Smart Spaces, Buildings, and Homes

The Industrial Revolution had a major impact on buildings as well as on cities and the landscape. The growth in productivity and focused production resulted in lower opportunities (and wages) in agriculture, while it increased opportunities in the cities, resulting in migration and sprawling urbanization. This further impacted on culture and society.

The Industrial Revolution created new and abundant building materials, including cast iron, steel, and glass, enabling the construction of large and numerous buildings and city structures in a short time.

Technological innovations, especially the elevator, allowed a decoupling from structural constraints, and the concept of space more closely followed function, leading to vertical growth (Corbusier, 1922). Cities changed their skylines dramatically. The city function was changing and enlarging, which created new social classes. Medieval cities had focused on protection and featured strong external walls, whereas modern cities are open and connected. Districts and neighborhoods underwent transition; although slums and wealthy areas were still separate, working-class districts emerged. As there was no public transport, the industrial workers lived close to industries, giving rise to workers’ cities. With the growth of wealth, employers built houses for workers (a worker who sleeps better, works better).

Buildings were responsible for 32% of global final energy consumption in 2010, which was approximately 117 exajoules and 51% of global electricity consumption (Lucon et al., 2014). Energy is used in buildings mainly for heating, cooling, hot water, lighting, and appliances.

Approximately 80% of this energy came from fossil

fuel resources in 2015 (World Bank, 2019). To achieve a net-zero-energy or plus-energy building, it will be necessary to combine energy efficiency measures and the adoption of renewable energy technologies.

The Digital Revolution leads to further new materials and technological solutions that have the potential to improve internal conditions and to reduce the negative impacts of buildings on the environment.

Smart homes make use of digital tools, technology, and information (IEA, 2017). Equipment and building parts have advanced features of their own, as well as interconnectivity to improve their operation. Smart homes have a system of sensors to monitor variables like temperature and occupancy, and they enable growing and is projected to increase steadily. According to Strategy Analytics, a big data analyst think tank, the penetration of smart homes is expected to grow worldwide from 4% in 2013 to 12% in 2019, and in the USA from 13% in 2013 to 38% in 2019 (Ablondi, 2014).

According to their data, there were already 172 million smart homes in 2016 globally, which is expected to grow to over 300 million in 2020 (Strategy Analytics, 2019). Behind this trend, the penetration of connected smart home appliances is projected to multiply six times between 2017 and 2030, from around one billion to over six billion (Figure 38).

Integration of “smartness” into homes is best done at the construction stage; however, new construction is below 1% of existing stocks per year in Europe. A focus on deep renovation could provide a tipping point, and it might reduce the need for new constructions. The issue with costs is even more prominent in the Global South, where most new buildings will be built, and where decent housing is an issue in itself, with all the related environmental impacts. Additionally, there is a major disconnect in the longevity of smart devices and technologies (in the order of three to five years) and that of the buildings themselves (50–100 years), which may require continual retrofitting of new technologies and devices as they become obsolete. Harnessing the benefits of connectivity requires more than technology.

Today’s buildings can adapt to their external conditions, utilize natural daylight, and adjust ventilation to regulate the internal conditions and optimize overall energy demand. Building energy management systems (BEMS) can enormously increase the efficiency of energy use in buildings. Recently BEMS has been combined with Building Information Modelling (BIM) systems, which control all systematic life cycle information of buildings. BEMS can optimize the effective energy use within whole combinations

of systems (e.g., onsite renewable production, natural ventilation, personal energy consumption patterns, and building mixed-use).

Progressive sustainable construction incorporates various sustainability aspects. These buildings integrate thermal sustainability and all other services of a building, using closed material reuse or recycling systems for water, wastewater, food waste, and construction materials (Ertsey & Medgyasszay, 2017).

They may even be self-sufficient, such as the Net-Zero Projects by EPA (2018). Digitalization ensures that energy is consumed when and where it is needed, and it enables peak demand management, while predicting, measuring, monitoring, and reacting to what is happening within or around the house (IEA, 2017).

In addition to offering more comfort, smart homes increase health protection and security, and they are the source of huge amounts of data. Understanding personal energy consumption patterns within buildings can support projections in energy demand, which can be

balanced with renewable energy generation. Building information may be linked with large public data sources in a timely manner to balance regional energy demands with onsite renewable energy production.

By integrating smart buildings and renewable energy production, the smart grid concept is expected to create a fundamental efficiency and reliability improvements for the whole built environment. Automated control systems can optimize energy demand and network availability, delivering energy more effectively and enabling consumers to actively participate in the electricity market (Kolokotsa, 2016). Smart metering technology can support the delivery of intelligent services for households and building users. These data, as well as other energy and climate data, are used to analyze the complex relationship between energy consumption and variables such as temperature, solar radiation, and occupant behavior (Jain et al., 2014).

However, to achieve this implementation, community governance and partnership are critical to ensuring that large-scale network systems are built and that the Figure 38. Home connectivity in recent years, in the near future, and in 2030. Panel (a) shows the growth of the number of smart homes, and the distribution among world regions and major economies; panel (b) presents the expected growth in smart home appliances. Source: Data from Strategy Analytics (2019).

Digitalization and Sustainable Development 5

maximum potential of integrated sustainable actions in a community are realized (e.g., Figure 39). However, the issues of privacy and illicit access to personal date constitute a major challenge to the diffusion of smart and interconnected buildings.

Increasingly, homes are becoming much more than places for sleeping. Advances in computational design technologies have promoted the concept of flexible spaces over conventional spaces (e.g., offices, single-use buildings). The Digital Revolution may accelerate more

“anonymous” shared spaces, which simply provide basic facility infrastructure that can be adapted for a number of different users (including anonymous users)

depending on the situation. This may fundamentally change the value of land and property. Such multi-use shared spaces can dramatically reduce use of resources, energy, and materials; it can also lower transport costs and overcome location-specific constraints.

Such high levels of connectivity within homes do not come without significant risks, such as the potential for cascading or systemic failures, or loss of systems control. Critically, increasing connectedness increases the potential for malicious hacking.

Beyond connectivity, digitalization also impacts the construction of buildings. Figure 40 shows a residential building that was “printed”.

Figure 40. The first residential building in Europe printed with a 3D construction printer. Yaroslavl (Russia).

Source: AMT-SPETSAVIA Group (Russia) – www.specavia.pro, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/

index.php?curid=74334750.

Figure 39. Smart Cities of the future. Source: Graphic courtesy Miho Kamei.

6 Governing the Transformation