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Professor Igor Mezic on the potential of data-driven smart buildings

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

"Five percent of all of our buildings spend fifty percent of the energy - of all the energy that's used in buildings," says Mechanical Engineering Professor Igor Mezić . He has applied his expertise in big data systems dynamics to examine the root cause problems inside building systems, using the massive amounts of data that electronically sophisticated commercial buildings stream twenty-four hours a day.

Watch our interview with Professor Mezić on the potential of "smart buildings" to autonomously detect energy waste problems that could save tremendous amounts of energy resources and money.

"I started doing research with the Institute for Energy Efficiency [at UCSB] that would enable buildings to "think." Today if a unit fails in a building, you might for for 15 or 20 days before the problem gets discovered. The waste of energy is very large and nobody knows about it."

"If you're thinking about developing nations and other parts fo the world, the problems with energy efficiency that they're going to have as well are with the fast-growing, very large commercial market sector," explained Mezic. "It sounds very mundane, but at the end of the day it's artificial intelligence for a building to recognize on its own that there's a problem."

Learn more about the Mezić Research Group at mgroup.me.ucsb.edu.

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Igor Mezić