Ms. Stanton spent time with building managers, learning about the commercial real estate industry and reviewing data. “I came to realize that we already have enough real estate in big cities,” she said. “We don’t need to build more buildings; we should use them better.”
The company’s technology is also being used to improve workplace efficiency, including the use of space as offices transition to hot-desk systems, where employees are not assigned to specific desks, but clustered as needed. It can be used to reserve desks or meeting rooms, reduce energy consumption by controlling lighting or heating and air conditioning, and even monitor water flow to detect leaks. Many companies using the technology have found they can reduce their real estate footprint by 20 percent or more, Ms. Stanton said.
OpenSensors’ clients include Zaha Hadid Architects, which has used the company’s technology as a general tool for creating simulated design models, and the University of Utah’s ARUP Laboratories, which have used OpenSensors to study bat populations at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. monitor in London. (Bats are considered an indicator species that reflects the general health of the natural environment.)
As Bryon BeMiller, who markets smart building technology for semiconductor supplier Semtech, said, “It provides a lot of very useful data for companies in terms of, are they efficiently using the space they’ve rented? Do they have more desks? need fewer desks? Do they need more common areas, less common areas?”
But today, keeping employees healthy is perhaps the most important use of the technology. In a recent paper on airborne transmission of respiratory viruses, funded in part by the National Science Foundation, researchers found that the optimal indoor CO2 level for disease prevention was 700-800 parts per million. with a minimum ventilation rate of four to six air changes per hour.
A recent article in Science on fighting indoor respiratory infections notes that governments have invested heavily in food safety, sanitation and drinking water for public health purposes, but that airborne pathogens and respiratory infections, whether seasonal flu or Covid-19, are largely have been ignored.
“We spend 70, 80 percent of our time indoors,” said Ms. Stanton, “so air filtration is very important, especially from a productivity standpoint.”
