Air quality monitoring and analytics in buildings
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Air quality monitoring and analytics in buildings

3 MINUTES READ
Benjamin Kott
Author: Benjamin Kott Founder & CEO of Fabriq March 08, 2017

The increasing focus on Health & Wellbeing of building occupiers requires companies to consider how best to manage their workplace environment. Well-known benefits from healthy indoor environments include employee / occupant well-being and increased levels of productivity, among others.

An integrated solution comprising sensors, connectivity and platform

At EnergyDeck, we're in the process of launching our next generation, data science based Alphadeck platform. We've completed work on the platform foundations and have launched a first version of the Air Quality Monitoring module at Ecobuild 2017 in London. The platform automatically pulls in readings from a number of wireless sensors that can be flexibly placed in almost any indoor environment directly by the occupant.

The Alphadeck system can track metrics including PM (2.5 and 10), CO2, VOC, relative humidity and temperature, in addition to lux and more specialised parameters (depending on sensor capabilities). Data acquisition and management is completely integrated into the Alphadeck platform, which captures a very wide range of metrics including asset information, energy and building performance data. All this data is available to users for further analysis and reporting, either in the form of dashboards, web or downloadable reports.

Air quality matters beyond Health & Wellbeing

It comes as no surprise that many corporates are keen to provide the best working environments for their employees, and it is clear how effective air quality management can play a significant role in this endeavour.

Seen from the landlord's perspective, this makes AQM a key subject as well. If landlords are able to demonstrate high levels of performance of their assets in this respect, they can use it to attract and retain the best tenants. Vice versa, it is also important for risk management. With the increasing ubiquity of personal devices that measure an ever-increasing number of environmental metrics, landlords are well advised to ensure their environments are healthy and demonstrate low levels of e.g. pollutants on an ongoing, operational basis (i.e., not just at the building design stage).

Health & Wellbeing certifications ensure adherence to standards

The WELL and RESET standards provide specific thresholds for a variety of air quality parameters typically found in indoor environments, such as the ones shown in the table below.

Time plays a crucial role in this context. A short-lived spike of pollutants is less of an issue than continuous exposure of occupants to concentrations near or above the upper limits shown above. Ongoing monitoring, real time analysis and alerting are key to ensure long-term sustainable environments.

AQM in practice – how EnergyDeck can help 

To start understanding and managing air quality in the workplace, it is necessary to acquire data at granular intervals from reliable sensors, process it in real time and flag any values above certain (time) limits.

EnergyDeck can support this process through:

  1. Specifying and deploying suitable sensor technologies given client objectives and occupancy types
  2. Setting up wireless networks (based on Wi-Fi or 3/4G technologies) that are low cost, fully autonomous and independent of corporate IT networks as well as building management systems
  3. Automatically collecting data generated by the sensors and making it accessible to selected users via our Alphadeck platform; this includes customisable dashboards with specific metrics
  4. Analysing data in- and out-of-platform to understand long-term patterns and relationships between a wide range of air quality metrics, Health & Wellbeing aspects and e.g. energy consumption
  5. Providing the business case for the sustainability of assets and / or workplaces
  6. Interfacing with specialists for workplace services and certifications such as WELL, RESET etc.

Get in touch!

To learn more about our air quality monitoring solutions or the advanced capabilities of our next-generation Alphadeck platform, get in touch on info@energydeck.com or give us a call at +44 20 33 55 11 74.