Image Credit : ARUP
Project Overview
Neuron is a cloud-based centralised management console which provides a foundation to connect disparate building systems and equipment, making them easily accessible and facilitating operation and maintenance.
Organisation
Project Context
Buildings account for nearly 40% of global energy consumption, with heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems that provide year-round indoor comfort taking up the largest proportion and thus contributing to a staggering amount of greenhouse gas (GHGs) emissions every year. It is particularly serious in Hong Kong where some 90% of the city’s electricity is consumed in buildings – that is about 60% of Hong Kong’s GHGs emission.
Moreover, while only a fraction of over 40,000 buildings in the city are energy efficient buildings, over 50% of the building stock are, indeed, ‘sick buildings’. They expose occupants to health issues and discomfort due to building-related factors such as poor ventilation or indoor temperature being too high or too low.
Although building automation and energy management systems have been around for some time, they focus mainly on monitoring and providing alarm capabilities. With the increasing convergence of building systems there is great value in a central analytics platform which can provide more insight from the combined data.
Project Innovation
Integrating Arup’s domain expertise in the building industry with a digital mindset and the power of Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence, Arup developed Neuron, a total solution taking the concept of smart buildings to a new level and changing the way buildings are designed, constructed, managed, operated and maintained. It does not only help buildings achieve energy savings, but also create a better indoor environment that focuses on the health and wellbeing of the occupants.
Neuron embodies 5G, IoT, big data, cloud computing and AI technology for smart buildings with advanced data analytic capabilities. With the computational power of AI together with machine learning, Neuron transforms building operations – by analysing and learning from large historical data set, it can automatically perform trend discovery and energy forecast, building system optimisation, fault detection and predictive maintenance. In this sense, Neuron is a game changer as it enables buildings to actively response to dynamic environment and look for opportunities to enhance energy efficiency and indoor environment, instead of only presenting real-time status and waiting for building operators’ action.
Using this dynamic real-time view of the integrated systems of the building, operators can quickly retrieve asset information for decision-making, diagnose problems remotely and test a proposed fix for a piece of equipment before applying it to the physical component.
Commercial - Digital
Commercial projects recognises that design is the means to create meaningful experiences for users, create value for people and drive profit for businesses.
The digital category celebrates design outcomes across digital platforms and includes motion design, front end and interaction design, user experience design and digital product design.
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