Smart Hot-Desking and its Surprising Potential for Social Impact

by Theo Tryfonas, University of Bristol

June 1st 2016 @ 11:00, in Room Levico - Povo 2

Abstract:

I will discuss a model we developed that harnesses occupancy sensor data in a commercial Hot-Desking environment. Hot-Desking is a method of office resource management that emerged in the nineties hoping to reduce the real estate costs of workplaces, by allowing offices to be used interchangeably among employees. We show that sensor data can be used to facilitate office resources management, in our case desk allocation in a Hot- Desking environment, with results that outweigh the costs of occupancy detection. We are able to optimise desk utilisation based on quality occupancy data and also demonstrate the effectiveness of the model by comparing it to a theoretically ideal, but impractical in real life, model. We then explain how a generalisation of the model that includes input from human sensors (e.g. social media) besides the presence sensing and pre-declared personal preferences, can be used, with potential impact on wider community scale.

Speaker:

Theo Tryfonas is a senior lecturer (associate professor) with the University of Bristol.

He is a computer scientist and systems engineer working in the fields of Smart Cities, Internet of Things and Cybersecurity. He is interested in secure, energy-efficient and resilient urban applications of IoT, data-driven models of civic innovation, privacy and technology policy. He teaches one of the first courses on smart cities in the UK and is currently involved with nationally and European-funded research on smart buildings, autonomous connected vehicles and resilient networks of smart connected objects. He is associate member of the all-party parliamentary group Smart Cities and accredited expert for the European Network and Information Security Agency.

Contact Info: Yannis Velegrakis (velgias@disi.unitn.eu)