Recently, it has become fashionable to put down those networks, which are most in our face on a daily basis. The Internet, Facebook, Twitter, Smart Energy Grids, highways, iTunes, Kindle all come in for their share of criticism, which is as it should be. They are seen to sap our time, take our money, invade our privacy and may seem to be the arena of elites. All that is true to some extent. Clearly, most people have done some benefit/cost analysis and have decided that these networks generally work in their favour – most of the time. Like democracy, which must be defended on a daily basis, our participation in networks must be continuously evaluated and adjustments made where necessary. Whether various regulators shape the networks we have control over or participants get vocal and then walk, if things go off track, vigilance and action is always required.

With the Smart Homes we design, thermostats are connected to lights, which are connected to the TV and on it goes. The aim of the system is to reduce energy and other resorce use, cut costs, add convenience and improve safety and security. There are legitimate concerns that privacy may be compromised by these systems. As we have designed safety into our electrical systems for the past century, Smart Home controls require strong security. It may be that utilities and product suppliers would like to know what appliances you are using and how much energy they consume. You may want to share that information with them, maybe to your benefit, but maybe not.

Any appropriate Smart Home system must be secure and under the control of the resident. They alone can decide, whether data will be shared with a utility or product supplier. The Smart Meter at the home reports energy use to the utility for billing purposes at various intervals, but does not necessarily connect to the control systems inside the home. The utility does not know what you are doing and when. There needs to be a drawbridge at that point, which only the resident can lower.

There are those who are fearful that anonymous hackers, utilities, sales organizations, espionage agencies and government officials are poised to snoop in their home. Some paranoia is useful in this world, but really – let’s get a grip. Who is going to spend time and money hacking through your firewall to reset the temperature on your hot water tank. They can’t even scald you, as there is a thermostatic mixing valve that prevents that. People are justifiably concerned about an unauthorized person accessing the hard drive on their computer, but checking the lighting setback regimes is not very interesting to even the most bored hacker.

Smart Homes produce a wide variety of benefits for the residents and society in general. By optimizing energy system efficiency and instituting load management, fewer generation, transmission and distribution projects need to be built. Distributed generation systems, such as solar panels on your roof can easily be integrated as the economics improve. Seniors can remain in their homes longer with Living-in-Place systems. House fires and flooding from leaking pipes and tanks will become a thing of the past. Networks that we control will give us more time and money to do the things we like, while minimizing our negative impacts on the earth. Smart Homes are not just automation, but they can reflect the way we want to carefully live our lives.

The Smart Grid in concept, is a network transmitting resources (electricity, natural gas, gasoline, water, coffee, orange juice, beer, wine – whatever) and data (both ways).  The two elements may or may not flow through the same channels but they are connected.  We have come to think of the Smart Grid as an electric utility thing, but that’s because they created a new branded version recently and did a lot of ad buying.

Yes, in some sense, we have been adapting everything in sight since humans got tools.  If the prime definition of adapt is “to make fit,” then we have been very busy at that.  It has largely been a process of making our earth fit our requirements.  Much of the effort has been a sort of Procrustes’ Bed affair – a rather uncomfortable process for our fellow travelers on this planet.

So we can either try to adapt the world to ourselves or design our activities and physical assets to fit in a non-disruptive way within our residential ecosystems.  We have spent much of human history attempting the former with very mixed, long term effects.

One of Terra Firm’s businesses, is retrofitting  buildings so that they and their contents are not damaged or destroyed in an earthquake, with the attending nasty consequences for the inhabitants.  Most buildings in earthquake zones were not built with the seismic forces in mind, because we weren’t aware of the degree of risk or we simply didn’t want to spend the extra money.  People were very concerned about this issue for a few years after the recent San Francisco and Los Angeles quakes.  We have regressed in our remedial activity recently in spite of damaging events in Sumatra, Haiti, Chile, New Zealand and Japan.  We can’t bolt the San Andreas Fault together and we are not focussed on designing buildings for strong ground motion – maladaptation.

Our energy use runs from the sophisticated (smartphones and laptops) to the crude crude (internal combustion engines and furnaces).  We are still building homes, offices and industrial plants as if energy was cheap, plentiful and without extraction and distribution consequences.  We can get better at this.  We are building our business on making homes more like smartphones in their energy use.  There are still some who think we should be moving our cities away from the rising oceans and broadcasting particles into the atmosphere to reflect the sun’s radiant heat – adapting to our failure to adapt.

Maybe someday, we will have an International Association for Adaptive Engineering.  Millions of people are already working in this field, but they tend to be under thousands of different tents.  For humans, the time frame to make changes to our operating mode may be relatively short.  Many of the other species that seem better at adapting and will likely continue with the evolutionary experience.

A Smart Home Design for Every Home       

Seismic Risk Assessment 2008