BIT – Building Impulse Toolkit: a novel digital toolkit for productive, healthy and resource efficient buildings

Abstract

This paper presents the “Building Impulse Toolkit” (BIT), a novel array of digital sensors and methodologies for the transient and holistic tracking of occupant response in the built environment. BIT aims to enable the dynamic monitoring of occupant comfort, productivity and well-being in order to inform responsive and predictive control strategies. Further, to assess user experience in order to facilitate the design and operation of future resource-efficient and occupant-centred buildings. This paper describes the preliminary results and limitations of this novel toolkit and, subsequently, discusses the future research and development required.

Building Impulse Toolkit (BIT): A novel IoT system for capturing the influence of façades on occupant perception and occupant-façade interaction

“…The current version of the BIT Station interface was developed over 18 months by trials with volunteers and in collaboration with the Department of Psychology and the User Interface team at Arup. During these trials, several solution were tested as reported in a previous work [26]. The polling station format of BIT Station was selected over an alternative electronic survey with pop-up notifications because a pilot study with 16 volunteers at the University of Cambridge showed that the polling station was rated better for level of intrusiveness and the ease of use [26].…”

“…During these trials, several solution were tested as reported in a previous work [26]. The polling station format of BIT Station was selected over an alternative electronic survey with pop-up notifications because a pilot study with 16 volunteers at the University of Cambridge showed that the polling station was rated better for level of intrusiveness and the ease of use [26].…”

“…The initial concept of a Building Impulse IoT toolkit to capture occupant response to the façade has been presented by the authors [26], where the toolkit was evaluated in terms of its level of intrusiveness relative to traditional web-based questionnaires. The present study is a natural and significant progression from the previous work by the authors; in it we describe the final development of the IoT toolkit called the Building Impulse Toolkit (BIT -Fig.…”

“…The additional new features beyond those found in Refs. [11,25,26] create the missing link between key façade-induced environmental parameters and corresponding response and IEQ at the occupant location, that could among other things inform occupant-centred controls in future applications. The present study also includes the first ever systematic validation of the Building Impulse toolkit in terms of the accuracy and resolution of the data gathered.…”

“…The possibility of facial action unit monitoring or other means for indirect occupant data collection, previously suggested in Ref. [26] was not developed further and is therefore not included in the current BIT prototype.…”