Sensing Buildings: Environmental Impact of Sensor Technologies and Data Infrastructure in Buildings

Abstract

Building operations and the construction sector are one of the largest contributors to global carbon emissions and energy consumption. While novel construction materials and insulation offer lower embodied carbon solutions, improved heating and cooling devices offer cost and energy effective building services. Above all, “smart” devices promise remote control, oversight, and optimization of building operations. With the rising implementation of AI solutions to every sector, it is important to see the digital devices as an interface to the material machinery they are connected to. The way through which we are introduced to these systems as solutions to environmental problems leaves out the operational and infrastructural costs of the devices. Making material design decisions that are conscious of the mining operations that source the rare earth minerals, to the pumping of oil for polymer coatings, to the chemical baths that separate it from the ore, all the way to the hard drives in server rigs that are cooled with water and driven by electricity, the cloud is nothing but materiality and resources. When evaluating buildings operations and construction techniques for sustainability considerations and environmental impact, connected services such as data networks and optimizations that rely on large server infrastructures and cloud computing are not part of the scope. This thesis reveals the missing components of energy evaluations in “smart” devices within the walls, floors, windows, doors, and roofs of our building, to create a framework through which building efficiency and sustainability can be reconsidered. Through historic research, literature reviews, and experiments, this work shines some light on the environmental impact of data infrastructure to which our buildings are connected. The work presented in this thesis does not claim to be comprehensive nor to solve the problem of optimizing buildings for energy efficiency. Instead, the goal is to build upon existing and established research on data infrastructure, smart technology, climate research etc. showing that, while the efforts currently taken might be improving the efficiency in a building on-site, considerations that are impacting the energy consumption off site need to be taken into consideration.