Scoring a building's atmospheric environment
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing systems for controlling and monitoring a building's atmospheric environment fail to effectively combine diverse metrics like thermal comfort, ventilation, and air quality into a single composite score, making it difficult to assess and optimize the overall environment for safety and comfort.
Innovation Solution
A system comprising a processor and computer-readable memory that receives signals from sensors for thermal comfort, ventilation, and air quality, normalizes these signals, and combines them into a composite score, which is then displayed to users, allowing for real-time monitoring and optimization of the atmospheric environment.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If multiple separate metrics (thermal comfort, ventilation, air quality) are monitored individually, then measurement precision for each metric is improved, but device complexity and difficulty of assessing overall environment worsen
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple separate sensor metrics (thermal comfort, ventilation, air quality) into a single composite score. The processor receives signals from multiple sensors measuring different atmospheric parameters and integrates them into one unified indicator that represents overall atmospheric environment quality, thereby reducing complexity while maintaining measurement precision for each individual metric.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a normalization process as an intermediary step between raw sensor measurements and the final composite score. Each sensor metric is normalized to a common scale before being combined, allowing diverse measurements to be integrated meaningfully. This intermediary normalization layer enables the system to handle multiple different metric types without increasing operational complexity for end users.
2Ease of operation
If individual metrics are controlled separately, then ease of operation for each metric is improved, but ability to assess overall safety and comfort worsens
Solution Approach 1:
The system merges multiple individual metric assessments into a single composite score that preserves information about overall atmospheric quality. While individual metrics can still be controlled separately for ease of operation, the composite score provides a unified view that prevents loss of information about the integrated environmental state, enabling both simple operation and comprehensive assessment.
3Ease of operation
If a composite score is created to assess overall environment, then ease of assessing overall atmosphere is improved, but device complexity worsens
Solution Approach 1:
The normalization process serves as an intermediary that automatically handles the complexity of combining different metric scales. By normalizing each metric to a common range before combination, the system creates an easy-to-interpret composite score without requiring complex manual adjustment or calibration, thereby improving ease of assessment while managing device complexity through automated processing.
Data Source
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AI summary
Apparatus and associated methods relate to calculating a single composite score that indicates an atmospheric environment quality level of a building 10. Such a composite score is calculated using sensors from three distinct types of atmospheric environmental categories: i) thermal comfort; ii) ventilation; and iii) air quality. Because the sensors used to detect these distinct types of atmospheric environmental categories are indicative of dissimilar metrics of quality of the atmospheric environment, the dissimilar metrics are normalized so as to be combinable. The dissimilar metrics are normalized based on measures of acceptability of the metrics. Each of the dissimilar metrics is given the same normalized score when the dissimilar metrics correspond to the same level of acceptability for that metric. The levels of acceptability may be determined based on one or more building industry standards.