Just as you would not classify an animal or human as being smart if they did not possess a nervous system, so it is for buildings. Ecospectral’s BRIM system brings neurology to the built environment.
The human nervous system includes a sensory nervous system which consists of sensory neurons, neural pathways and parts of the brain involved in sensory perception.
As Wikipedia explains, senses convert signals from the physical world to the realm of the mind where we interpret the information, creating our perception of the world around us.
Without this sensory nervous system, we cannot function and as noted by the famous philosopher Immanuel Kant in the 1700s, our knowledge of the outside world depends on our modes of perception.
The vertebrate nervous system can be traced back 600 million years ago to worm-like creatures (see this link). In true Darwinian style, in recent years technology has evolved to the point where the built environment can take on analogous traits.
If your finger touches a hot plate, what happens? Your sense of touch sends a signal down the neural pathway. The body is sufficiently sophisticated and integrated to cause an immediate response that results in the hand being removed from the heat source. The brain registers the event and stores the information. It also stores information acquired through other senses – sight, light and smell. Next time the human approaches the hot plate the sense of sight combines with other signals that change the human behaviour – in an optimal way – preventing the same damage from re-occurring.
The BRIM system does this for buildings.
The BRIM sensor unit comprises 4 sensors for noise, light, temperature and motion and can integrate with other third party sensors. It has built-in processing that enables immediate reaction to control connected devices according what is sensed without needing to send those signals to the brain box. It correlates those signals together – not just one of them. So, if temperature exceeds the desired level, but no motion is detected yet noise is significantly higher than normal the relevant aircon devices are controlled immediately and management is informed that the aircon unit may have a fault.
The BRIM brain, located in the cloud, uses machine learning algorithms to crunch the signals over time to identify the patterns of human behaviour and then send back messages in a way that optimises the control of connected devices.
If our knowledge of the outside world depends on our modes of perception, then the same is true for our knowledge of our buildings. Our knowledge of our buildings depends on our modes of perception which are developed by what we sense.
Only the BRIM system can do that.
