Crowd-Sourced Building Comfort Feedback for HVAC Issue Response
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Solution Overview
Problem
Building occupants often experience discomfort due to temperature or air quality issues, which can indicate inefficient HVAC design or operation, leading to discomfort and potential health problems, and there is a need for a system to capture, analyze, and aggregate comfort and maintenance information to provide actionable feedback.
Innovation Solution
A computer-implemented system in a client-server environment that allows crowd-sourced report generation, aggregation, and response, enabling building occupants and managers to generate thermal and maintenance reports, with geo-location, rule-based responses, and preventative maintenance checklists, facilitating efficient building system control and maintenance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If traditional HVAC control systems are used, then building operations can be maintained with existing infrastructure, but occupant comfort cannot be effectively monitored or improved
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a feedback mechanism where occupants can submit comfort complaints through a mobile application, and these complaints are aggregated and analyzed to generate actionable insights for HVAC system optimization. The system closes the loop by notifying occupants when their complaints have been addressed, ensuring continuous improvement of occupant comfort based on real-time feedback.
2Productivity
If manual comfort monitoring and reporting is used, then building personnel can track issues, but the process is time-consuming and inefficient
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces manual mechanical processes of comfort monitoring with an automated electronic system. Mobile applications on smartphones capture comfort data electronically, automatically aggregate complaints by location and type, and generate reports without requiring manual data entry or processing, significantly reducing the time and effort required for comfort issue resolution.
Solution Approach 2:
The system enables occupants to self-report comfort issues through the mobile application without requiring intervention from building personnel. The automatic aggregation and analysis features also provide self-service capabilities by generating insights and recommendations without manual analysis, freeing up building personnel to focus on resolution rather than data collection.
3Loss of energy
If HVAC systems operate without optimized control, then system simplicity is maintained, but energy consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs preliminary analysis of comfort complaints to identify patterns and trends before implementing HVAC adjustments. By aggregating and analyzing complaint data in advance, the system can proactively optimize HVAC operations based on predicted comfort issues, reducing energy waste from reactive adjustments and preventing unnecessary system changes.
Data Source
AI summary
A system and method for crowd-sourced environmental system control and building maintenance includes a server for providing selective access to building occupants and managers. Users are permitted to generate building reports in the form of (i) thermal reports using a thermal report module, and/or (ii) maintenance reports using a maintenance report module. The reports are each geo-located to locations within the building, and are then captured, stored, and aggregated at the server. The aggregated reports are sorted according to their geo-locations and comfort rules are used to (i) permit a manager at a client computer to access the server to respond, and/or (ii) automatically respond and assign a response status to particular reports. An inspection checklist interface is generated and populated to display a list of preventative maintenance tasks, each of the tasks being user-selectable to designate completion, with the updated status of the reports being stored at the server.