Integrating Social and Environmental Perspectives for a Sustainable Built Environment
CME Department Seminar
April 11, 2025
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM America/Chicago
Address
842 W. Taylor St., Chicago, IL 60607
Calendar
Download iCal FilePresenter: Andrew Sonta, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne
Location: ERF 1047
Abstract: The built environment has a dual set of responsibilities. On one hand, given buildings’ outsized impact on the environment, it is imperative to improve sustainability of construction and efficiency of operation. On the other hand, our buildings serve a fundamentally human purpose: they should support our human-centric goals such as well-being and productivity. To advance our understanding of holistic building performance and potential, we must take a research perspective that integrates these two sets of responsibilities. This talk will elucidate this overarching research objective with examples of data-driven research on multi-scale human-building interactions. In commercial buildings, data on occupant behavior can be used to develop energy efficiency strategies as well as indicators of social interactions and workplace productivity. Using smart meter data to learn building occupancy profiles can assist grid operators in implementing human-centric demand response measures. In urban neighborhoods, data on human mobility and spatial design features can be used to model walkability and understand neighborhood social cohesion. Across multiple scales of the built environment, this approach to understanding human-built interactions has the potential to transform the way we design and manage our cities and create more sustainable and equitable built environments.
Speaker Bio: Andrew Sonta is an assistant professor of civil engineering at EPFL, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. He directs the ETHOS Lab: Engineering and Technology for Human Oriented Sustainability. The mission of the ETHOS Lab is to use data, engineering, and design to create interventions in the built environment that integrate our social and environmental goals. Prior to joining EPFL, he received his PhD from Stanford University’s Sustainable Design and Construction program, studying human-building interaction in commercial buildings. He was then a postdoctoral research fellow at Columbia University’s Data Science Institute, working in the smart cities focus area. He has also taught in the architecture program at the University of San Francisco. His work spans engineering, design, social science, and data science and aims to address urban sustainability challenges through a multidisciplinary lens.
Date posted
Apr 2, 2025
Date updated
Apr 2, 2025