Ezra's Round Table / Systems Seminar: Bing Dong (Syracuse) - Occupant-Centric Ecosystem: from Smart Buildings to Smart Cities

Description

By 2050, a staggering 70% of the world’s population is projected to live and work in cities, while two-thirds of global primary energy consumption will be attributed to cities, leading to the production of 71% of global direct energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. People currently spend more than 90% of their time in buildings, which contributes to more than 70% of overall U.S. electricity usage. Considering this, occupant behavior becomes one of the leading influences on energy consumption in buildings and cities. The proliferation of urban sensing, IoT, and big data in cities provides unprecedented opportunities for a deeper understanding of occupant behavior patterns at both building and urban scales. Meanwhile, traditional design and operation of the smart building ecosystem only consider physical aspects of energy infrastructure. Future smart cities, with connected buildings, increasing penetration of distributed energy resources, and widely adopted electric vehicles, require an occupant-centric approach for optimal and distributed coordination of clusters of buildings and DERs with the smart grid while considering human behavior and mobility. This talk will present and discuss how occupant behavior impacts building operations while considering grid needs and flexibility, with an emphasis on efforts to model occupant behavior at both building and urban levels and improve buildings-to-grid integration across spatial scales in cities, to foster an occupant-centric ecosystem for future smart cities.

Bio:
Dr. Bing Dong is an Associate Professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at Syracuse University. He also serves as Associate Director of the Syracuse Center of Excellence for Environmental and Energy Systems. Dr. Dong’s research interests include building energy efficiency, occupant behavior modeling at both building and urban scales, buildings-to-grid integration, building controls, and diagnostics, and big data analytics. Dr. Dong was Subtask A leader for IEA EBC Annex 66, “Definition and Simulation of Occupant Behavior in Buildings”, and currently serves as Subtask 2 leader for IEA EBC Annex 79, “Occupant-Centric Building Design and Operation”, an interdisciplinary, international research collaborative effort involving more than 100 researchers from 16 countries. Dr. Dong has led 22 research projects that lead to research awards totaling over $10 million funded by NSF, Department of Energy (DOE), ARPA-E, NYSERDA, and industry partners. He has over 100 journal and conference papers published. Dr. Dong is the recipient of the 2018 IBPSA-USA Emerging Contributor Award and the 2019 NSF CAREER Award. Dr. Dong is Associate Editor of the International Journal of Building Simulation. He serves as research committee chair for ASHRAE’s Occupant Behavior Working Group, as well as serving on the Board of Directors of the International Association of Building Physics (2021-2024). Dr. Dong received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University.