Project
Online meetings and regularly working from home. These are just a few examples of how our working patterns have changed after the corona lockdowns. This also means that how and when we use our offices has changed. The Active mode lab of the department of Transport & Planning researches how we can use the scarce office and meeting spaces more efficiently, in light of the new working patterns, by smart use of sensors and data.
The goal is to test a sensor system and dashboard that provides people with real-time information about the occupancy of relevant rooms. The goal is also to gain insight about how people use such a system; how they experience it; and when and under which conditions they feel it is acceptable to them from, among other thing, a privacy perspective to install occupancy sensors in a certain space.
The research mainly takes place within the department of Transport & Planning itself and consists of three phases.
- Phase 1: A survey at the department Transport & Planning asking people about their use of the office and meeting spaces, the potential benefit they expect to gain from an occupancy information and what discomfort think they would experience when a certain sensor would be installed in their office or in a meeting room.
- Phase 2: Testing the custom-build sensor system to ensure it is functioning as expected.
- Phase 3: Testing the sensor system in combination with the dashboard to collect data about how people use it and experience it.
Phase 1: The survey
A survey has been distributed among the employees of the department Transport & Planning asking them about their use of the office and meeting spaces, the potential benefit they expect to gain from an occupancy information and what discomfort think they would experience when a certain sensor would be installed in their office or in a meeting room.
Phase 2: Testing the technical functioning of the custom-build sensor system
A custom sensor system has been developed and will be tested in the Piet Opstal meeting room, the Ditlab meeting room, Serge Hoogendoorn's room and the call booths at pantry B at the department of Transport & Planning at the end of 2024. The goal is to ensure that the sensors and the back end of the system function as expected and tweak these were needed.
The sensors are simple motion sensors that can only measure if anybody is in the room or not. The picture shows one of these sensors.
What can the sensors measure?
The sensor can only measure if there is any movement in the room using 6 PIR motion sensors (one on each side). So, we cannot measure who is in the room, how many people are in the room or where people are in the room. Nor can we measure trajectories, record images or sound, identify shapes of people or wifi or bluetooth signals.
In short, we cannot identify who is in the space or what you are doing in any way but only identify that something is moving in the space and therefore that the space is occupied.
How can I see whether I am in a room where this sensor is active?
You can see this in two ways. Firstly, you will see the sensors themselves. Due to how these sensors work they are located at clearly visible locations in any space. Furthermore, a flyer will be prominently displayed in any space where the sensors are active.
What data is collected and does this include any personal data?
For every minute the sensors capture if any movement was detected in the room and send this information to a database. This database thus only stores whether any movement was detected during a particular minute by a sensor and does not include any personal information. The figure below shows the raw output of a sensor. This figure shows that the sensors only record a binary value (0 or 1). Namely, has any movement been recorded by the sensor in the last minute (value =1) or not (value = 0).
Who has access to the data?
Martijn Sparnaaij and Dorine Duives are the only people who have access to the data.
What will be done with the collected data?
During this phase the collected data is used to test if the sensor and backend system are working well from a technical perspective and if the sensors and backend system can correctly and consistently identify if a room is occupied or nor. To accomplish this last part, we will check the room occupancy by hand from time to time to get a validation data sample.
Phase 3: Testing the use of the sensor system and dashboard
During the third phase sensors are installed in multiple rooms/spaces. These include the Piet Opstal room, the Dittlab meeting room, the cubicles at pantry B and the room of Serge. The occupancy of these rooms will be displayed in real-time on a dashboard. For 1 month the use of the system will be active after which a survey will be distributed to collect how people experienced the system.
Contact and questions
If you have any questions, please contact us by mailing to hybridworkresearch-TP-CITG@tudelft.nl. Or talk to Martijn Sparnaaij or Dorine Duives.