain temperature, humidity, acoustic and light sensors, accelerometers, magnetometers and an alert system that activates whenever any of the sensors reaches a pre-determined level.
The data collected by the motes stream in real time to a ZigBee network, a high level communication protocol that uses small, lowpower digital radios based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard for wireless personal area networks.
Sensor information is updated approximately every three seconds to a database that is part of the CAMAS-VM test bed framework and is available to anyone with network access.
“Anyone can obtain up-to-the-second sensor information about the Calit2 Building from anywhere in the world by querying the CAMAS database,” Davison says.
He recently adapted the motes – which were originally battery powered – so that they can be plugged into electrical outlets for charging.
The motes are another effort by the ResponSphere team to quickly recognize changes in building conditions that could indicate emergency situations. Changes in temperature and light sensors could be indications of explosion or fire; because the sensors are localized, responders would know exactly where to take action.
The acoustic sensors measure ambient sound levels, where a drastic change could signify a problem. The accelerometers measure building sway on the x and y axes, while the magnetometer reads magnetic levels in the building.
“These motes stream real-time sensor data, so they can be utilized as a first indication of trouble in the building,” says Davison.
- Anna Lynn Spitzer
Reprinted with permission from Interface, Calit2's magazine
