Jonathan Bean, co-director of the Institute for Energy Solutions, part of the Arizona Institute for Resilience.
What role does advanced computing play in architecture today?
One area is dynamic energy modeling for buildings: an hour-by-hour analysis of all the heat that’s coming in or going out through windows or walls. There’s a lot of utility for that, but I was trained as a social scientist, so I also have a different perspective.
There’s this idea that if we could just control everything to the nth degree, a lot of our problems would be solved. If we could control everyone’s water heater, we could manage everything in a sustainable way – the master-controlled smart city.
That’s the vision that keeps getting funded, despite ample evidence that it’s not an approach guaranteed to work. And many people don’t want the government to control anything in their homes.
What’s interesting to me is that we keep ignoring the part of the equation we know how to solve — using passive energy conservation strategies in new and existing buildings, like construction with thermal mass materials that use less energy in the first place.
Given that, where do you see value for advanced technologies?
The reality is we need to understand so many scenarios: different uses, climates, building codes. So I’m excited about tools that use AI to say, “OK, you’re designing a house or remodeling a lab space – here are some things you can do that will optimize energy conservation and production for this particular scenario.” That’s where I think assistive technologies are really unexplored and exciting.