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Congratulations to SBS lab member Rosina Adhikari on passing her Ph.D. comprehensive exam. Her research is focused on addressing challenges in climate resilience and building decarbonization with specific emphasis on low-income communities. She has worked on multiple U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and National Science Foundation (NSF) projects. She has also published several conference papers. Rosina joins several of our lab members who have recently passed their Ph.D, comprehensive exams.
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Nearly 30 experts from the US, Republic of Ireland, and Northern Ireland attended the U.S.-Ireland Workshop on Multi-Scale Building Energy Performance Prediction at the University College Dublin. The participants were from a wide variety of backgrounds including government, academia, national laboratories, industries, and non-profit organizations. They discussed the challenges and opportunities in modeling for building energy performance in the three jurisdiction. We are happy to see this workshop be so successful and look forward to the continued collaborations and new collaborations that can come from this.
The workshop was a spin-off of our joint project “U.S.-Ireland R&D Partnership: Intelligent Data Harvesting for Multi-Scale Building Stock Classification and Energy Performance Prediction” with James O’Donnell at University College Dublin and Neil Hewitt at Ulster University. We were glad to have Ph.D. students Rosina Adhikari and Jiyuan Sui as well as undergraduate students Almila Meng and Alex Pan join the workshop. This was a great opportunity for several of our students to learn from the experts. We are extremely grateful to National Science Foundation, Science Foundation Ireland, and Department of Economy NI for sponsoring this research.
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We are delighted to announce that another research paper from our joint U.S.-Ireland R&D Project was published in the Data in Brief Journal. The paper titled “Urban Residential Building Stock Synthetic Datasets for Building Energy Performance Analysis” proposes an urban building stock dataset consisting of synthetic input and output data for the energy simulation of 1 million buildings. It contains four different residential types: terraced, detached, semi-detached, and bungalow. It includes 19 inputs which include building component U-values, HVAC parameters, and renewable system parameters.
This dataset will be a valuable resource for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers seeking to boost sustainability and energy efficiency in urban building environments. It also holds potential for future research in the field of building energy modeling and analysis. The work is part of the U.S.-Ireland R&D Partnership and Next Generation Energy Systems (NexSys) project funded by the Science Foundation in the Republic of Ireland (RoI), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Department for the Economy NI in Northern Ireland.
We appreciate this opportunity for collaboration and look forward to future papers and joint research opportunities as we continue this partnership.
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Prof. Wangda Zuo presented at the Makassar Low-Carbon City with Metaverse. This event was opened by Mayor Mohammad Ramdhan Pomanto and Helen Santiago Fink from US-ASEAN Smart Cities Partnership. Five international experts shared their experiences in achieving low-carbon cities by working on waste, energy, and water systems. The passion for a low-carbon city was evident as more than 1000 participants attended this event in person and online.
We are thankful for the support of the National Science Foundation (NSF) towards our joint US-Indonesian team as we work with the City of Makassar on smart garden alleys over the past three years. We look forward to extending this collaboration to look into net zero carbon cities for Makassar.
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Last week, Prof. Zuo and Ph.D. student Yizhi Yang attended the joint project meeting at Ulster University. They were able to meet and discuss their joint US-NI-Rol project “Intelligent Data Harvesting for Multi-Scale Building Stock Classification and Energy Performance Prediction.” While the SBS team was in Belfast, Northern Ireland they were able to visit and tour Ulster University’s heat pump facility. The team also met with officers from the Department for the Economy NI to better tune their research to support the policy-making process regarding energy-efficient buildings and renewable energy.
This research project is supported by National Science Foundation (NSF), Department for the Economy NI, and Science Foundation Ireland (SFI). The project is a collaborative project with Pennsylvania State University, University College Dublin, and Ulster University. The project aims to reduce residential building energy consumption and related greenhouse gas emissions across the three jurisdictions. This goal is being achieved by using the expertise in green engineering from the NI team, building modeling and machine learning from the US team, and the information theory of the RoI team. We are thankful for the warm and generous welcome from the Ulster University team and excited to continue working with all parties on this important research project.
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This past week, Prof. Zuo was able to visit the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bhilai to start working on the NSF-funded US-India research project on energy-efficient healthy buildings. He was able to meet with Director Rajiv Prakash, Professor Pravesh Chandra Shukla, and Dr. Satyajit Gupta. He was also able to tour the facilities and meet many faculty and students. Prof. Zuo also gave a seminar about our research on smart cities. We are looking forward to continued collaboration with the team at IIT.
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This December, Professor Wangda Zuo and undergraduate researcher Nathan Kurtz visited Makassar, Indonesia as part of their collaboration with the city in the NSF-funded Smart Garden Alley Project. During their visit, they met with many project collaborators and community organizers to learn more about Makassar’s ambitious plan to create circular economies – which have the potential to generate less material waste and pollution, increase sustainability, and decrease burdens on marginalized communities – in city alleys. With the help of the city, Makassar residents have improved drainage, created community and hydroponic gardens, and have started fish farms in alleys. Residents have shared the produce, fish, and lobster harvested from these alleys within the neighborhood and have also sold them to cover garden maintenance costs. The SBS Lab is analyzing sensor data with AI to help residents ensure optimal garden conditions.
During their visit, Professor Zuo also talked with researchers from the Institut Teknologi Bandung and the Indonesia University of Education to learn about localized sustainable improvements for Indonesians, including low cost cool roof technologies. We thank everyone involved with the visit for their hospitality, especially Mayor Moh. Romdhan Pomanto, Donny Koerniawan, and Beta Paramita. We look forward to more productive collaboration!
We also thank the National Science Foundation and the US Department of State’s US-ASEAN Smart Cities Partnership for their generous funding.
Picture: visiting Institut Teknologi Bandung and the Indonesia University of Education.
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Professor Wangda Zuo presented the SBS Lab’s Smart Garden Alley Project, also contributed to by Yizhi Yang, Yingli Lou, and Kathryn Hinkelman, at the National Science Foundation (NSF) 2022 Smart and Connected Communities Principal Investigator (PI) Meeting in Arlington, VA on Oct 11-12. He also served as a panelist in the “International Collaborations in S&CC” conference session.
The associated abstract for the Smart Garden Alley project can be found here.
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During his visit to Washington DC this summer as part of the US-ASEAN Smart Cities Partnership, Makassar City Mayor Mohammad Ramdhan Pomanto gave an interview about the Smart Garden Alley project, a collaboration between the city and SBS Lab researchers Katy Hinkelman, Yingli Lou, and Yizhi Yang. Mayor Pomanto explained the motives behind the smart garden alley project, its goals to promote sustainability and urban farming, and the benefits it has had on local residents. The SBS Lab is working with Mayor Pomanto and the city to make these garden alleys “smart” through collecting data from sensor networks to inform urban farming practices and increase comfort in garden alleys. To watch the interview, click here.
Related: Penn State’s article about the mayor’s visit.