Utilising In-Use Data to Reduce Costs, Decarbonise, Verify Build Quality and Ensure Healthy Buildings

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Innovate UK
Innovate UK
Innovate UK
Innovate UK
Innovate UK

£107,880

March 31, 2023

June 30, 2023

Our project aims to develop the Atamate products and services to establish a data driven methodology to reduce energy demand and carbon emissions in existing domestic buildings.

Building energy consumption and therefore carbon emissions are dictated by the fabric performance of the building - levels of insulation and airtightness, the installed mechanical and electrical systems, and most importantly the occupancy or use of the building. We propose to partner with a Housing Association to monitor a number of trial buildings, each with a different combination of fabric, services and occupancy, to provide a dataset to monitor, assess and improve in use performance.

We believe that there are 3 core challenges in upgrading existing buildings that we would look to address as part of this project:

1. Developing appropriate strategy for intervention of mechanical and/or fabric upgrades. Success criteria will be based on:
1. Providing a route to zero carbon - which means removing gas (or oil) from a property.
2. Maintain tenants' bills at or ideally below current levels
3. Optimal capital cost intervention. Atamate acts as a monitoring and control platform to trial different fabric and mechanical interventions.
2. Verification that the work is completed to an appropriate standard. Refurbishment work is difficult and often hidden (eg. mastic a window or insulating a roof). Consequently verifying the contractor has completed the work correctly is critical. We believe that data collected from atBOS can be used for this purpose.
3. Ensuring the building is healthy for occupants. atBOS technology will monitor air quality, climate, occupancy and energy and water use in real time.

Our project proposes to use our existing technology platform, atBOS, to control and monitor house associations properties to gather data to research and develop tools to address these challenges. These tools will then allow solutions to be scaled up.

As every building is different, having an approach which can flex to different combinations of architecture, mechanical systems and building occupants is crucial. We believe that an integrated approach to controlling buildings can provide this flexibility whilst providing a platform that allows other technologies and practices to align for the same purpose. We therefore offer the glue that can tie decarbonisation projects together, whilst also providing the capability to monitor and report actual performance in use.