By Prof. Driss Benhaddou, University of Houston, Texas, USA.
Imagine a building capable of turning up the heat, activating the air-conditioning and even sending surplus solar energy it generates to the neighbourhood as if it is a living organism. As the current power grid is evolving toward a “smart grid” concept with power generation and distribution will involve small scale renewable energy technologies, such as solar energy (i.e. photovoltaic (PV)), intelligent buildings will have the capabilities to autonomously decide and act what to do with its environment and with the extra energy it produces. A typical scenario to consider is a customer implementing a solar energy system that will be used to deliver electricity to its needs while interacting with the smart grid for optimum operation of the building. Even though automatic control of different component is currently a proven technology, developing building that can autonomously act in its own as if it is a living organism is still a research endeavour. On the other hand, the Internet of Things (IoT) concepts are being developed as a way to bring different features to the fingerprint of user and allow seamless integration of technology in smart application. The presentation will talk about how the Internet of Things (IoT) concepts can be used to drive the implementation of living building in a smart grid and smart city environments and the research challenges that need to be addressed to develop the living building concept from algorithms and computing challenges.
Biography:
Dr. Benhaddou is a Fulbright scholar and a Professor with the University of Houston (UH), where he is actively involved in Internet of Things (IoT), optical networking, wireless sensor networks, and smart system development. In particular, he is developing research in the application of Internet of Things (IoT) in distributed solar energy in smart grid and smart cities. Prior to joining UH, he was a senior technical staff member at Lambda Optical Systems Inc., where he played a key role in protocol development and systems integration activities. In particular, he led system test/integration activities for the Advanced Technology Demonstration Network (ATDNet) testbed project and worked closely with the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and the Laboratory for Telecommunication Sciences (LTS). During his earlier tenure at Sprint, he also implemented an extensive broadband testbed for vendor equipment certification and research/development activities. He holds two doctoral (PhD) degrees, one in optoelectronics from the University of Montpellier II, France, and the second one from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, in computer networks and telecommunications. In addition, he is spearheading the development of new state-of-the-art wireless and optical networking research laboratory within at the University of Houston.