Possible Role of AI and IoT in Smart Buildings

There are an increasing number of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) devices and applications which are used across the globe in different areas. One such area is IoT-enabled smart buildings. There is a growing interest among government and non-government organizations in IoT-enabled smart buildings. Despite the perceived benefits of being smart, there is also a key concern of human safety in an emergency situation. This research aims to address this important concern and will develop an initial framework, called here the Safe'Tech, for human safety in IoT enabled smart buildings. The SafeTech will be developed and evaluated using the well-known design science research method. The SafeTech will comprise of both a design and software prototype solution, which can be used to ensure the safety of humans during an emergency through the collection, processing and communication of real-time data from the IoT sensors embedded in the smart building such as smart campus and shopping centre. The SafeTech will interact with the smart building through sensors and collect the state of the physical environment and sense any emergency and then also interact with the humans in the smart building and inform and direct them about the emergency and guide them for the safe evacuation. The applicability and evaluation of the framework software prototype will be demonstrated with the help of smart building scenarios in both Australia and Qatar, involving the fire emergency exercise and automatic and directed evacuation using the SafeTech. This research has several implications, in particular, the impact of reducing human life loss or injury reduction.