A "smart" model house as research and demonstration tool
for telematics development
Ad van Berlo
Glaukopis Consultancy
Hoekseakker 3
5511 KW Knegsel, The Netherlands
Tel. +31 497 517894
fax +31 497 518542
e-mail: vanberlo@dse.nl
1. Introduction
Maintaining and enhancing the quality of life of both older and disabled citizens involves facilitating independent living, promoting greater social integration, enhancing opportuni ties for education, training and employment and increasing the availability and quality of care and technical assistance. Here, technology has a fundamental role to play. Adequate application of technology has the potential to maintain and enhance the quality of life and might even contribute in reducing the increase of cost of care. Smart home technology is one of the technologies which is often being mentioned in this context.
"Smart home" technology or domotics has become the popular name for the integration of telematics into the electrical installation of the home. Products such as switches, dimmers and thermostats have incorporated microchips already for a longer time. In the current smart home technology a large number of sensors and actuators is connected to each other, which makes the home look like being intelligent. This intelligence could be of great assistance to people with a disability or to older people. But also younger people without disability could enjoy the comfort and benefit the energy saving of a smart home.
Given all these advantages and potential benefits the question arises why not smart houses are being built on a large scale. Several factors contribute to the fact that they are still a rare phenomenon. High costs have been mentioned as one of the key factors in the past, but also lack of standardisation and lack of information to the end user were of big influ ence so far. However, costs have been reduced enormously in recent years and some degree of standardisation is under way. Now, it's time to carry out bigger information campaigns to inform the end users, the architects and the installers. One of the major tools to do this is a smart model house. In this paper the basic functions of a smart home are summed up. Since the ideal house should be both smart and built for lifetime, the princi ples of life-time housing are summarised briefly. The Eindhoven "smart" model house is discussed in more detail for the purpose of further awareness raising and articulating needs of futural inhabitants of real houses with these functions.
| Top |
2. "Smart" houses
2.1 Definition and application areas
Smart home technology is the integration of services and technologies, applied to homes, flats, appartments, houses and small buildings with the purpose of automating them and obtaining and increase safety & security, comfort, communication and energy saving.
Safety & security refer to technical alarms, fire and smoke alarm, burglary and intrusion alarm, medical or social alarm and presence simulation. Among comfort are things like the automatic handling of airconditioning management, automatic lighting, controlling the blinds and centralisation. Communications refer to remote switching, audio and video distribution and telematic infrastructures. Energy saving is related to the use of night rates, consumption rationalisation, heating, lighting and data recording.
2.2 Zwijndrecht (Belgium)
In 1995, the Flamish government started a programme to build 5000 service flats within 10 years. The pecularity of this project is that the houses will contain basic smart home technology. In Zwijndrecht, in 1997, the second flat of 20 appartments was finished. Elderly were heavily involved in defining the specifications of the smart home technology.
Before the building started, the following priorities were mentioned by the elderly them selves:
Maximal safety & security
- when leaving the appartment, burglar alarm is switched on automatically;
- when somebody rings the bell at the entrance of the flat, he or is automatically depicted on TV;
- several automatic lights at darkening, at entrance of the house, at entrance of bathroom;
- simulation of absence via lighting;
- passive alarm if the inhabitant is not moving or using any equipment after a certain amount of time at day time.
Maximal comfort - optimal processing of temperature;
- automatic regulation of lighting and heating;
- remote control of several functions.
Simple interfaces - limited number of push buttons;
- simple buttons with symbols for specific life situations;
- several panic buttons, which switch on lights and switch off equipment.
Minimal cost of energy - automatic use of cheapest tarif;
- energy supply per room, if it is used.
Formulating these wishes have taken considerable time. The elderly were helped with a model house, which was temporarily built for this purpose and for a exhibition only. Now these wishes have been put in practice, there is a continuous need to see and try out the technical solutions by new tenants in the next flats. So, there is a continuous need for an empty model house.
| Top |
3. Life-time housing with the Senior Citizens Label
In the Netherlands, in the early nineties, a uniform consumer label has been developed to serve as a minimum guarantee for the quality of life-time housing: the Senior Citizens Label. The basic principle behind the development of the set of requirements was that a house, which is suitable for the elderly, must be able to house them for the rest of their life. It should be a "home of life". Therefore, preventive as well as anticipative measures must be taken. People living in a house with the Senior Citizens Label should not move out of their house, because of occurring disability. This means that the dwelling should be adaptable over life time. For example, the Label does not require a shower seat, but the walls must be strong enough if necessary. Cost neutrality was another basic principle for development of the Label. This means that things such as thermostatic tap, height-adjusta ble kitchen elements, had to be left out of the 31 basic requirements, because they are still too expensive. They went to the urgent recommendations list.
