Real Solutions to Real Problems FAQs | Legal | Privacy | Contact About Wolf RockExpertiseSolutionsHappeningsNews and Notes Home>Solutions>WaveSaver About Wolf Rock Expertise Solutions CollegeLink Wireless Fencing uBio CollegeWhere WaveSaver Happenings Notes and News     WaveSaver  WaveSaver for Schools and Universities was the 3rd round of environmental modeling software Wolf Rock developed for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. We designed and built two previous versions: one for hotels and a second for office buildings. There was also a version of the technology developed for the Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) for Government installations. The Problems There were three major areas that required creative problem solving. The first was in the area of Human Factors.  The problem was describing the layout of every building on a college campus, (right down to the water faucets) as well as the daily usage patterns, for everyone who uses those buildings. The second problem was computation.  Speed was needed by the expert system to evaluate trade-offs in priority, pay back, time and cost.  The more options considered the better the return. This meant we needed to design a simulation of the building infrastructure from water heating, temperature variations, factors of reclamation and heat recovery, that could do real time computations of the consumption and waste production. The non-deterministic nature of the results had to deal with the concepts of reclamation, heat extraction, and waste absorption, so the problem was not straightforward by any means. The third problem was the expert system itself.  Given a building and a fixed about of time, we needed to be able to determine what construction changes could be made, the time and cost needed to make the changes and the resource and cost savings before and after the change. This information then needed to create an optimal construction schedule. We had an excellent Professional Engineering group to work with. The Solutions The application uses an inheritance based GUI, and a custom designed object instance database.  This allows a user to quickly and easily create a complex system model of water and energy usage for institutions ranging from a small college up to a large university campus (and even a medium sized city) The concept of Is Like and a set of seasonal variations that could be applied to any object in the system made a huge problem into a very manageable one.. It allowed the local engineer to create say, a dormitory and then specify that other dormitories to be like that prototype. The relation could be fixed (change one and all of the relations change as well) or used as a starting point.   Key Project Data Project Duration 9 months (incremental development based on a family of products) Key Technologies Simulation, Database, GUI Design, Computation Models, Moduar components, Computational Plug-In components. Major Technologies Human Factors, non-Linear Dynamics, Computational Modeling, Expert Systems Key Success Factors Accurary, PayBack, Usage Motivation Surprises How much money can actually be saved with a minimal about of investment and construction. Client Platforms Windows 3.1, 95, 98, ME,NT, 2000 Development C, C++,  Application Generation Tools.   Population and usage could be defined seasonally as a percentage of a fixed point. Student Population could apply to the classrooms, dining halls and residence halls, and all of the usage would adjust accordingly. The age of the building, its style and location were also used to determine the defaults for everything from waste treatment type to the number of gallons used to flush a toilet.  Seasonal degree day charts and local construction adjustments were also taken into account. The result was that the initial description of a campus could be developed extremely quickly. The initial states determined the parameters of the simulation model.  Actual numbers were then used to train the model and calibrate the behavior to actual usage. Without this rapid bootstrap process the size of the task would be overwhelming and the model would never be created. Using this approach the engineer could be seeing the first estimates the day they started using WaveSaver. The second problem, the model computation used highly optimized computation routines and Non-Linear dynamics technology “focus” the system and determine the usage of resources in the most optimum manner possible. This allowed us to better determine when dead ends would occur, where to do tree pruning, and dynamic dependence trees for pre-computation. This provided a very fast means of computation, thereby increasing the number of saving strageties considered. The third solution was the creation of an expert AI system.  We introduced some degree of interactivity into the expert model so that an engineer, working in conjunction with the system, could prune paths that were unlike to be implemented.  This made the output much more in tune with reality and generated detailed projects to make the school more energy and water efficient. We also made it possible to use the simulation model incrementally so that designs could be tiered and long range multi year solutions created. A sophisticated analysis component was also included to allow the user to compare existing, planned and stage implementations. The application and has saved millions of dollars. WaveSaver also provides construction modules that provide full job costing, unit pricing, ROI values and a complete savings evaluation. Changes can be compared with other changes and the existing model. Tracking allows for a  comparison between the predictive model and reality to insure that WaveSaver did what it promised.   Engineers will be engineers A few members of the team stayed in a Sheraton Hotel that had been retro-fitted using WaveSaver. A competition broke out to see who could find all of the water saving retrofits that had been installed in suite bathrooms. Did you know? The average woman spends, on average, one minute longer in the shower than the average man. Screen savers? To cut back on cooling and electric expenses even a medium sized company can save thousands of dollars by turing off the monitors at night and on weekends. © 1995-2007 Wolf Rock Corporation, Manchester NH 800.853.1497 [Home] [FAQs] [Legal] [Privacy] [Contacts]