Broadband for Smart Cities

The book "Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia" (W. W. Norton & Company, 2013) by Anthony M. Townsend, looks at how cities can use information and communications technology. Townsend covers a lot of territory, looking at cities not only in the USA but in developing nations and issues from security, to the environment. Unfortunately the narrative is a little hard to follow and for the first hundred pages I wondered what the book was about. It was only when Townsend started relating his own experience of building community non-profit WiFi services in New York that the book started to make sense. The heavy emphasis on US developments of technology is also a little distracting. There is barely any acknowledgement that many ICT developments came from elsewhere (for example, the World Wide Web from Europe, the ARM chip from the UK and WiFi from Australia). Townsend raises many issues but then seems to move on to another. This is a useful book to dip into, but frustrating to read from start to finish.

The attempts Townsend relates of communities to provide ubiquitous broadband are very relevant to current Australian discussions of the National Broadband Network (NBN). He relates lobbying of government by telecommunications companies interested in not having a public sector rival. Townsend is suspicious of private company involvement in community networking. He portrays non-profit community providers of broadband in USA as heroes and credits mobile data networks in developing nations with being important in economic development, However, Townsend seems reluctant to acknowledge the role of telecommunications companies in providing wireless broadband in developed nations. There has been a problem that the telcos have charged prices for mobile broadband. For Australia I have suggested that mobile broadband could complement cabled services, with some govenrment intervention.

IBM Smarter Cities Not Smart Idea

IBM is offering a cloud based Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities. This is suggested as a way to centralize city operations and deal with a crisis. However, this is the same flawed approach as Microsoft's house of future. These visions assume centralized control is required, which makes the systems very fragile. We need resilient systems, with distributed local intelligence which will continue to operate when communications links are lost and retention of reliable mechanical systems for when the automation fails.

Similarly, you would be nuts to build a city which relied on a cloud based operations center. If the operations center was disabled, due to accident or attack, or the links to the cloud facilities were lost, the city would cease to function. The result would be a disaster, as you would not even be able to warn the citizens or organize an evacuation, as the communications to do so would also be down.

Apart from accident, deliberate attack needs to be considered. The Stuxnet computer worm is rumored to have damaged nuclear processing facilities in Iran. An attack on the centralized operations center and computer controlled equipment of a city could paralyze the provision of services and result in the deaths of thousands of citizens, directly and indirectly.

We need to build our city systems the way the army trains its troops: they are not trained to be mindless automatons following orders. In battle communications are often poor and those at the top have little idea as to what is happening on the battlefield. They rely on the judgment of those on the front line. Similarly the city needs its automated systems and its staff to know what to do in a crisis, without detailed orders from a center which may not be contactable, be there, or be giving sensible advice.

Australian Building Ratings Underestimate Energy Use

Speaking at the Climate Research Expo, Annie Egan mentioned that here research on energy performance of Australian office buildings shows they are about 20% less efficient than the energy rating standards, such as NABERS, would indicate. One problem is that NABERS assumes one person per 15 square metres in an office building, while in reality there are 25 to 42 square metres per person. Also the air leakage of building varies widely.

This research suggests one simple way to improve the efficiency of building: reduce air leakage and adjust airflow depending on occupancy. At present Australian buildings are designed to have airflow for the maximum number of people the building can accommodate. As a result there is no need to seal the building, as a lot of airflow is needed anyway. In reality buildings have far fewer people in them most of the time, so need less fresh air. The buildings could therefore be sealed (at low cost with some sealant) and then the airflow adjusted automatically based on occupancy.

For more on this see: The Potential Energy Savings through the use of adaptive comfort cooling setpoints in fully air conditioned Australian office buildings, a simulation study, Aileen (Annie) Egan,

Energy performance simulation of Australian office buildings

My work aims to investigate energy performance simulation of Australian office buildings and look at sources of inaccuracy with these simulations.
Increasingly these simulations are being relied upon to verify that building designs will perform well. So far I have looked at issues such as occupancy, air leakage and weather data.

Annie Egan
College of Engineering and Computer Science

Solar technologies from National Taiwan University

Greetings from the the Austrlaian National University in Canberra, where Professor Bin Juine Huang from National Taiwan University is speaking on Solar technologies for buildings. NTU's New Energy Center (NEC) has a KAUST Global Research Partnership with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. They are working on solar buildings . Their emphasis is on simple, inexpensive and practical technology.

One example is a 1 axis, 3 position solar tracker. Instead of having a complex mechanical system which can track the precise position of the sun, this design just as three settings, for morning, noon and afternoon sun.

Another example is the use of a super-capacitor in parallel with a lead acid battery to improve its performance when charged from a solar panel. This is due to the fast reaction of a super-capacitor to changes in the power supplied by a solar panel. This is an interesting result (CSIRO have done work on super-capacitors to combine with lead acid batteries for automotive use, with their UltraBattery).

Previously I had Samuel Fernandes, working on powering web servers from renewable energy. With this we assumed that the power requirements of the server would not be effected by the type of power source.

IT equipment and other electronics have capacitors in their power supply systems. Data centres have banks of lead acid batteries for backup power. It may be that by changing the cabling arrangement in a data centre (or a cyber cafe in India), it would be possible to gain a significant increase in efficiency.

Solar technologies for buildings

Professor Bin Juine Huang from National Taiwan University will speak on Solar technologies for buildings, at the Austrlaian National University in Canberra, 19 August 2010.

Solar research at the National Taiwan University
Prof BJ Huang (National Taiwan University)
SOLAR SEMINAR SERIES

DATE: 2010-08-19
TIME: 15:00:00 - 16:00:00
LOCATION: Ian Ross Seminar Room, ANU, Canberra
CONTACT: daniel.macdonald@anu.edu.au

ABSTRACT:
Prof Huang from the National Taiwan University manages a research team including 8 professors and 42 research students. Prof Huang's talk will provide an overview of his group's activities. NTU and Taiwan are particularly strong on commercialisation of research so you may be impressed by how that happens in Taiwan. Prof Huang's group focuses on solar technologies for buildings including:

* LED technology * Heat pumps * Solar heating and cooling * Solar distillation * Dye solar cells * System integration and control * Energy Efficient buildings

Queens University Live Building

The Queen's University, Faculty of Applied Science has set up a "Live Building". The mechanical, electrical and structural systems in their Integrated Learning Centre are monitored in real-time, as are many modern buildings, but in this case the information is provided live on the university web site.

As an example, it is possible to monitor if the lights are on, or off, in the rooms of the building. Also there is a real time display of the air conditioning plant. and display of electrical power use of buildings on the campus. However, the displays seemed to have been designed to impress, rather than inform. It would be good to have some simple tables of numbers and charts, rather than animations.

Curiously the campus solar array is offline awaiting the completion of paperwork with the power company.