So, the Senior Citizens Label consists of 71 requirements, of which 31 are basic and must be fulfilled always. Meeting the other 40 urgent recommendations is not always possible or necessary, but the higher the score is in the recommendations list, the higher the quality of the house will be. The total set of requirements concerns the environment, the building and the house itself and they are categorised in: safety & security, comfort, accessibility and adaptability. One requirement consists of several norms. The requirement is met if all norms have been met.
| Top |
4. The "smart" and "life-time" model house
In 1994, in Eindhoven a model house was built according to the demands of the Dutch
Senior Citizens Label. Initially, the house was built for demonstration purposes of the new Label only. But the house was also equipped with smart home technology and assistive technology, many of them in line with the demands of the Label.
From 1994 up till present time, the model house and the technology in this smart house
have been evaluated through the comments of thousands of visitors and more specific
interviews with hundreds of elderly. One of the major conclusions from the experiment
with the model house is that a Senior Citizens Label house, including smart home techno logy, would be a very comfortable house for the healthy and younger elderly and that the same house would be safe, secure, accessible and adaptable for those who have problems with ADL or IADL functions. This has put strong emphasis on promoting a house with the Senior Citizens Label and equipped with smart home technology as a comfortable and secure house for the entire life-span of everyone.
The project has also demonstrated that there is a clear need for information on products and services that prolong independent living at home. Participating companies, both distributors and manufacturers have become aware of the usefulness and fruitfulness of a dialogue and confrontation with elderly consumers. University researchers and teachers as well as students have become aware of the existence of products and services for elderly people. Architects and students in particular have noticed the opportunities of smart home technology as a basic installation in the house.
In 1995, the model house was placed in 5 major cities around the Netherlands to further
demonstrate and teach the practice of the Senior Citizens Label. In 1996 the house
returned to Eindhoven and served as a very practical and useful "living lab" to perform
all kind of projecs with participation of older people. In late summer 1997, the model
house again moved to another place in the Netherlands, Boxmeer, where it will serve as a focal demonstration and research tool for a wide scale smart home technology and telema tics project.
The purpose of this project is to use all kinds of telematic applications within the house of
the senior citizen and to use all kinds of information technology applications to exchange
information between older citizens and care providers and between care and service
providers among themselves. In this "intranet"-type regional communication environment
a mixture of all kinds of ICT will be implemented. For this project, a number of 20 older
volunteers have been trained recently to guide and help the hundreds of older consumers,
that later on will be involved in all kinds of subprojects. Examples of these subprojects
are: Internet access to older citizens, information exchange via a call-centre, integrated
safety and security systems, etc.
| Top |
5. Wide-spread introduction of smart home technology
Introduction of smart home technology in normal housing has not taken place yet. High costs have been mentioned as one of the key factors in the past, but also lack of standardi sation and lack of information to the end user were of big influence so far. However, costs have been reduced enormously in recent years. The recent flats in Belgium have clearly demonstrated this. Competition between suppliers is one of the key factors, but also some degree of standardisation of bus systems is under way. EHSA's initiative for standardisation, called "convergence" aims to bring together the best of three systems (EHSA, EIB bus, BatiBUS), taking into account the existing products on the market without having to start from scratch.
The European funded Domotics Integration Project concluded in 1997 that three important steps have to be taken for a real breakthrough of domotics or smart home technology:
- an awareness campaign towards the client or end-user
- awareness and information towards the architect
- training the installer
This would include paying attention to intrinsic aspects of smart home technology, such as constantly using the same definition.
According to the DIP project the awareness campaign will need
- smart home technology at exhibitions
- use of credible channels, f.e. energy companies
- information in special magazines to new builders
- information and training of architects
- visualisation of model homes
| Top |
6. Conclusion
Adequate application of smart home technology or domotics has the potential to maintain and enhance the quality of life and might even contribute in reducing the increase of cost of care. Several factors contribute to the fact that smart home technology is still a rare phenomenon. High costs have been mentioned as one of the key factors in the past, but also lack of standardisation and lack of information to the end user were of big influence so far. In this paper it has been demonstrated that a smart model house is very useful for both bringing information to the end user and developing new applications for telematics with the help of older panelists.
Finally, it has been argued that a house with smart home technology must be a life-time house per definition.
| Top | | TIDE 98 Papers |