Sensor-based information modeling for life cycle commissioning of residential buildings

According to the National Institute of Building Science (2006), one of the main goals of building commissioning is to “maintain facility performance across its life cycle”. In recent years, the maturing of sensing technology has helped to advance this vision through sensor-assisted building commissioning. For residential projects, however, the overhead associated with long-term sensor performance and quality assurance and sensor data analysis creates a barrier that diminishes the benefit of such technological advancement. This paper describes how the principles of complex system theory can be applied to address these issues in the context of residential building. Two cases are presented. First case demonstrates the application of “scale” and “format” that underline the idea of “bounded rationality” in dealing with imperfect sensor data. Second case refers to the idea of “decomposable hierarchical system” as the framework for building system information modeling to reduce the level of difficulty for resident’s participation in life cycle commissioning.